The next Boneworks update, due tomorrow, pays tribute to developer Stress Level Zero’s original VR game – Hover Junkers.
Update 1.6 will be free for all and adds a new sandbox to the game. It’s all entirely themed around the studio’s 2016 VR launch title, adding in new weapons, characters and even vehicles from it. Check out the trailer below.
Boneworks Hover Junkers Update Coming Tomorrow
Hover Junkers is a multiplayer first-person shooter in which players battle it out across the wastelands in ramshackle floating crafts. The game looked to take advantage of room-scale VR tracking by making vehicles the size of your play space.
This update, then, lets you drive those vehicles once more in a large sandbox environment. Of course, Boneworks’ signature physics are put to good use, with wind farms you’ll need to dodge and canyons to weave through. You can even jump between vehicles and seize them from enemies.
Following Hover Junkers, Stress Level Zero released another VR game, Duck Season, that paid tribute to Duck Hunt in some disturbing ways. Can we expect to see the next update revisit that game? There’s certainly a lot of potential there.
Outside of these updates, the developer is also working on a new game set in the Boneworks universe that’s thought to be coming to both Oculus Quest and PC VR headsets. We’re not yet sure when we’ll hear more than that title, but hopefully, there will be news in the new year.
Will you be checking out the game’s latest update? Let us know in the comments below.
Stress Level Zero’s Hover Junkers (2016)was one of the first room-scale multiplayer shooters to land on the HTC Vive. Now, the studio is hosting a free access weekend to celebrate the long-awaited addition of the game’s single player campaign.
Launched in April 2016 on HTC Vive, and later on Rift when Touch arrived, Hover Junkers was originally a multiplayer-only shooter that pioneered a unique locomotion scheme to get you moving around the vast deserts of the post-apocalyptic world quickly and comfortably. Piloting your own makeshift hovercraft, you can build up defenses in the room-scale environment, all the while driving around the desert committing impromptu drivebys and ganking other hover junker pilots with a host of weapons.
Now the game boasts a single player campaign, dubbed ‘Junk Road’, which departs from the multiplayer action by taking its cues from the classic game Oregon Trail, but set it in the Hover Junkers world.
“This is a fairly major departure from the intense combat of multiplayer, providing a more relaxed experience while paying homage to the classic game that, for many of us, was our very first video game,” Stress Level Zero writes in a Steam update. “To access the road, you must select the Junk Road option in the main menu bar and select what items to take with you across the wastes.”
Since its release, Hover Junkers has seen a few updates including the addition of new weapons, and a co-op mode that lets you ride and die together on a single hover junker. Stress Level Zero hasn’t made mention of what’s next for Hover Junkers, although Junk Road has been the result of over a year of work, and is the game’s biggest update to date.
The game is currently on sale on Steam for $7, an 80% savings off the original launch price. After the free access period ends on October 22nd, the game will return to the new permanent price of $20.
With the Steam Summer Sale in full swing it is time for VRFocus to bring you a number of deals on virtual reality (VR) titles. With so many titles on sale during this period it can be hard to find something to new to pick up and play. Below you will find ten titles that are sure to peak your interest and keep you entertained. As always, be sure to check back every weekend for even more deals right here on VRFocus.
Hover Junkers
Why not engage in some multiplayer first-person shooter action where you ride around on your own hover ship in this intense and stylish title. Pilot your own ship building defenses around the edge from all manner of objects as you then walk, duck, dodge and aim in gunfights that will put your skills to the test. With both player-versus-player modes and coop wave-based modes, Hover Junkers is a unique title that has something for everyone.
Hover Junkersis available now for £9.44 (GBP) down from the usual £26.99.
Apex Construct
“Despite some minor gripes, its clear that Apex Construct represents the way forward for VR videogames, an absorbing, intriguing experience that draws you in with a rich world complete with its own history and mysteries to be unravelled as well as a fluid combat system. Apex Construct is the standard by which future VR titles will be judged, and an indicator that VR has stepped up its game.” – Read VRFocus’ Staff Writer Rebecca Hills-Duty’s review of Apex Construct.
Apex Constructis currently available for £16.74 (GBP) down from £24.99.
Subnautica
Why not descend into the depths of an alien underwater world filled with wonder and peril in Subnautica, an open world survival game set completely under water. You will need to explore, craft, harvest and survive by any means possible in this massive title where anything could be lurking in the depths. One more, the title is fully playable in VR meaning you can truly immersive yourself in the wide, uncharted ocean.
Subnautica is available now on for £15.59 (GBP) down from £19.49.
Gal*Gun VR
Grab your VR headset and your gun and get ready to hunt demons and spread love in one of the more, different, VR titles on this list. As angels and demons keep messing with highschool life, it falls down to you to put things right and deal with being the most popular guy around, fending off a rush of girls who are madly in love with you. Using your Pheromone Shot your need to give them all euphoria along with getting rid of any demons that might be causing trouble. Can you save the day and maybe find true love along the way or will you fall to the rush of love from these girls?
Gal*Gun VR is available now for £15.40 (GBP) on sale from the usual £22.99.
Katana X
“Katana X is a sword simulation action game designed specifically for VR utilizing tracked motion controls. It’s a highly accessible game that is easy to get into and strangely addicting once you start. This game takes real physical skill of body control and hand–eye coordination to get high scores. If you like motion gaming, swordplay, and having a serious workout session, this is the game for you.”
“Battlezone is arcade VR action at its finest, with options galore allowing players to uniquely hone their combat strategies. With both extensive single-player and multiplayer modes there’s enough here for countless hours of gameplay, so you can comfortably sit cocooned inside these rolling machines of destruction and never get bored, because quite frankly, it’s too much fun.” – Read VRFocus’ Senior Staff Writer Peter Graham’s review of Battlezone.
Become the night and experience Gotham City through the eyes of the world’s greatest detective in an all new Arkham mystery. Immersive yourself in the shoes of the Dark Knight and learn what it means to be Batman. Can you solve the mystery using all your skills and gadgets?
“Block the beats! Audioshield puts you at the point of impact for every hit in your songs. Block incoming orbs with your shields and feel the music. Works with any song file, plus online music streaming and Song of the Day.”
Audioshieldis currently on sale for £7.49 (GBP) down from £14.99.
TO THE TOP
Experience the thrill of platforming in VR as TO THE TOP gives you the freedom to explore an environment with superhuman abilities. With over 35 levels to complete with new obstacles and challenges, can you make it through each of them and complete for the fastest time? Climb, jump, explore and enjoy your journey through a visually stunning environment as you try to reach the top.
TO THE TOP is currently available for £11.61 (GBP) down from £15.49.
Job Simulator
“Making good use of the HTC Vive’s roomscale without demanding an excessive playspace, Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives is a great starting point for both Owlchemy Labs and users set to experience their first taste of modern VR. It’s humorous and inviting without ever truly being too taxing, and the potential for expansion is nigh-on unlimited. Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives is an easy recommendation for anyone looking to jump into VR and a great advertisement for the fact that virtual worlds don’t necessarily need to lean towards photorealism to be immersive.” – Read VRFocus’ Editor Kevin Joyce’s review of Job Simulator.
Job Simulator is available for only £11.61 (GBP) right now on sale from £15.49.
That is all for this week but remember that VRFocus gathers all the best sales and deals every week, so check back next weekend at the same time to discover more.
When you first pick up a motion controller, there are two things everyone wants to do with it – use it as a sword or lightsabre, or use it as a gun. Developer Stress Level Zero discuss the challenges that surround creating guns for virtual reality that work and feel fun to the player.
Stress Level Zero are the developers behind the first-person shooter Hover Junkers, a multiplayer arena battler for the HTC Vive. In a video, one of the development team, Brandon, speaks of how the team wasn’t really interested in developing for VR until the tracked motion controllers were available as an option.
Brandon said, “It seemed like the best thing to do was to start small, and that the easiest thing to do would be to start with a handgun.” He also speaks of debates in the development community about if introducing force-feedback recoil would interfere with the tracking on the controller.
“We decided to relegate two-handed guns to the final expansion of Hover Junkers to give ourselves more time to get it right. That let us focus on getting handguns right.” Brandon says. Going on to speak about the progress that other developers made subsequently on creating two-handed guns gave the team a basis to start from, and improve upon.
“The sniper rifle seemed to be the hardest gun to get right, because you have the scope you have to aim down, so we shifted our team for that on to Duck Season and instead focussed on the shotgun.” Brandon said, then comparing the various forms of PC motion controllers and how useful they are for the process of creating VR guns, including the as-yet unreleased Knuckles Vive controllers.
You can watch the full video below.
VRFocus will continue to report on new developments in VR hardware and software.
Duck Season is a first-person adventure game created by Stress Level Zero, developers of multiplayer shooter Hover Junkers (2016). While it’s hard to pin down exactly what sort of game it is with its unique, nostalgia-inducing narrative style and horror elements, we’ll be finding out soon enough, because Duck Season is slated to release on Steam and the Oculus Store on September 14th.
Back at GDC in March, we had a chance to pop into the beautiful spiral into madness that is Duck Season. Playing out between your family home and a realistic version of the Nintendo lightgun classic Duck Hunt (1984), Duck Season departs from the happy-go-lucky ’80s and ’90s gaming staple when the dog, who you invariably always took a shot at for being a smug bastard, would eventually come back to exact his revenge.
Duck Hunt, image courtesy Nintendo
According to Duck Season’s Steam page (Oculus Store link coming soon), the game has seven unique endings, seven mini games to play on your Kingbit Entertainment System (i.e. not-Nintendo), dozens of Easter eggs and hidden secrets, multiple short films found on VHS tapes, and additional mysterious sub-plots.
One of the original launch titles for HTC Vive was multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) Hover Junkers by Stress Level Zero. Ever since the studio released version 1.2 across August/September 2016 very little had been heard from the team until March this year when it started to detail a progress update for v1.3. This is a big one, with Stress Level Zero adding a single-player campaign, and this week it’s released a teasing trailer giving players an idea of what to expect.
Describing the 1.3 Junk Road update in a Steam posting, Stress Level Zero founder Brandon J Laatsch said it’ll: ‘be extremely familiar to anyone who played the classic Oregon Trail years ago.’ He then went on to say: “You start each run by loading up a junker with supplies. Once ready you depart on rails as you head for another planet to start a new life for your family. You make choices about pace, rations, when to hunt for food, and many more randomly occurring choices to make along the way.”
This takes Hover Junkers in a new direction, hopefully attracting more players in the process. When originally released the title was well received but failed to continually attract new players. As such finding matches became increasingly difficult which can be a death sentence for any videogame let alone VR.
There’s no confirmation just yet of an actual release date, with the studio giving a six to eight week time period in a June update.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Stress Level Zero and Hover Junkers, reporting back with the latest updates.
Developer StressLevelZero is fulfilling their promise of adding a single player campaign to Hover Junkers—one of the Vive’s earliest titles—arriving in the free 1.3 ‘Junkroad’ update. The team recently posted a short gameplay teaser, showing a distinctly less frantic atmosphere compared to the game’s original multiplayer mode, with the full trailer and release coming in the next few weeks.
Multiplayer first-person shooter Hover Junkers from developer StressLevelZero was a popular launch game for the HTC Vive, built from the ground up for VR and motion controllers, using hovercrafts as moving platforms on which to shoot, an innovative way of traversing large maps while reducing the chances of nausea. The hovercrafts allow for some interesting gameplay mechanics, such as creating cover made from junk, and players can share the platforms in co-op matches.
Perhaps due to the slow update schedule or lack of progression, the multiplayer scene has unfortunately all but dried up; a single player campaign could help to reignite interest in the game. The free 1.3 ‘Junkroad’ update is due to launch within the next few weeks. The campaign’s concept was outlined by StressLevelZero founder Brandon J Laatsch in a news entry on the game’s Steam page in March, saying it would be familiar to anyone who played the classic Oregon Trail series.
“You start each run by loading up a junker with supplies. Once ready you depart on rails as you head for another planet to start a new life for your family. You make choices about pace, rations, when to hunt for food, and many more randomly occurring choices to make along the way.”
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Image courtesy StressLevelZero
Image courtesy StressLevelZero
Image courtesy StressLevelZero
Image courtesy StressLevelZero
Image courtesy StressLevelZero
Image courtesy StressLevelZero
In another news entry posted in June, Laatsch offered a few screenshots of the single player, and stated that there would be “plans moving forward to hopefully address player count and community involvement!” While the teaser for Junkroad seems unusually subdued, StressLevelZero developer Chris Sherwood confirmed in the YouTube comments that there will indeed be enemy AI to fight, with bandit encounters “in the works”.
Now that the HTC Vive has been out for a while, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of content flow onto Valve’s flagship VR headset. Hundreds of games live on Steam with HTC Vive support, although it’s worth clarifying that the majority of them offer very little in the way of engaging content beyond a simple gameplay mechanic that’s fun for 30 minutes.
As a result, we feel the need to provide a definitive source with an up-to-date list regarding the very best Vive games that you can play right now. We’ll keep an eye on the VR gaming landscape and update this list over time, as appropriate, to better represent what’s available.
Obviously, it goes without saying that the first three Vive games you should play are the original three that came bundled with the Vive’s very first preorders: Tilt Brush, Job Simulator, and Fantastic Contraption. While these titles may not be bundled any longer, they’re still awesome demonstrations of what VR can accomplish by focusing on very specific concepts. Additionally, The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed, and Zombie Training Simulator were included with Vive bundles for a long time and also deserve recognition as being excellent games in their own right. Plus Google Earth VR, The Lab, and Rec Room are three of the best apps period, but since they’re totally free we opted to leave them off this list for now.
But this list is focused on games you don’t have access to out of the box. If you just got a Vive or are cruising for something to play, you already tried the bundle games. You want something more. And that’s where this list comes in.
None of these games come bundled with the device, prices will likely change depending on which week or month you’re reading this list, and chances are they’ll all receive updates and patches making them even better than they are today. But the fact remains that at the time of writing, these are the 9 must-play Vive games available right now, in no particular order.
What else can be said about this game that hasn’t been said already? It’s amazing. If you for some reason don’t know about this game, it goes like this: you’ve got a red and blue lightsaber, one i neach hand, and you’re tasked with slicing blocks that come cascading towards you to the rhythm of the music. It’s like DDR with lightsabers, basically.
Beat Saber is easily one of the most addictive VR games to date and it’s dead simple to pick up and play by anyone regardless of VR experience. And in the PC VR version you can download amazing custom songs!
As the winner of our 2017 Vive Game of the Year Award, it was only appropriate that we commemorate the occasion by adding the title to our Best Vive Games list as well!
In LA Noire VR you take on the role of Cole Phelps as you explore 1940s-era Los Angeles solving crimes, inspecting crime scenes, and interrogating people. The massive, sprawling city is one of the largest sandboxes in VR to date and it sports some of the best, most immersive visuals we’ve seen.
It’s not a perfect game, but it’s a strong indicator of the direction VR is headed if AAA game studios like Rockstar are getting involved with adapting their IPs to the VR format.
For a game that wasn’t originally designed for VR at all, Skyrim VR is nothing short of impressive. This really is the Skyrim that you know and love, but now you can enjoy it like never before with the immersive presence of a VR headset. With a large variety of control schemes to choose from and hundreds of hours of content, this is a game that all RPG fans should play as long as you can look past the wonky controls, downgraded visuals, and frustrating UI. Not to mention all of the mods for the PC version!
There is just something special about the sensation of walking down the dirt road to Riverwood in VR for the first time, or staring down the throat of a fire-breathing dragon, or even gazing out upon Tamriel from the top of the Throat of the World. Whether you’re a Skyrim-veteran or one of the lucky few that get to see this world for the first time, Skyrim VR is enrapturing.
The Exorcist: Legion VR is without a doubt one of the best VR horror experiences available. The slow-building tension is expertly paced, each and every scare feels visceral and dangerous, and the sheer sense of terror you feel while methodically exploring the richly detailed environments is staggering. It honestly felt like I could hear the voices inside my own head and I could feel the heat from my crucifix as I stared down the faces of demon and eradicated the evil within.
The Exorcist: Legion VR will turn even the most hardened horror fans into whimpering piles of fear.
This is the hardcore VR shooter for hardcore VR gamers. If you grew up playing games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, SOCOM, and other similar tactical military shooters, then you’ll feel right at home in Onward. It has much more in common with the grueling teamwork of those games than the run-and-gun hip firing found in modern shooters like Call of Duty, and it was all created by one guy.
From holding your rifle with both hands and using your walkie talkie on your shoulder, to pulling out your knife to sneak up on an opponent, Onward is the visceral, realistic VR game many people have been waiting for. It uses full roomscale tracking with motion controllers and artificial locomotion attached to the trackpad — no teleporting here. The community is healthy and fun, making this one of the clear standout titles for the HTC Vive so far.
SUPERHOT VR is a pure, distilled, injection of unadulterated adrenaline that will get your blood pumping just as quickly as time stops in the game itself. With every movement you make, time creeps forward ever so slightly, and everything from the level design to the way it feels to dodge a series of bullets in slow-motion is orchestrated to reinforce the core ideals of the experience. From start to finish it plays out like a fantasy ripped from the screen of every action movie; an indulgent cacophony of visual and gameplay excitement.
This is easily one of the best titles available for Rift with Touch and the recent Forever update makes it even better with expanded game modes, more challenges, and an improved sense of replayability.
This is a VR game that really came out of nowhere and surprised us this year. Ninja Theory went from being hush-hush about projects to announcing and releasing Hellblade in VR within a manner of just a couple of weeks. And oh boy are we glad that they did!
Hellblade may not have been made originally for VR, but it adapts so perfectly. The game tells the story of Senua on her journey to save the soul of a loved on as she slowly descends deeper and deeper into both the bowels of celtic hell and the depths of her own mind. Voices constantly talk to you and pull you in various directions and it all sounds incredible with the 3D spatial audio that VR affords.
Undoubtedly Hellblade VR is an experience like no other.
You may have heard of most other games on this list at some point, but I’d be willing to bet you’re not familiar with Transpose at all. Allow me to introduce you to one of the most mind-bendingly cool puzzles games you’ll see this side of Portal. In Transpose you create “echos” of yourself and your past actions to solve a variety of puzzles.
An excerpt from our review:
“Transpose is a stunning VR puzzle game that elevates the genre and delivers an out-of-body-like experience about manipulating gravity and bending time. There isn’t much of a story to follow and not all of the puzzles are as satisfying as the rest, but fans of the genre would be doing themselves a disservice to not play this excellent adventure from Secret Location.”
These two go hand in hand and should be experienced in sequential order. The Gallery is building towards becoming one of the best, most intimate narratives experienced in VR thus far and does an excellent job of showing how the “adventure” genre has evolved over the years to allow for something beautiful and emotional.
You can get through each episode in just a handful of hours but you’ll be left with your jaw on the floor after it’s all over. We can’t wait to see where the story goes next.
11/22/18 Update: This is a big, long overdue update. We’ve removed Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Arizona Sunshine, Island 359, Project Cars 2, and Raw Data from this list to make room for Skyrim VR, Beat Saber, Hellblade VR, The Exorcist: Legion VR, and In Death.
12/27/17 Update: Vanishing Realms has been removed from this list and replaced with LA Noire VR.
11/23/17 Update: Redout, AirMech, The Brookhaven Experiment, and Chair in a Room: Greenwater have been retired from this list and replaced with SuperhotVR, Star Trek: Bridge Crew, The Gallery Episodes 1 & 2, and Project Cars 2.
4/5/2017 Update: The Lab and Rec Room have been retired from the formal list and added to the intro section of free titles. They were replaced by Arizona Sunshine and AirMech Command.
8/30/16 Update:The Gallery was moved into the ‘bundle’ paragraph at the start of the article, while Unseen Diplomacy, Space Pirate Trainer, and #SelfieTennis have been retired. The list has also been expanded from 7 games to 9, opening up 2 new spots. In the 5 total vacant slots, we’ve added Raw Data, A Chair in a Room: Greenwater, Island: 359, Battle Dome, and Rec Room.
This article was originally published on 4/13/16.
Editor’s Note: Another version of this list, specifically focused on multiplayer games, has been retired and will no longer be updated. This list is our definitive collection of the overall best Vive games we’ve identified as of the last time the list was updated.
