The Oculus Rift launch lineup
Oculus Rift has a sizable roster of launch games, each featuring their own unique approaches to virtual reality. With so many to keep track of, we’ve compiled them all here for your convenience. Click ahead to see each launch game available for the headset.
Adr1ft
- Price: $20
- Developer: Three One Zero
Adr1ft is a first-person adventure game where you play as Commander Alex Oshima, an amnesiac astronaut that must explore a destroyed space station in order to find a way to return home safely. Stuck with a suit that’s slowly leaking oxygen, you need to navigate through zero gravity, scavenging the environment for resources while trying to discover the truth behind your ordeal. For more on Adr1ft, you can read our full review.
Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games
- Price: $5
- Developer: Turbo Button
Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games is a third-person adventure platformer based on the popular animated TV series of the same name. It puts you in control of Jake and Finn as they embark on an adventure to break Magic Man’s curse, which turned your in-game character into a giant floating balloon.
Airrmech Command
- Price: $40
- Developer: Carbon Games
Airmech: Command is an action RTS that puts you in control of an army of mechanized units as you work to eliminate an opposing army. It features a distinct presentation that allows you to control the ensuing action from a holographic tabletop
Albino Lullaby
- Price: $10
- Developer: Ape Law
Albino Lullaby is a first-person horror adventure where you must escape a labyrinth of rooms that shift and rearrange as you explore them. As opposed to relying on jump scares, it uses its atmospheric and unsettling level design to provide the scares.
Audio Arena
- Price: $10
- Developer: Skydome Studios
Audio Arena is a single-player rhythm game where you use the Rift’s head tilting functionality to navigate a small arrow across an open space as you collect powerups to the beat of music. These powerups are in turn used to defeat enemies that spawn on the map.
Project Cars
- Price: $50
- Developer: Slightly Mad Studios
The critically acclaimed driving simulator Project Cars now has full Oculus Rift support. The headset adds new functionality to the driving experience, giving you the ability to openly move your head and look around your car’s cockpit as you drive.
Chronos
- Price: $50
- Developer: Gunfire Games
Chronos is an action-RPG developed by Gunfire Games, a studio comprised of former employees of Vigil Games (Darksiders I and II). It puts you in control of a hero that must explore an ancient labyrinth that holds the secrets necessary to save his homeland. But what’s interesting is how the labyrinth is designed to only open once a year, so each time you die, you’re cast out and your character is brought back to explore it again an in-game year later. As your character ages, your physical powers diminish, but your magical abilities grow in strength.
Darknet
- Price: $10
- Developer: E McNeil
Darknet is a puzzle game inspired by hacking scenes from old B-movies where you control a hacker that must break into and control different computer systems. It uses its premise to encapsulate the empowerment and control the hacking scenes that inspired it provided to audiences.
Dead Secret
- Price: $15
- Developer: Robot Invader
Dead Secret is a mystery thriller set in a lonely farm house where a murder has taken place. You play as a young journalist attempting to discover the truth behind the victim’s death and the secrets they left behind.
Defense Grid 2
- Price: $30
- Developer: Hidden Path Entertainment
Defense Grid 2: Enhanced VR Edition is an updated version of 2014’s tower-defense strategy game of the same name. It has been updated to accommodate VR, featuring new controls and displays, as well as exclusive content: the first Defense Grid 2 story expansion with five new levels and a new storyline.
Dreadhalls
- Price: $10
- Developer: White Door Games
Dreadhalls is a horror game set within a mysterious underground labyrinth inhabited by deadly creatures. It challenges you to navigate procedurally generated mazes, solving puzzles and avoiding the monsters that lurk deep within.
Elite Dangerous
- Price: $60
- Developer: Frontier Developments
Elite Dangerous is a space adventure and ship combat simulator that was originally released in 2014. It throws you into an open galaxy where you must chart a path across space, furthering your efforts by engaging in trade, bounty-hunting, piracy, and assassination contracts.
Esper 2
- Price: $10
- Developer: Coatsink
Esper 2 is a direct sequel to 2015’s puzzle adventure Esper, which was a launch title for Samsung’s Gear VR. You play as an ESPER organization agent tasked with quelling a recent outbreak of telekinetic abilities in the world’s population. Your missions involve solving a variety of physics-based puzzles as you explore various locales, which include government buildings, ancient temples, and underwater bases.
Eve: Valkyrie
- Price: $60
- Developer: CCP Games
Eve: Valkyrie is a spin-off of the critically-acclaimed Eve Online. Unlike that game, Valkyrie is a first-person space combat simulator that places you inside the cockpit of a spaceship. It has you tackling a variety of missions and fighting off waves of enemy ships as you engage in large-scale space battles.
Fly to Kuma
- Price: $15
- Developer: COLPOL
Fly to Kuma is a puzzle game that entrusts you with the lives of a pack of pink bears in business suits. Your goal is simple: pick up, move, and rotate blue blocks and other structures to help the pink bears reach their goal.
Eve: Gunjack
- Price: $10
- Developer: CCP Games
Eve Gunjack is another spin-off of Eve Online. It’s an action arcade first-person shooter where you pilot a stationary turret pod of a mining platform and shoot oncoming waves of enemy ships. With only your shooting skills and reflexes at your disposal, it’s up to you to prevent the mining platform’s crew from being annihilated.
Herobound: Spirit Champion
- Price: $10
- Developer: Gunfire Games
Herobound: Spirit Champion is a third-person action-adventure game that places you in control of a tiny goblin on a quest to save the world.
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
- Price: $15
- Developer: Steel Crate Games
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a unique VR multiplayer experience where one player (the one wearing the headset) is trapped in a virtual room with a time bomb in need of defusing. The other players are tasked with giving instructions to defuse the bomb by reading an accompanying defusal manual. However, the catch is that only the player with the headset can see the bomb, so it’s up to both sides to communicate to defuse it before it explodes.
Lucky’s Tale
- Price: Free (Bundled with Headset)
- Developer: Playful
Lucky’s Tale is a Mario 64-inspired third-person platformer where you play as Lucky, a small fox on an adventure across a multitude of colorful worlds.
Omega Agent
- Price: $15
- Developer: Fireproof Games
Omega Agent is a first-person action shooter where you control a nuclear-powered jetpack equipped with an arsenal of weapons. Set on a remote island training facility for Cold War spies, Omega Agent challenges you to complete various missions as you soar through the skies and lay waste to dangerous robotic enemies.
Radial G
- Price: $25
- Developer: Tammeka Games
Radial-G is a racing game in which you control a futuristic race craft, travelling at breakneck speeds through tubular-shaped tracks.
Rooms
- Price: $15
- Developer: HandMade Games
Rooms is a whimsical puzzle game that takes place in an old mansion owned by a legendary toymaker. You play as a young girl who must navigate a series of rooms packed with challenging puzzles to solve.
Shufflepuck Cantina
- Price: $10
- Developer: Agharta Studio
Shufflepuck Cantina is a virtual air-hockey game with a unique premise: after jumping your spaceship through a wormhole, you crash land on a planet where its inhabitants make a living playing air-hockey at a local interstellar casino. In an effort to raise the funds needed to rebuild your ship, you must take on opponents in intense bouts of air-hockey.
Smashing the Battle
- Price: $20
- Developer: One-Man Studios
Smashing the Battle is a hack-and-slash/shoot-em up hybrid action game where you beat up endless waves of robotic foes. It gives you a choice of two playable characters, each with their own unique play styles and storylines.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
- Price: $20
- Developer: The Astronauts
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter can now be played using the retail model of Oculus Rift. This first-person mystery thriller–originally release in 2014–puts you in control of Paul Prospero, an occult detective investigating the disappearance of a young boy in the wake of a brutal murder.
Vektron Revenge
- Price: $10
- Developer: Ludovic Texier
Vektron Revenge is an isometric shooter that combines VR with the action of an old-school arcade game. Unlike the arcade hits it’s inspired by, the game’s playfield has no limits, allowing you to avoid and destroy waves of geometrically-shaped enemies in a 360 degree environment.
VR Tennis Online
- Price: $25
- Developer: COLOPL
VR Tennis Online is a multiplayer sports game in which you and others compete against one another on virtual tennis courts. It features a mechanic called “Killer Techniques,” which are special shots you can equip before the beginning of a match that have unique effects when used.
Pinball FX2
- Price: $15
- Developer: Zen Studios
Pinball FX 2–the most recent entry from Zen Studio’s popular pinball series–has been ported to Oculus Rift. This version places you inside a room where you can play pinball on a virtual machine. It also contains unique graphical effects not seen in other versions, such as a shark swimming past you when you play the Secrets of the Deep machine.
BlazeRush
- Price: TBA
- Developer: Targem Games
BlazeRush is a multiplayer survival-based racer where players work to destroy one another while completing laps on a miniature racetrack. It initially released on PS3 and PC in 2014, but has now received a new release on Oculus Rift with full VR support.
Windlands
- Price: $20
- Developer: Psytec Games Ltd.
Windlands is a first-person platformer set in a colorful world filled with islands. Its main draw is its movement, challenging you to traverse its environment using a grappling hook to perform complicated platforming maneuvers.