The Best VR Games To Use With A Large Play Area

Summary

• VR offers unparalleled immersion and inventive interaction, but cost may be a barrier.
• Room-scale VR provides a 1:1 digital to physical environment, enhancing gameplay experience.
• Some games like Shattered Lights utilize physical movement for a more immersive horror experience.

VR is a great, if still a somewhat niche, developing technology. The sense of immersion it can provide paired with some genuinely inventive means of interacting with a digital world is unparalleled. The cost of the required hardware does make it a bit off-putting to many, though. But once you’ve played at room-scale, you won’t want to go back.

In VR, room-scale is a term used to define, in simple terms, when the scale of the digital environment is 1:1 with your physical one. You take a step in real-life, you move the same distance in-game. It’s the kind of thing that makes you forget you’re in a game, and what’s actually around you in reality.

8

Sommad: Impossible Spaces

Sommad: Impossible Spaces is a game that makes extensive use of what is known as ‘Non-Euclidean Architecture’, which is a scientific way of saying shapes and spaces that can’t strictly exist in their shape. Plenty of games make use of this, but actually experiencing it in VR is a whole other thing. That is what Sommad aims to achieve.

The game itself is a relatively simple puzzle adventure with light combat elements, though the room-scale is what really makes it. As you make a step across solid ground in the real-world, you’ll take that same step in the game around shapes that simply don’t make sense. It’s disorientating by all means, but it is incredibly tantalising.

7

Resident Evil 4 Remake

There are, unfortunately, many games that stop existing once they are removed from sale. Resident Evil 4 is thankfully not one of those games, and its remake shows that both the original and it can exist side-by-side. Both versions have a VR mode as well, though RE4 Remake’s VR is simply a cut above in what it achieves.

It can be played in any format you want, but using it at roomscale really brings the game to life. You start to see the sizes of these areas you’re in, you get to peek through holes and around corners to spot enemies, move across the physical space to side-step enemies. Your body is tangibly in the game, and moving can save your life.

6

Blade And Sorcery

Some of the most popular games in VR are combat games. It’s easy to put a weapon in your hand and let you live out the fantasy of feeling super powerful. Blade and Sorcery is one of the finest, giving you an incredible selection of tools to choose from, all with realistic properties.

What makes this so fun at room-scale is the physics of it all. The environments are cool to move around in, but to be able to move around an enemy, dodge their attacks and use your own with such freedom of movement is exhilarating.

5

Umurangi Generation

Umurangi Generation originally launched as a regular game for the flatscreen, and it was incredible there. But in a game that promotes freedom of expression, there’s no better way of doing that than having your own hands place the camera and press the buttons. Umurangi Generation VR is the best way to play the game.

Having to physically interact with your camera to swap the lens is cool enough, but shifting your body around to get the perfect shot feels so good. Even better is the delay on taking shots, letting you drop your camera in place so you can move around the physcial space to fit yourself in. You can do so many inventive things with the freedom of a whole room to move in.

4

Eye Of The Temple

Eye of the Temple was built from the ground up as a dedicated for roomscale VR game. It needs you to be physically present in its world, and that means there’s no teleporting around. Just your own trusty hands and feet to carry you through its labyrinths and many puzzles.

The game demands full awareness at all times. Pulling levers needs you to actually use your whip to reach them. Dodging pillars needs you to physically duck or move to the side. Keeping balanced means you have to watch the floor beneath you and move your feet to match.

3

No Man’s Sky

No Man’s Sky is a game like few others. It has accumulated copious updates over the years, VR being one of the most impressive. And every single new update that releases is fully compatible with VR, too, making the entire galaxy explorable with your own eyes, hands, and feet.

The planets and moons or No Man’s Sky are massive, obviously, but you don’t really get that scale until you see them in VR. Even better, having a room-scale set-up lets you move around these environments yourself, letting the scale really set in when you have to take each step and crane your neck to look up at geological formations and native creatures.

2

Shattered Lights

Horror is the perfect fit for VR, though it can sometimes to difficult to balance ease-of-play in VR with the frights intrinsic to horror. Shattered Lights made the daring choice to do away with all forms of movement other than your own physical body. If you want to outrun the horrors, you’re gonna have to do it yourself.

That said, Shattered Lights is more of a story experience, making up drink up its unsettling atmosphere. The environments are all designed around a 2mx2m play area, meaning you will always be able to move around the entire environment. It is unsettling, and the amount of detail in the areas will make you want to get up real close, regardless of what frights await you.

1

Tea For God

The wonderfully named Tea for God is a unique game, taking room-scale VR and playing with it in very inventive ways. Using Non-Euclidean Architecture as well, it procedurally generates areas as you move through them, and adapts their scale to your own play area. No matter what size you have to play in, the game will make sure it fits.

You must explore, and not two stories will ever be the same. The game gives you plenty of modifiers too, changing the game from a shooter to a casual stroll, or letting you turn it into more of a rogue-lite to increase the random factor. It is a seriously impressive achievement, made all the more enticing by the fact that it will fit your play area no matter the size.