Valve’s collection of VR-minigames, The Lab, is one of the highest rated SteamVR titles and it’s free. With support for Index, Vive, Rift, and Windows VR, there’s no reason not to try it if you own a PC VR headset. Beyond some very polished mini-games, Valve has included quite a few easter eggs to uncover.
Update (August 29th, 2019): In honor of the update Valve released for The Lab today, we’ve added two new easter eggs to this list (note: the video above only includes the nine easter eggs we originally highlighted).
Original Article (February 7, 2017), Updated: Released all the way back in April 2016, the company has proven their game development talent once again with The Lab, a free collection of Valve-developed VR mini games set in Portal’s ‘Aperture’ universe. Inside the lab you can stick your head into a wide range of short VR experiences from photogrammetry to archery. But once you’re done inside the ‘Pocket Universes’, there’s lots of fun still left to be found in Pocket Universe Lab 08. Here’s a list of our favorite secrets in The Lab:
Mini-mini Game
Inside The Lab is a very fun mini-game called ‘Xortex’, which tasks you with using your VR controller to fly a little ship around in a 3D ‘Bullet Hell’ game. Before you step into the game however, you’ll notice a pink Xortex 28XX arcade machine. Step up close, press the credit button, and grab the joystick to play a mini-mini-game, which also serves as a list of Valve credits. If you’re patient, you’ll get a mini-mini-boss fight at the end who you’ll recognize from elsewhere in The Lab.
Sacrifice Your Humanity for Convenient Carrying
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could pack up that adorable robo-pup for easy transportation? Well, if you can bear to shoot your lovable sidekick with an arrow, you’ll find that it occasionally turtles into a portable pill shape. Now you can pick it up and take it with you. And no, you can’t put it in the slingshot (you monster).
Little Bendy
‘Bendy’, the stick figure you’re undoubtedly familiar with by now (who could forget how they stormed your keep in ‘Longbow’?) apparently comes in all shapes and sizes. Hidden behind ‘Longbow’ is a little Bendy in a jar. If you bring the Rhythm Core over from the table in the middle of the lab, you can get him to bust a move.
Bendy Behind the Locked Door
Head near the ‘Postcards’ experience and you’ll find a door with a window. The door is locked, but attempting to open it will trigger a series of different Bendy vignettes, including a headless Bendy zombie.
Valve Demo Room 1
Head back to the ‘Postcards’ experience and unplug the cable running into the jacks under the photos. Normally you can move this plug from one postcard to another to load a different photogrammetry experience. If you plug it into the valve on the left, however, you’ll get treated to a visit inside Valve’s headquarters and a little VR history.
Ping Pong with Turrets
Inside the Valve Demo Room 1 experience, you can break the glass and activate the fire alarm which will enable little turrets the spring forth from the markers on the walls. They’ll lazily fire balls at you which you can bat back with the ping pong paddle sitting on the desk. On the floor you’ll see the balls satisfyingly roll down a little drain back to their home.
Valve Demo Room 2
There’s another hidden VR demo room that you can visit inside of Valve’s headquarters, but you’ll need to go another layer deeper. Inside the Valve Demo Room 1, pick up the headset from the floor and put it on. Inside you’ll see the second Valve VR demo room with a model of Atlas, the robot from Portal 2. Look up high and you’ll see the prototype Lighthouse base stations employed during the time the scene was captured. Peek off to the right of the computer for a further glimpse into Valve’s offices.
Pop Balloons with Pins and Lasers
Inside the Valve Demo Room 2 experience, you’ll find yet another fire alarm. Smash the glass and activate it to have balloons begin cascading down from the ceiling. Use the triggers on your controllers to activate pins and pop the balloons, or use the highly effective lasers which you can activate with your grip buttons.
Rainbow Marka
Hiding behind the ‘Xortex’ cabinet is a rainbow ‘Marka’ which acts just like the other dry erase markers but gives you a nice multicolored stroke. Now who will find the best artistic use for it?
Knuckles EV3 Dev Kit Boxes
Commemorating the development of the Index controllers (AKA ‘Knuckles), Valve has hidden some virtual dev kit boxes to The Lab. If you want a challenge, see if you can use the drone (unlocked after playing ‘Xortex’) to push the box off the beam overhead.
The real Knuckles EV3 dev kit box and controllers | Image courtesy TECHNO SPORTS
If you want an easier way to look at the boxes up close, position your playspace through the wall near the closed door with the window and then walk through the door to find a pile of EV3 dev kit boxes in the corner.
More Pocket Universes?
Signage inside Pocket Universe Lab 08 urges players to keep their cores powered or risk the consequences. If you keep your eye on the Bendy workers along the conveyor belt, you may spot one who trips while moving a box, spilling what appear to be unpowered Pocket Universe cores. If you use the bow to kill the worker before he can clear up his mess, three cores remain on the ground. If only we could find a way to power them….
Last week we reported that Magic Leap, Oculus, and Insomniac Games were set to talk at the 2017 edition of the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas. We also took issue with the event’s annual awards ceremony.
Namely, we lamented the lack of a category for VR and AR games at the 2017 iteration of the show, and the small number of these games listed in general. It appears we spoke too soon, though; the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) that runs the ceremony today announced two new categories for it, both of which recognize the best in VR gaming over the past 12 months.
D.I.C.E. has dubbed these nominees as ‘Immersive Reality’ games, likely to allow for entries of titles on other platforms like the mixed reality Magic Leap in the years to come.
First up, we have the ‘Immersive Reality Game of the Year’, which is described as an experience that “best utilizes the attributes of the platform to entertain users.” Included in the list is Ubisoft’s soothing flying title, Eagle Flight [Review: 7.5/10], Schell Games’ mind-bending puzzler, I Expect You To Die [Review: 7.5/10], Owlchemy Labs’ super successful Job Simulator [Review: 8/10], Valve’s VR compilation, The Lab [Review: 9/10], and the manic SUPERHOT VR [Review: 9/10].
That’s a pretty good selection of VR games, and its refreshing to see a ceremony honor titles that didn’t just appear on PlayStation VR, which we criticized last year’s The Game Awards for doing.
The ‘Immersive Reality Technical Achievement’, which celebrates games with the “highest level of technical achievement within an immersive reality experience”, is a very similar category. Eagle Flight, Job Simulator, I Expect You To Die, and SUPERHOT VR are all listed. Joining them is Google’s popular creativity app, Tilt Brush, which is now available on the Vive.
As we mentioned before, other VR and AR games have been recognized in other categories; Driveclub VR is up for ‘Racing Game of the Year’, and Pokemon GO and Thumper both have several nominations. Suddenly these awards are looking like a much better representation of the year VR has had.
The awards take place just under a month from now on February 23rd at The Mandalay Bay Convention Center.
Anyone that’s tried The Lab, the free mini-game collection from Valve that’s available on Steam, knows that Longbow is one of the standout experiences. Standing atop a castle wall, you shoot down wave after wave of little stick figures as they go running by. Some of them wear armor to take more hits as the number of enemies slowly grows over the course of the waves.
The mechanics are fluid and easy to pick up and learn with enough finesse to feel just about as accurate as the real thing. The only problem is that it’s a single map, it’s dead simple, and it lacks gameplay diversity. That’s where QuiVr, from Blueteak, comes in.
QuiVr first hit the scene several months ago as a free alpha demo. You could take on some waves of enemies and engage in some simple multiplayer, there were a few points to move around the map, but that’s all that it really offered. Now in Early Access, the list of features is much longer. For starters, the play space is dramatically increased which not only adds to the variation in strategies, enemies, and overall gameplay, but also adds to the amount of space you have to defend.
Since enemies still descend upon you in waves, it’s important to be aware of your surroundings. You’ll have to fight them back as they progress while also moving up in the world to secure new gates and push back the flood of enemies. In this way it feels like part wave shooter, part tower defense game, with a unique combination of elements. That should help fend off the VR users that commonly cry out in contention of games being “just another wave shooter”.
The archery motion of grabbing an arrow, docking it, and pulling back the bow string is addictive and natural. Over time, you’ll get into a rhythm and it feels amazing to learn the trajectory of your shots. Early Access has also added lite progression elements between both single and mutliplayer, allowing you to earn new customization options and small abilities throughout the waves.
The community has responded to these efforts and the Early Access version of the game sports a “Very Positive” designation on Steam, with only 2 of its 54 reviews listed as negative. According to the content of the Steam reviews, online comments, and gamers in general, it seems as if a lot of the people that are paying for Early Access now have previously played the free Alpha demo beforehand. With QuiVr, Blueteak is demonstrating that the concept of making a good product, listening to your fans, and communicating with the public is a solid way of honing in on what people want.
QuiVr is one of the most promising VR games we’ve seen emerge in Early Access thus far. By staying open and communicative with the fans, Blueteak is a prime example of how to do this style of modern indie game development correctly. Instead of nickel-and-diming users for small additions, or exploiting a new industry full of naive consumers, the developers are instituting meaty updates and waited to charge players until they had a product that was actually worth paying for.
If you’re interested in being a part of QuiVr’s development as it evolves through Early Access, you can buy into the experience on Steam right now for $19.99 with a 20% discount until 1/2/16, bringing the price down to $15.99. It currently features official support for both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in standing and room-scale configurations with motion controllers being required.
Focusing on cross-headset support, Valve aims to make Steam the go-to place for virtual reality content distribution. Now touting more than 600 VR titles, the platform’s VR apps are steadily rising through the ranks of the entire Steam library.
Among Steam’s top 10 best reviewed games, 30% are VR compatible, including the #1 position which has been held by Valve’s The Lab since at least as far back as July, and is now the best reviewed game among Steam’s entire library of more than 10,000 games.
While The Lab and Rec Room certainly get a boost in positive reviews thanks to being free, VR-compatible title Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, a cooperative bomb defusal game, holds the #10 position even with a $15 pricetag.
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 Job Simulator and Fantastic Contraption 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, and Zombie Training Simulator, are included with all current Vive bundles, and also deserve recognition as being excellent games in their own right. And Google Earth VR is one of the best apps period, but it’s not really a game technically.
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.
The Lab
Not only is The Lab free to download and specifically created by Valve for the HTC Vive, but it’s also one of the best demonstrations of not just VR, but room scale as well. Instead of masquerading as a glorified tech demo pretending to be a real game, it’s just a collection of short demo experiences. Each of them focus on something specific and really show you how much potential exists for developers in the future.
Longbow, for example, puts you atop a castle wall as an archer that’s tasked with shooting invaders. It sounds simple but it’s incredibly addicting. Then there’s Xortex, which is a clever twist on the classic shoot ‘em up genre that puts you in control of a ship in 3D space as you move and zip around by dodging and shooting lasers from every direction. It’s free and it’s super high-quality, you’d be crazy not to download this one immediately.
Raw Data
Raw Data is what happens when a group of game developers get together and posit a virtual world where all of the protagonists get to be super-powered, cyborg-killing, badass heroes. It can be easy to brush this one off as “just another wave shooter,” but that would be a gross oversimplification of the game. You don’t just face off against robots and call it a day, but instead move around the environment and set up defenses, dodge attacks, and more.
What makes Raw Data so great though is that you’re not just fighting these robots by yourself, but you can do so in cooperative multiplayer with friends or random people over the internet. The multitude of different classes — such as a pistol-wielder and sword-wielder — lend a lot of variety to the experience. With more classes coming, as well as more missions, powers, and enemies, this is easily one of the most polished and robust Early Access VR titles on the market.
Vanishing Realms
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to play D&D with a hint of Zelda in VR? Then look no further because Vanishing Realms could very well scratch that pesky itch. On the surface, it’s a relatively bare bones dungeon crawler with some light exploration and puzzle elements, but where the game really shines is when you’re thrust into combat.
Using the Vive’s motion controllers and room scale technology, you maneuver around the environment to dodge enemies and attacks and can even swing your sword and block with your shield all using real-life 1:1 motion tracking. Hear a bow string twang from behind? Spin around and block the arrow with your shield. Duck behind cover and cast spells at enemies. You can do it all in Vanishing Realms.
Onward
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.
A Chair in a Room: Greenwater
What does it take to scare you? I don’t mean to make you jump in surprise from something that pops up as you round a corner in the darkness, or a loud noise that catches you off guard. I mean what does it take to really, really frighten you? The kind of scare that leaves you thinking about it after you take off the headset and stop playing the game. That answer is likely very different for everyone, but for me, the answer is A Chair in a Room: Greenwater.
Everything from the pacing, to the foreboding sounds and atmosphere, all the way to the twisted story of mental illness and terrifying captivity, A Chair in a Room: Greenwater is one of the scariest games I’ve played on the HTC Vive. Instead of relying on cheap jump scares, it builds a suspenseful narrative that concludes in a breathtaking ending. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a great example of what’s possible with the horror genre in VR.
The Brookhaven Experiment
You’ve probably heard about it or seen it before, as The Brookhaven Experiment has become synonymous with, “Hey! Watch this person’s ridiculous reaction to fake stuff in VR!” But the great thing about The Brookhaven Experiment is that if you look beyond the silly reaction videos and dig into the meat of the game, what you’ll find is one of the most satisfying (albeit terrifying) VR experiences currently on the market.
You can plow through the game’s Survival mode, completing waves as they get progressively harder and more intense, as well as the Campaign mode, which features a pseudo-plot and voice acting to push the story along. Between waves you’ll upgrade your weapons and prepare for the onslaught of more zombies, crawlers, and other creepy beasts. It sounds simple, but the slowly building dread you’ll face as you spin around searching for that last zombie — just as your flashlight dies — is truly unnerving.
Rec Room
You’ve got no excuse for not playing Rec Room. This whimsical gym simulation, complete with dorm rooms, a communal area, and tons of activities, is not only free to download and play for all Vive users, it’s also one of the most engaging experiences you can try in VR to date. When you first log into the world, you’ll start in your dorm room, alone, to get your bearings. Pick out your clothes, choose your appearance, and establish a bit of your virtual identity before meeting your peers.
From the main lobby, you can walk around and chat with other players, complete with high-fives, fist bumps, and incredibly emotive faces. Activities range from an exciting game of Paintball, Table Tennis, Dodgeball, and more. The premise is simple, but the execution is so loveable and on-point that it’s impossible to not play Rec Room with a smile on your face. It reminds us of the reasons we enjoy(ed) going to school: hanging out with friends.
Island: 359
It’s really a damn shame. But it seems like, in the year 2016, people have mostly forgotten how terrifying dinosaurs can be. They’ve been replaced mostly with zombies as the go-to monstrosity of choice, but little else can match the ferocity and terror from the roar of a towering T-Rex. That’s something that Island: 359 not only captures, but revels in from start to finish. It may currently only be a fraction of its planned vision, but it’s already delivering on much of its core promise.
In Island: 359, you’re a mercenary dropped into a dangerous tropical jungle on the hunt for big, bad dinos. You’ll be tasked with venturing into the depths of the sprawling tree-laden wilderness — a massive area — complete with free quick-sprint teleportation movement. With a litany of guns, items, and other upgrades to find, you’ll spend your time upgrading as you advance through the jungle. But be careful: your bounty won’t count if you can’t make it back to the chopper for evacuation.
Redout
This is WipeOut for the modern age. It’s a shameless imitation that does everything right and excels at its copy of Sony’s first-party racing title, updating it for 2016, and adding VR support to boot. It may not be a VR-only title like most of the others we tend to cover at UploadVR, but it’s still one of the best games you can play right now on the HTC Vive.
The speed is indescribably intense and the sheer breadth of content is refreshing for an industry that seems riddled with tech demos and brief experiences. Redout came out of nowhere to offer the speed, thrills, and intensity that the market was craving. Definitely grab this one if you haven’t already.
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.
