Tag Archives: best Oculus games

Top 5 Oculus Releases – April 21st-27th – Short and Sweet

April 28, 2018Best Oculus Games, Oculus Gamesbest Oculus games, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift gamesinfinitywaltz

Some weeks, our top releases are all about big budget, epic “save the world” experiences, but this time around we encourage you to explore things on a smaller scale with some shorter but still engaging and artistic new Oculus Rift releases:

Rolling Line

from Gaugepunk Games

As far as hobbies go, model trains have a fairly high barrier to entry. They take money, a lot of time, and a lot of space.

By moving the action into VR, Rolling Line eliminates most of those barriers, offering players the chance to rearrange bushes, hills, stations and tracks to their hearts’ content, not to mention controlling the locomotives themselves.

Oculus Rift | 400 MB | $13.99 from Steam

BurningBridges VR

from Amstad Digital

The first VR release from Swiss technology/art start-up Amstad Digital, this experimental game combines “get-to-the-top” platforming action with a surreal storyline that explores issues of identity.

Honestly, though, even with no narrative component at all, we’d still be playing BurningBridges VR just for the chance to explore its gorgeous cyberpunk-influenced environments.

Oculus Rift | 10 GB | $4.99 from Steam

M.I.A. – Overture

from IBLACKHOLES

A fairly brief but engaging experience, M.I.A. – Overture uses a lot of familiar tropes and mechanics – treasure hunters, mysterious islands, solving puzzles to bring ancient artifacts back to life – in way that still manages to be fresh.

The vine-climbing sequence in particular is well-done, as is the visual juxtaposition of ancient stone ruins with low-poly natural landscape features.

Oculus Rift | 2 GB | $14.99 from Steam

DeathTolls Experience

from Ari Eslami

An incredible – but also incredibly bleak – offering, DeathTolls Experience is VR artist Ari Eslami’s meditation on mass death in general and the war in Syria in particular.

We wouldn’t call this “enjoyable,” but its use of the medium makes an incredible impact in a way that words and numbers can’t, and we applaud Eslami’s combination of art, journalism and new media.

Oculus Rift | 4 GB | $3.99 from Steam

Save Snegurochka!

from TIPA Games Berlin

It’s a bit odd to release a winter-themed game right at the start of summer, but with its heart-rousing tale of a snowman rescuing a dog, Save Snegurochka! is a charming little surprise that’s appropriate for the entire family (not to mention a nice emotional antidote to the seemingly endless parade of body bags in our previous pick).

Oculus Rift | 2 GB | $8.99 from Steam

Top 5 Oculus Releases – April 14th-20th – Meditate or Get Mental

April 20, 2018Best Oculus Gamesbest Oculus games, Gear VR games, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift games, oculus rift newsinfinitywaltz

This week’s top Oculus releases focus more on mind than reflexes, literally and figuratively. Twist your brain in the VR sequel to one of the greatest comedic adventures of all time, set your brain to work as a virtual city planner, or just relax with some paper airplanes:

Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin

from Double Fine Productions and React Games

The beloved team of youthful psychics is back with an all-new adventure, initially released as a PSVR exclusive and now available for the Rift. Exclusive to VR and serving as a bridge between the original classic and its forthcoming sequel, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin picks up right where the first Psychonauts game left off.

Featuring some interesting control choices – like using your head to pick up and manipulate objects instead of your hands, in a simulation of telekinesis – this abounds with tricky puzzles that will push both your logic and your psychic abilities to their limits.

More importantly, it’s got the signature writing and twisted humor we’ve come to expect from Double Fine Productions in general and this series in particular.

Oculus Rift | 8 GB | $19.99 from Oculus or from Steam

Block’hood VR

from Plethora-Project and General Arcade

Another expansion of an existing – and award-winning – game concept into virtual space, Block’hood VR puts a 3D spin on the original game’s ecologically-focused, voxel-based approach to the city-building sim.

Players will still build neighborhoods using a block-based system that requires careful thought not only of each section’s own qualities but those of surrounding blocks, and the use of VR space gives each choice and combination even more impact.

Oculus Rift | 2 GB | $14.99 from Oculus or from Steam

Paper Valley

from Vitei Backroom

If psychic puzzles and ecological urban planning is making your head hurt, why not relax by tossing some paper airplanes in an idyllic wooded vale? Paper Valley is a meditative experience that still offers puzzles as tossed paper airplanes help to reveal a lost civilization – a bit like Myst gone papercraft.

Its combination of simple mechanics and tranquil environments netted developers Vitei Backroom a Famitsu Media Highlight Award at last year’s BitSummit in Japan.

Oculus Rift | 657 MB | $19.99 from Oculus

Fibre

from konzeptzwei

Not all this week’s releases are slow-paced – Fibre is far from it, in fact – but this combination of rail shooter and endless runner for Gear VR is incredibly meditative once you get into the rhythm of it. Stark, abstract graphics inspired by data packets on a network also make this a far different experience than the robot and zombie games more typical of the genre.

Gear VR | 130 MB | $2.99 from Oculus

3D Mahjong Worlds

from PixelBrain Studio

A favorite casual game genre – the venerable Mahjong solitaire tile game – makes its way to the Oculus. UK developer PixelBrain Studio previously released a similar game for mobile VR, and the experience served them well. This is a simple idea executed extremely well, bringing the relaxing puzzle-solving and hypnotic tile-clicks into a more immersive space.

Top 5 Oculus Releases – April 7th-13th – Boss Raids and Bombs

April 14, 2018Best Oculus Gamesbest Oculus games, Gear VR games, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift gamesinfinitywaltz

If you’re not still lost exploring the wilderness of Skyrim from last week, this week’s new Oculus and Gear VR releases offer some new twists on popular genres, like MMORPG boss raids, escape rooms and wave shooters:

Nemesis Realms

from Evocat Games

Inspired by end-game raid bosses in MMORPGs, Nemesis Realms takes that concept and turns it into a smaller scale local multi-player affair. One player controls the raid boss, while up to four additional players attempt to take him out in the arena.

While there are only three bosses available so far, they include a multi-headed dragon, which is more than enough to generate our interest.

And Evocat Games has done a wonderful job distilling the asymmetric action of boss raids into something simple enough that anyone can pick it up while still retaining the manic fun and nerve-wracking tension of large-scale multi-player battles against massive enemies.

Oculus Rift | 2 GB | $14.99 on Steam

The Ship

from VR Escape Adventures

Escape room games are a popular VR genre, arguably second only to wave shooters in terms of sheer numbers, so it takes something fairly special in the genre to get our attention. The Ship stands out for its story-driven setting – a historic pirate ship – and for its cleverly designed puzzles, which were put together by a real escape room company.

The end result is an experience that, despite comparatively simple graphics, feels a lot less like a video game and a lot more like a real-world escape room.

Gear VR | 539 MB | $3.99 from Oculus

Zombie Grenade Practice

from ARVI LLC

Zombie Grenades Practice - screenshot courtesy Steam — Zombie Grenades Practice – screenshot courtesy Steam

Speaking of wave shooters doing something special, Zombie Grenade Practice offers a new take on zombie-killing mayhem: no guns or melee weapons, just an arsenal of grenades for taking out the shambling corpses.

Careful attention to level design and additional modifiers to the usual formula – like improving your score by maximizing zombie deaths and minimizing human ones – add touches of puzzle and strategy, resulting in a much more thoughtful game than a typical wave shooter, despite the seemingly comedic premise.

Oculus Rift | 16 GB | $12.99 from Steam

No Horizon

from Virtro Entertainment

There aren’t loads of space pilot simulators for Gear VR, and No Horizon adds to the mix with an approach that’s a little more free-flowing and sandbox-oriented than the excellent but more linear End Space.

Gear VR | 120 MB | FREE from Oculus

The Road to Hades

from AUTOSAVE

Though some players have reported clipping issues and a few other performance issues that are still being worked out, the unique Asian horror setting and gorgeous imagery of The Road to Hades make this experience more than worth checking out.

Oculus Rift | 7 GB | $14.99 from Steam