I Just Got An Oculus Quest 2 What Games Should I Get?

It was the question that rocked the internet the day after Christmas 2021. After years of speaking about VR’s promise and it often being declared dead on arrival, VR and more specifically the portable wonder that is the Oculus Quest 2 mobile Virtual Reality headset had become as seemingly popular as Cabbage Patch dolls, or the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in decades past.

So you just got an Oculus, er, Meta Quest 2 for Christmas and after a few rounds of Beat Saber and themed rollercoasters, you’re wondering what else there is to do. Here are some great choices to try out if you want to go beyond the front page of ideas! Some of these we just find ourselves going back to time and time again, while others we discovered off the beaten path at festivals like FIVARS or IndieCade.

Of one thing we are sure – you will find hours of delight for any mood with the choices below! Hopefully, this list will help you discover a few choices off the beaten path to level you up from day one!

Scary and Exciting

These are not for the faint of heart!

Want a deeply immersive and thrilling horror adventure? Resident Evil 4 was ported over to the Quest just for you. Goes especially well with Halloween or people who like scary action.

You might also want to check out Cosmodread a VR survival horror roguelike that procedurally generates its haunted horrors experience in space.

Affected: The Manor has been around for a while and scared the lights out of almost anyone who has dared enter the super haunted halls of this seemingly endless house of eerie dread from another plane.

Fitness

Supernatural requires a monthly or annual subscription but there is a reason Facebook paid 500million dollars for this easy-to-pick-up and social-friendly fitness titan. Beautiful 3D vistas surround you as you swing your bats at targets or box to hundreds of big hit songs ranging from Kanye to Bono Jovi to Swan Lake.

If you really want to knock yourself out try Thrill of the Fight boxing. Warning though, it will seriously raise your heart rate.

Storytelling

Often people ask why bother purchase a story that you can’t even affect. Well, it’s not unlike buying a movie on DVD or from Video on Demand. You can always be sure that it’s yours to keep, even if they stop renting it. I mean unless of course the entire store goes down, in which case we have bigger problems.

That said the following are some form of story or interactive story or game as story. They are experiences that are worth experiences more than a couple of times before you inevitably reach for them the next time you want to share the wonders of VR with a non-gamer or someone who just wants to get blown away within moments of putting on the headset.

Moss is one of the original and still most beguiling story-type games to play on Quest. 3D dioramas in a rich and wonderfully realized adventure tale about your little mouse going on a big quest.

Debuted at the FIVARRS festival in 2018, but only commercially available for the first time in 2021, Battlescar is a must-see story set in the 70s – 80s punk music scene of New York. This is VR storytelling at its best. It also stars Rosario Dawson in the title role alongside a killer soundtrack.

In Madrid Noir a young woman arrives at the apartment of her estranged and deceased uncle. Tasked with picking up the pieces of her life, she is unexpectedly thrown back into the past to relive a summer she spent with him as a child. It’s a wonderfully thematic adventure game with fairly simple puzzle and lots of interactivity.

If you want pure hilarity in the style of something you might find on Adult Swim – check out Trover Saves the Universe. Though sometimes its sheer abstract comedy might make it a little confusing as to how to proceed, if you can swing it, (or borrow a playthrough guide) that laughs are legitimate and the world-building is great.

Music and Rhythm

Beyond Beat Saber – try Synthriders which has a great catalog of electro, trance, even electro-swing punk from bands like Rancid. This neon glowing world is great for workout, player vs player and 360 spin modes.

We also love Dance Central from Harmonix which has you dancing to songs from artists like Dua Lipa in various rooms of a nightclub, checking your cell phone, and making new friends while it tracks your dance moves. Super fun night out.

Audio Trip is a hand-crafted dance-style fitness game worth checking out for its creative movements.

Sports and Leisure

We love Real VR Fishing for its beautiful 360 setting and high precision fishing experiences – feeling the tension on the line and playing give and take with your catch. Successfully catching new fish leads to adding them to your giant aquarium for later study and viewing pleasure.

If you ever wanted to take your date to mini-golf but were too afraid to ask, now you can make your wish come true with a gorgeous look VR experience anyone can enjoy: Walkabout Mini Golf has nice physics and fun and (mostly) harmless mental timeout playtime.

Puzzles

ROOM VR: A Dark Matter is a series of complex puzzles in what could be seen as an Escape room game but also feels connected to the classic Myst series. Room and VR are a match made in heaven.

Not quite puzzle not quite action is A Rogue Escape – the name kinda says it all – you will be attempting to pilot a craft with a lot of unlabelled interoperable controls as you flee from dark forces that don’t want you to get away. Thrilling and fascinating.

Another fun and unique puzzle game is Squingle – where you maneuver glowing different colored spheres through translucent tubes, to their goal point. It is absolutely awesome in 3D. You can find Squingle in the App Lab.

Travel

Wander is the Google Earth equivalent for Quest. Travel all over the globe and get facts and walkthroughs of actually 360 photos and 3D scans of locations you may never otherwise get to visit in your lifetime. If you’re lucky, you might even find your childhood home!

Creative Tools

The original creative breakout smash hit – Tilt Brush created a cottage industry of its own for painting in 3D space. It was eventually abandoned by Google and released free to the public.

Gravity Sketch is for designing actual 3D models and lets you import images, videos, and 3D files (.jpg, .png, .mp4, .obj) and export snapshots and 3D files (.png, .obj, .iges).

Multiplayer Action

Cookout: A Sandwich Tale is like Job Simulator meets Space Team meets Cook, Serve Delicious. If you have no idea what any of those references mean – you and your friends have different prep stations and are attempting to fulfill sandwich orders for an ever-growing lineup of hungry anthropomorphic (animal characters) villagers. You can also hear each other when you play so the hysterics can be shared across the network as you collaborate to chop, sautee, dress and serve your sandwich orders on time!

Demeo is a good tabletop-style dungeon crawler to play with your friends where you roll dice as you fight an increasingly dangerous dungeon filled with monsters and treasure. If you survive you can level up with new cards to add to your deck before you descend to the next floor!

Mind, Body, and Relaxation

Tripp is just what the name says – a lot of trippy soothing visuals created by different artists, designed to elevate your thoughts and mood.

Nature Treks is a relaxing way to get away to virtual nature retreats. An early title for Quest, the animation quality may not have aged as well as with some titles, but it still does the job of dropping down your stress levels as you interact with and enjoy nature and its inhabitants.

We hope you enjoy these suggestions – let us know your favorite VR games in the comments!