Category Archives: Best Oculus Games

Top 3 Oculus Experiences at FIVARS 2018

OGR attended this year’s FIVARS Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories in Toronto, Canada and found a curated collection of new narrative works for Virtual Reality, roomscale, 360 video, holography and augmented reality.

Of course we wanted to cover the new ideas coming in from around the world for the Oculus platform so here are our three top picks:

Battlescar

directed by Nico Casavecchia and Martin Allais

Battlescar film screenshot courtesy official site
Battlescar – screenshot courtesy official site

Winner of the Grand Jury prize, this pumping punk rock diary is brought to life through lighting, a killer soundtrack, a performance voiced by Rosario Dawson and use of dioarama, decoupage and other artistic techniques as ported to a CG VR context. This first episode is an amazing visual feast that feels like a cross between a Ramones music video and an off Broadway play, set in the 1970’s in Alphabet City. We’re looking forward to the next installments.

Oculus Rift | Produced by Atlas V in co-production with 1STAveMachine, Fauns and Arte France in association with Kaleidoscope

Mel’s Wake

directed by Luisa Valencia

Mel's Wake game poster

From the developers behind “We Happy Few” comes an ambitious experiment in branching spherical video narrative. While still under development, Mel’s Wake has you in the role of a ghost at her own funeral, eavesdropping on various characters from her life. Which way you look affects the way conversations unfold in realtime. At the end you are shown what characters you most interacted with/fixated upon. This could form the basis for very interesting future content.

Oculus Rift | Produced by Signal Space Lab

Where Thoughts Go

by Lucas Rizzoto

Where Thoughts Go game screenshot courtesy Oculus
Where Thoughts Go – screenshot courtesy Oculus

We are always on the lookout for people using the tech in new ways, and Lucas Rizzoto’s intimate piece does just that – over several chapters you are asked philosophical or personal questions. Reaching out into one of several dreamy environments, you grasp onto a cute floating sphere (with eyes) and here someone respond to the question – for example: “what did you want to be when you grew up?” After doing several of these, you are invited to grip both triggers and record your own. You are anonymous of course, and, at the festival this was supported by having you in a curtained off tent with little glowing lights and pillows, where you sat on a shag carpet. Your recording is then sent off into the virtual and literal cloud to join the growing number of others. A beautiful and clever exercise.

Oculus Rift | Produced by Where Thoughts Go | $9.99 via Oculus

Top 5 Oculus Releases – July 29th-August 10th – Megastars and Mental Health

Another couple of weeks’ worth of top Oculus releases! This time around, we’ve got larger than life experiences about saving the world (or just saving a music festival’s vibe with some sick beats) sandwiched between more contemplative meditations on love and mental illness.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

from Ninja Theory

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice game screenshot courtesy Steam
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice – screenshot courtesy Steam

A thoughtful and intense exploration of mental illness by way of a hack-and-slash adventure set in the Norse underworld, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was one of our sister site’s Top Indie Games of 2017.

Both its brooding atmosphere and its use of multi-layered narration – representing the auditory hallucinations and self-doubt of a psychotic episode – coupled with an notably excellent motion and facial capture animation process, helped make this a moody work of genius.

Adding VR implementation is the perfect enhancement of its themes and one of the rare times that speaking of VR as a means of guiding players toward embodied understanding actually makes sense.

A warning, though: just with headphones on, this game was intense to the point of disturbing. The added experience of playing it in VR may be too much for some players.

Oculus Rift | 30 GB | $29.99 from Steam

Electronauts

from Survios

Electronauts game screenshot courtesy Steam
Electronauts – screenshot courtesy Steam

A hyper-designed DJ simulation for electronic dance enthusiasts, Electronauts thinks of everything.

More a musical tool than a game, this experience offers easy song transitions (no worries of beat-matching train wrecks here), remixing and VR-exlusive digital instruments to let aspiring stars create their own arrangements. If you’ve always thought that people like Tiesto and Steve Aoki had a much easier job than they let on, now’s your chance to prove it.

And while the graphics are decidedly vaporwave – not that we have a problem with neon, mind you – the included music is definitely modern, including the likes of The Chainsmokers and DJ Shadow. What Electronauts gets right is that that if favors energy and and flow over literalism. An excellent immersive offering.

Oculus Rift | 2 GB | $19.99 from Oculus or from Steam

Pixel Ripped 1989

from ARVORE Immersive Games, Inc.

Pixel Ripped 1989 game screenshot courtesy Steam
Pixel Ripped 1989 – screenshot courtesy Steam

If our previous game borrowed a bit from the ‘80s with its look, Pixel Ripped 1989 embraces that decade wholeheartedly. Rubik’s Cubes and Nintendo nostalgia abound in this paean to an earlier era of games.

Its central concept, however, is cutting edge: it’s AR completely within VR, putting players in the role of a little girl with a portable video game device (it’s not quite a Nintendo Gameboy). As the reality from the game she’s playing spills out into her own, she’ll team up with her own game’s protagonist to save both worlds.

It’s a unique and clever use of VR that manages to be self-referential and meta without bashing you over the head about how smart it thinks it is. The setting is just the cherry on top of the sundae, presuming Ready Player One and Stranger Things haven’t burnt you out on ‘80s references by now.

Oculus Rift | 3 GB | $24.99 from Oculus or from Steam

Megaton Rainfall

from Pentadimensional Games, SL

Megaton Rainfall game screenshot courtesy Steam
Megaton Rainfall – screenshot courtesy Steam

Starting with a gloriously over the top premise – you’re playing as a superhero who lobs bombs at giant Independence Day-inspired flying saucers – Megaton Rainfall excels at its sense of scale and detail.

Despite a comparatively short story-driven campaign, there’s as much fun to be had here simply flying off into the wild blue yonder and exploring the universe as there is in defending earthly cities from space invaders.

Oculus Rift | 1.6 MB | $14.99 from Oculus or $15.99 from Steam

Anamorphine

from Artifact 5

Anamorphine game screenshot courtesy Steam
Anamorphine – screenshot courtesy Steam

Bringing things in a more earthly direction, Anamorphine isn’t about saving the world, just about dealing with depression and guilt.

The approach to story that the Artifact 5 team has taken, however – wordless narrative comprised of dreamlike and surrealist images to represent the memories of the game’s protagonist – have garnered this release numerous awards, and it’s been a featured selection at IndieCade, E3 and PAX East.

Oculus Rift | 10.4 GB | $19.99 from Steam

Soviet Lunapark game featured image courtesy of Steam

Top 5 Oculus Releases – July 21st-28th – Wave Your Hands

VR is wonderful at expanding minds and creating experimental and avant-garde experiences that make us view the world in new ways.

It’s also good for simple fun, and is at happens, this week’s top Oculus Rift releases tend toward the latter rather than the former, taking fairly simple premises – the wave shooter, for example, or simply grabbing and throwing things – and doing interesting things with them.

Soviet Lunapark VR

from Mundfish

Soviet Lunapark game screenshot courtesy Steam
Soviet Lunapark – screenshot courtesy Steam

Yes, it’s a fairly standard wave shooter, but Soviet Lunapark stands out for its attention to detail and unique setting – an alternate history Soviet amusement park overrun by zombies and killer robots.

With cooperative multi-player, dual locomotion modes and four different character classes to try out, it’s also got a lot more interesting game elements than your typical wave shooter.

Oculus Rift | 10 GB | $18.99 from Steam

Marvel Powers United VR

from Sanzaru

Marvel Powers United VR game screenshot courtesy Oculus
Marvel Powers United VR – screenshot courtesy Oculus

The biggest hyped release of the week, Marvel Powers United VR is a wave-based combat game, but with its wide variety of character choices and emphasis on cooperative multi-player, it does an excellent job creating the feeling of the giant battles in movies like The Avengers.

Oculus Rift | 54 GB | $39.99 from Oculus

Baby Hands

from Chicken Waffle

Baby Hands game screenshot courtesy Steam
Baby Hands – screenshot courtesy Steam

One thing VR excels at is offering participants a different perspective, and SXSW Indie Game Award-winning Baby Hands, now out of Early Access, does just that, putting players into the body of a comically destructive toddler.

Oculus Rift | 5 GB | $19.99 from Oculus or from Steam

Throw Anything

from Visual Light

Throw Anything game screenshot courtesy Steam
Throw Anything – screenshot courtesy Steam

Another recent graduate from Early Access, Throw Anything is another simple wave-based game – with zombies, no less! – but its central conceit of throwing whatever you can get your hands on at the undead hordes makes it irresistibly charming. So do its flat-shaded approach to graphics.

Oculus Rift | 2 GB | $11.99 from Steam

Gray

from LightnGames

Gray game screenshot courtesy Steam
Gray – screenshot courtesy Steam

This free horror experience is short but makes up for its brief length with tons of atmosphere and horrors. Think Silent Hill, or better – scarier – yet, Clive Barker’s Nightbreed by way of the Saw films.

Oculus Rift | 2.3 GB | FREE from Oculus