While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual apps are performing across its VR storefronts, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the top 20 Oculus Rift games and apps as of August 2020.
Some quick qualifications before we get to the data dump:
Paid and free apps are separated
Only apps with more than 100 reviews are represented
Some apps may have benefited from early hardware bundling (like Robo Recall and Lucky’s Tale)
Rounded ratings may appear to show ‘ties’ in ratings for some applications, but the ranked order remains correct
Best Rated Paid Oculus Rift Apps
The rating of each application is an aggregate of user reviews and a useful way to understand the general reception of each title by customers.
While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual apps are performing across its VR storefronts, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the top 20 Oculus Rift games and apps as of August 2020.
Some quick qualifications before we get to the data dump:
Paid and free apps are separated
Only apps with more than 100 reviews are represented
Some apps may have benefited from early hardware bundling (like Robo Recall and Lucky’s Tale)
Rounded ratings may appear to show ‘ties’ in ratings for some applications, but the ranked order remains correct
Best Rated Paid Oculus Rift Apps
The rating of each application is an aggregate of user reviews and a useful way to understand the general reception of each title by customers.
Every month we aim to round up each and every VR game release for you in one single place — this is April’s list for 2020. Check the bolded entries for ones we feel are particularly worth your time.
Well, it’s been a while since we did these lists! No real excuse other than I kept forgetting and other stuff got in the way. Aiming to stick with it more this time like before!
And don’t forget to watch VRecap every Friday to stay on top of the top news stories, top new releases, and our weekly VR game giveaway.
If you’re a VR game developer planning to release a game soon that isn’t on this month’s list or will be released soon in the future — let us know!You can get in touch with me directly by emailing david@uploadvr.com or hit all of the editorial team by emailing tips@uploadvr.com. Please contact us about your upcoming releases so that we can know what you’re working on and include you in release lists!
Unless otherwise stated, all PC VR releases are the Steam versions.
Rift, Vive, Index, and Windows VR Game Releases For April 2020
I find roguelikes to be somewhat masochistic. You play as far as you can even when you know death will put an end to every ounce of hard work you put in—all of it with the knowledge that when you hit the restart button, that everything has changed and all of the challenges are rearranged; a true Sisyphean task that bears out just enough accomplishment to keep you going. This is In Death in a nutshell, a truly challenging VR bow-shooter set in a world where you’re given nearly zero respite, as you’re attacked by some of the most gruesome (and well-realized) goblins to creep out of the Necronomicon.
Developer: Sólfar Studios Available On: Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR), Oculus Store (Rift) Reviewed On: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive Release Date: October 2nd, 2018
Gameplay
In Death is a bow-shooter in its purest sense. You’ll have to get the feel for the bow’s mechanics to understand where your arrows will eventually fly; you don’t have a handy reticle, and enemy hitboxes are unforgiving, as you’ll regularly see your arrows flying between the gaps in crusaders’ legs, or millimeters above the head of a possessed demon-monk. The shooting mechanic is however rock solid, so the learning curve isn’t nearly as steep as you might think, letting even the newest player get fairly far in their run by keeping a little bit of cautious optimism and tactical room-clearing in mind as they move forward through the nightmarish world.
With a shield in hand, you can protect yourself from most arrow and melee attacks, although you can be quickly overwhelmed if you’re not careful.
Image captured by Road to VR
There’s also a crossbow that you can select at the beginning of your run, but the lack of two-handed stability makes it difficult to use for long shots. I tended to stick to the bow, although the crossbow is useful for quickly knocking arrows for a rapid fire rampage against a room full of ghoulies or sticking as many explosive arrows into a boss as humanly possible. Then again, I’ve gotten pretty quick and accurate with the bow too.
With only six bars of health, and only a few opportunities to heal, you’re most assuredly going to die a miserable death whatever way you slice it. You aren’t going straight to Hell empty-handed though, because upon death you’ll be awarded a number of achievements that change the gameplay somewhat, be it for the better or worse (eg: far-away headshots do more damage, but you unlock harder class of baddie). This is, along with the ability to asynchronously challenge other online players to beat your single-player run through Purgatory, the main attractions to come back to the game after you’ve put it down.
Image captured by Road to VR
Well knowing that it’s a typical roguelike, I still wish In Death had the substance of a single-player game with a campaign and a real story. Alas, this is the genre, and In Death exemplifies it to awesome effect. The level of detail put into In Death is astounding, and can really leave you feeling creeped out at all of the cool and interesting side paths you can take. There’s always a terminus though with a level boss, but there’s also the promise of a demonic, giant version of the Archangel Gabriel should you get far enough (I didn’t. It’s too damn hard).
Image courtesy Solfar Studios
As for controls, you can teleport via either a hand-thrown teleportation ‘shard’ or a teleportation arrow that you load into your weapon. There is however also smooth forward locomotion which can be both head and hand relative. Rift users will also appreciate the variable snap-turn setting should you have the stock 180-degree sensor setup. And yes, there is both a righty and lefty option for weapons and shield.
I’ve played around seven hours of In Death over the course of several sessions, and I’ve yet to reach farther than an hour into the game because of its overall difficulty level. There is no difficulty slider, so you definitely need to temper your expectations when heading in as you make your way through the successively numbered Purgatories. At times, I found In Death too unforgiving. Getting to the level boss can take at very least 30 minutes of clearing out baddies leading up to the dungeon, where you then have to not only kill the boss, but a room of randomly spawning monks and ghoulies too, which is crazy hard without special arrows like poison or explosives, which you pick up eventually after a few deaths. Because there are no saves, you’re doomed to repeat yourself until you finally develop a strategy and get those pickups.
That said, I’m not a giant fan of the genre, although it’s clear In Death has nailed it pretty dead on, and there’s no faulting it for that.
Immersion
For much of the game you’re treated to a world of a perpetually shining sun that illuminates the fractured, but beautiful Gothic architecture—a tainted Escher-style mishmash of church steeples, monastic courtyards and long bridges that are suspended above the clouds. If it weren’t for all of the possessed monks, zombies, and crusaders trying to kill me, it would seem like a heavenly realm, and less like Purgatory – the Roman Catholic church’s theological supposition that a soul must first enter a hellish state of suffering before going to heaven.
Image courtesy Solfar Studios
The dramatic transitions from dark to light typically signal your impending doom, as you enter close-quarters combat and multiple baddies in a single area. The antithesis of this are the game’s ‘Pits’, which are dedicated dungeons featuring their own bosses.
The game’s positional audio is exceptionally good. While it doesn’t appear to have any type of ambient audio occlusion, each baddie has their own growl, and each thrown weapon that could so damage has a distinct noise, so even if you’re not faced directly towards the oncoming blow, you’ll hear it well in advance. This keeps you not only aware of the baddies in front of you, but gives you enough information to know when a monk has teleported behind you (nothing personal, kid).
Haptics are quite good too, as you draw your bow and feel a sort of progressive rumbling that feels like the growing tension of the bow-string.
Comfort
Teleportation is one of the most comfortable locomotion options outside of natural, room-scale locomotion. But even if you decide to use smooth forward, which simulates continuous walking, you’ll still be fairly comfortable.
While I prefer to play standing, In Death also includes a seated mode which will put your in-game height to a standing level, making it ideal for anyone with even an arm’s length of space in their play area.
From the makers of FORM (2017), a well regarded indie VR puzzle game, comes Twilight Path. With an entirely new setting, Twilight Path attempts something more ambitious than its predecessor, but winds up feeling like a rushed followup.
Developer:Charm Games Available On: SteamVR (Vive, Rift), Oculus Store (Rift) Reviewed On: SteamVR (Vive Pro) Release Date: October 2nd, 2018
Gameplay
Opening with a short prologue about a spirit world that’s recently come under siege by a cursed dragon demon, Twilight Path begins ever so briefly in the human world before transporting you to the spirit world with little explanation, beginning a linear string of puzzles which can be fun but often feel arbitrary as you teleport from one puzzle node to the next.
Whereas Charm Games’ previous title, FORM, had a more abstract presentation which relied and usually succeeded with dazzling visuals, Twilight Path sets up a more structured world and introduces the player to a few characters in an effort to infuse the game’s puzzle gameplay with interesting context.
Screenshot by Road to VR
Unfortunately it fails on that front as the characters are ill developed and almost entirely without player interaction, serving more as a convenient in-game location for some voice acting work to emanate. By the end, the game tries to bring a little action into the mix and suss some emotion out of the player after a climactic scene, but fails to achieve a sense of danger or urgency, while lacking the requisite character development to make the player care about the outcome.
Failing in its overambitious attempt at world building, Twilight Path is left then with just its puzzles. While you’ll find a few new ideas, there’s plenty borrowed from FORM. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, Twilight Path didn’t feel like it brought many innovative or memorable puzzle ideas to the table, and rarely offered me any “eureka” moments that are often accompany puzzle games that make you think outside the box.
Despite being usually fun to interact with thanks to (usually) good affordance design, FX, and SFX, puzzles largely felt like one-off contraptions. Twilight Path doesn’t really teach the player underlying concepts to later be tested in a challenging setting—the essence of most any game.
Screenshot by Road to VR
Even priced at a low $15, with a little over an hour of play timeTwilight Path feels like it tries to do too much with its world in the time allotted, while not focusing enough on the player’s gameplay journey.
Charm Games says that Twilight Path serves as an introduction to its world and they plan to add more chapters to this tale in the future.
Immersion
Screenshot by Road to VR
In Twilight Path you’re described as a human who has come to the spirit realm, apparently a fairly uncommon happenstance. You’ve acquired several magical abilities (for some reason), allowing you to interact with objects at a distance, transform broken things into not broken things, and teleport from one predefined location to the next.
The purely linear nature of the game, coupled with node-based teleportation—which sometimes moves you hundreds of feet or more from where you just were in a matter of seconds—makes it hard to stay grounded in the game world as you’re often left wondering exactly where you are in relation to the rest of the environment.
While the game gives you abilities which on paper should feel empowering, they often feel more like a means of activating scripted sequences. For instance, early in the game there’s some giant boulders blocking a pathway. While you might want to use your force power to pick them up and move them off of the track, instead you can only use your force power to just click and hold on certain action nodes on the boulders which causes them to blow up after a few seconds (for some reason).
Other ‘puzzle’ elements involve using your force power to click and hold on an obvious node for a few seconds as a large broken object reforms into its unbroken shape. Again, it would have been more empowering if I got to physically manipulate the large pieces to put the object back together myself, instead of simple activating a scripted animation with a trigger hold.
Twilight Path is a decent looking game, but lacks some consistency in its environmental design. The first half of the game takes place in the large outdoor spirit realm setting which is mostly passable, but lacks character. In the latter half of the game you’ll find an immense spirit creature that’s surprisingly detailed and quite well animated for its size. From then on out you enter interior spaces which are significantly more detailed and occasionally awe inducing. Sadly, you’ll only spend a few minutes in some of the game’s most richly detailed areas.
Comfort
As the game is purely teleportation based, and doesn’t require you to move more than a step from your central position, it’s perfectly comfortable, save for a few moments where you’re riding on a slowly moving vehicle.
To use your force power at a distance, the game relies on cursors which are projected out into the world. Played with the Vive, the cursors moved with my hands in a somewhat unintuitive manner, making control a little less precise than it seems it should be. I think this may have been an effort to avoid simple laser pointing input (which is smart), but the result could have felt better.
There isn’t a list of launch titles for Oculus Quest yet, the company’s newly announced $400 high-end standalone VR headset. Polyarc, the minds behind Moss (2017), say that the super endearing platformer adventure is indeed going to be among the 50+ launch titles coming to Quest on day one.
Already available on PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows VR, Moss will be cramming itself into mobile VR hardware for the first time—no small feat that will hopefully retain the incredible graphics that we came to love on higher-resolution headsets such as Rift and Vive. After all, Quest is said to feature a 1,600 × 1,440 per eye OLED, which is not only the same resolution of HTC Vive Pro, but we think it actually looks pretty great on Quest.
A particularly important piece of the puzzle is undoubtedly Oculus Quest’s ‘Touch’ controllers, which just like with Rift will allow you to physically interact with the little pint-sized hero Quill and move the puzzle-like platforms to help her along the way to save her missing uncle.
Oculus Quest is said to launch sometime in Spring 2019, so the team still has some time to tighten down on those textures, reduce polygons, and stuff the wide, beautiful world of Moss to fit Quest’s on-board Snapdragon 835 chipset.
While the list of Quest launch titles is still pretty uncertain—Oculus says Rift titles Robo Recall, The Climb, and Dead and Buried are all coming to the headset—it’s not clear if these are launch titles or not. Either way you slice it, some of the best Rift titles making it to Quest will certainly makes it easy for newcomers looking for solid content on the Rift-like mobile headset.
Echo Combat, Ready At Dawn’s upcoming shooter expansion to the newly renamed Echo VR, has had several open betas since the zero-G combat game was announced at last year’s Connect. Now, the studio has revealed that Echo Combat is launching in November along with a few new features that users can try out right now in the latest open beta.
The game, a Rift exclusive, is slated to launch on November 15th. While Echo Arena is free,the disc game launched last year with Lone Echo (2017), Echo Combat will be priced at $10 at launch.
Up until now, Echo Combat has featured only a single map and single game mode, a payload game that requires one team to escort a giant flamingo along a predefined track while the other team tries to stop them.
The team-based zero-G shooter now includes a new map dubbed ‘Combustion’ and a new ‘Capture Point’ mode. Both Echo Combat’s new map and mode are free to try during the open beta, which takes place between September 26th – 29th. You can download the game and start playing now.
Having grown up with FromSoftware’s mech arcade series Armored Core and the more simulator-style multiplayer Chromehounds, I have a special place in my heart for the lurching mech goliaths. And now Vox Machinae is here, promising to bring an immersive twist on the classic genre that aims to not only stuff the servers with VR players, but also players on traditional monitors as well.
Publisher: Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation Available On: Steam (Vive, Rift), Oculus Store (Rift) Reviewed On: Oculus Rift EA Release Date: September 26th, 2018
Note (September 26th, 2018): This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game only at its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score.
Gameplay
As a multiplayer-focused game at this point, the only way to effectively play solo is to go against bots, which automatically fill out with some not so-terribly-competent AI. That said, the developers have seemingly geared up for launch with an expansive number of dedicated servers that offer up to 16-player battles; three basic multiplayer styles are on offer at the moment, including free for all, team deathmatch, and two waypoint capture modes.
A host of mech styles are available, ranging from pure tanks that are predictably slow but have great armor, to light walkers with drill attachments and even ramming rods for devastating surprise attacks. Weapons are modifiable, even during mid-game so you can change up your tactic depending on the need at the moment. Yes, you can snipe too with an optically magnified in-game monitor, although I personally found the sniping railgun to be a bit under-powered to be a truly useful weapon. Choosing a weapon for your mech will allow you to bind it to a specific button on your controller, so it’s really up to you how your load-out will work and respond.
Image courtesy Space Bullet
Much of the game is about striking a good balance. You can go in guns a’blazing, strapped with the most powerful missiles, but heat will successively build up to the point that your mech will physically stop, close down the blast doors, and wait for the heat meter to go down, leaving you defenseless as other mechs come around to pop off yours arms and legs. Once those are gone, you might as well just eject right there and reformulate a better weapons setup for you next spawn, so figuring out what’s right for you will predictably take some time.
As for controls, if you use Oculus Touch or HTC Vive’s controllers, mech movement is dependent on in-cockpit controls, meaning you’ll have the ability to physically manipulate levers and buttons that control forward movement, left and right movement, and directional booster jump. You can alternatively use an Xbox One controller, which personally seems more intuitive, albeit less immersive than using your hands. Some other perks of using Touch/Vive wands include the ability to re-position informational screens such as your radar, honk a big rig-style horn, and physically use a CB radio to talk with team mates.
Playing in a multiplayer match stocked nearly a quarter-way with human players, it slowly became clear to me who was a bot an who wasn’t. Human players tended to skirt around large masses of mechs and stay back for farther shots, while bots tended to have no issue with marching into the fray three at a time. It’s still early days though, so it’s hard to say just what sort of tactics more adept players will follow, and if AI will adapt to higher skilled players.
Since it’s also open to non-VR players, I decided to give it a go in desktop mode, which can be launched via both the Oculus Store version and Steam by right clicking the title in your library and selecting ‘Desktop Mode’. Having played many matches in VR, I found that it was easier in the desktop mode to acquire a target picture using mouse or gamepad. This is balanced somewhat by the lowered peripheral awareness in desktop, as its much less intuitive to get a good sense of what’s around you since the cock pit is basically still the same, replete with a tiny radar screen that you physically have to look down at in either mode to determine if anyone’s nearby. Having the ability to look down at that one screen quickly while keeping an eye out for gunfire is an ultimate boon in VR.
In all, it’s a well-polished game that offers most of everything I want as an avid mech pilot, save the rad paint jobs and true ‘stick anything anywhere’ modularity that mech sims like Chromehounds offered, but Vox has clearly shied away from with its uni-textured mechs and specific weapon slots.
Immersion
Maps vary depending on the planet size and type, offering lower gravity in some, higher gravity in others, lava, rocks, weird formations, etc. While well-crafted, I found the render distance on smaller foreground objects like rocks and plants to be somewhat short, which introduced some noise into my goal of keeping a keen eye out for bad guys.
Maps are large, and offer enough variability to suit most player types, with high ledges for snipers and weird rock features for those more sneaky fast types.
The cockpit itself is like a fun mix between micro space-miner and 18-wheeler cabin, what with its dingy bed in the back and charmingly anachronistic CB radio. It is by far one of the coolest bits about Vox Machinae, and Space Bullet have really nailed the feel, control, and look of it all.
Comfort
Because Vox Machinae provides the user with a solid a cockpit (which at times can be quite bumpy), movement is mostly grounded in the user’s point of view, making it a reasonably comfortable experience.
That said, the cockpit does shake some and also uses smooth turning, which can be slightly uncomfortable for a fraction of susceptible users. To address this, Space Bullet have included an optional blinder mode that applies a vingette to your field of view when turning, and an optional nose rendered on your face to give you a more grounded feel even when the cockpit is chugging along.
Final Thoughts
Vox Machinae will no doubt attract the mech enthusiasts among us, and keep us playing the deathmatches for a while yet to come. I would love to see a single-player campaign though so future buyers will be more enticed into purchasing, therefor keeping the servers packed with a healthy flow of players. The developers have done a smart thing by allowing non-VR users to play the game too, which should hopefully keep the numbers up as well.
In all, Vox Machinae is a well-polished, classic mech arena that would do well with more customization, a few more maps, and some more interesting mission types to keep us coming back. It’s a really promising jump off point though for the Early Access title, and it’s clear the basic functionality is there – and boy is it solid.
This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game only at its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score.
Oculus today announced Lone Echo 2, a sequel to the highly praised Lone Echo which was developed by Ready at Dawn and published by Oculus Studios in 2017. While the game, like the original, is expected only to launch on the Rift, the announcement comes with an immersive trailer available on the Rift, Go, and Gear VR.
Now a little more than a year after the launch of Lone Echo, Oculus today confirmed that Lone Echo 2 is finally on its way. An immersive trailer, available on the Rift, Go, and Gear VR headsets, shows that the game is likely to be a direct continuation Jack and Liv’s story, the main characters of the first game. You can download immersive trailer on those headsets, or watch the flat version below:
The Lone Echo 2 immersive trailer is seen from the perspective of Jack, and shows Liv coming to terms with a challenging situation arising apparently shortly after players last left things at the end of Lone Echo. Not much is revealed in the trailer about exactly what’s going on or how Lone Echo 2’s gameplay will or won’t evolve from the original.
Lone Echo received high marks for its immersion and narrative, and is often regarded as one of VR’s top titles to date; we gave it a 9 out of 10 in our review. The game is unique for its high production values while steering completely away from first person shooter action, instead focusing on threats and conflict introduced by the environment rather than generic baddies or humanoid aliens dispatched with hot lead or lasers.
Granted, developer Ready at Dawn has been working hard on Echo Combat, a multiplayer FPS component to Echo VR—the multiplayer spinoff that’s set in the Lone Echo universe. Given what the team has learned about mixing handheld weapons with the games’ unique zero-G locomotion may mean that armed conflict isn’t entirely out of the question for Lone Echo 2, for better or for worse.
Oculus today announced Lone Echo 2, a sequel to the highly praised Lone Echo which was developed by Ready at Dawn and published by Oculus Studios in 2017. While the game, like the original, is expected only to launch on the Rift, the announcement comes with an immersive trailer available on the Rift, Go, and Gear VR.
Now a little more than a year after the launch of Lone Echo, Oculus today confirmed that Lone Echo 2 is finally on its way. An immersive trailer, available on the Rift, Go, and Gear VR headsets, shows that the game is likely to be a direct continuation Jack and Liv’s story, the main characters of the first game. You can download immersive trailer on those headsets, or watch the flat version below:
The Lone Echo 2 immersive trailer is seen from the perspective of Jack, and shows Liv coming to terms with a challenging situation arising apparently shortly after players last left things at the end of Lone Echo. Not much is revealed in the trailer about exactly what’s going on or how Lone Echo 2’s gameplay will or won’t evolve from the original.
Lone Echo received high marks for its immersion and narrative, and is often regarded as one of VR’s top titles to date; we gave it a 9 out of 10 in our review. The game is unique for its high production values while steering completely away from first person shooter action, instead focusing on threats and conflict introduced by the environment rather than generic baddies or humanoid aliens dispatched with hot lead or lasers.
Granted, developer Ready at Dawn has been working hard on Echo Combat, a multiplayer FPS component to Echo VR—the multiplayer spinoff that’s set in the Lone Echo universe. Given what the team has learned about mixing handheld weapons with the games’ unique zero-G locomotion may mean that armed conflict isn’t entirely out of the question for Lone Echo 2, for better or for worse.
Continue on Page 2: Most Rated Paid Oculus Rift Apps »
