Organized, personal list of lesser known VR recommendations (67 titles total)

Only includes titles available for PCVR.

I determine ‘lesser known’ according to personal judgement based on what I see. Some of these I see discussed a little, others may be completely unknown.

I determine ‘game’ vs ‘experience’ according to personal judgement, considering factors like mechanical involvement/interactivity, scope, purpose.

Divided into games vs. experiences. Sub-categorized by ‘must-have titles’ vs. ‘other recommended’. List order within a categorization is meaningless. Cost was not a factor in categorization, but all prices are listed.

I generally favour atmosphere, emotion, creative expression, interpreted meaning/story, and/or health & recreation.

I recommend, on Steam, wishlisting any game/experience that seems interesting to you. It helps the devs and this way you will hopefully be notified about sales. Also, check in on r/vrgamedeals once a week. Some of these go on sale here and there. Some are free.

And remember, Steam has a no-questions-asked return policy, you can refund any game within 14 days and less than 2 hours of play time. Don’t be afraid to use it! Of course, also remember that developers need money, so if you are done with one of the shorter titles within 2 hours and enjoyed it, I hope you don’t refund it!!

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GAMES

Must-have titles

• Paper Beast – $20 – Surprising, beautiful, wholly immersive, stunningly unique and memorable

• Garden of the Sea – $12 – Super cute, comfy, relaxing, full of life, immersive. I found it to be a pleasure to play, as you can tell from my gushing Steam review

• The Under Presents – Free with two in-game purchases, $12 and $15 – incredibly creative, immersive game… with narrative stuff… a unique integrated Journey-inspired multiplayer thing… improv comedy, strange magic powers, uh…. yeah this game is crazy. It’s unlike anything else you’ve ever played. Take a journey through a multiplayer event, climaxing with a ‘music video’ that showcases bits of the single player

• Organ Quarter – $25 – scary, immersive, atmospheric adventure. Heavily inspired by Silent Hill 2 and 3, it succeeds both in learning from and paying homage to those games, while carving out its own story and memories

• Katie – $3 – narrative/story game, janky, low budget, a lot of reading dialogue. And has a religious undertone-become-overtone I found naive/unsavoury. But, also an extremely genuine, thoughtful, emotional, vulnerable, intimate game

• Xing: The Land Beyond – $20 – Beautiful, narrative, adventure, puzzle game

• Transference – $25 – Scary, immersive, narrative game with exceptional audio-visual design

• Luna – $15 – Beautiful, relaxing, immersive, short, thoughtful narrative game. I reviewed it. This was part of the recent itch.io racial equality bundle, so if you bought that then you own it already

• Arca’s Path – $20 – Unique gameplay-narrative mix. Design, art, sound, story all working very well together. Abstract/thoughtful story. Kind of relaxing

• Pixel Ripped 1989 – $15 and $20 respectively – Super creative, fun and funny, memorable and immersive. And the sequel, Pixel Ripped 1995

• Thumper – $20 – Favourite rhythm game by a longshot. Incredible design, visual and audio impact, exhilarating, intense. I made a kind of Thumper poetry video experience

• The Solus Project – $20 – Sci fi, great story/narrative, memorable adventure. Frustrating at the start, but stick with it

• Moss – $30 – Gorgeous, fun, puzzle-platformer with adventure/narrative feel

• To the Top – 20 – So much fun! Kind of like a parkour game but actually executed in a way that’s a ton of fun to play

Other recommended

• Tea For God – FREE – Free, and great! Will blow your mind. Roomscale – you need some space to walk around. Fun with great aesthetic

• Jet Island – $20 – Super fun hoverboard adventure, simple/low budget, yet highly immersive and enjoyable

• The Persistence – $30 – Requires gamepad controller. Immersive, atmospheric, scary action rogue-lite. It’s a lot of fun and has narrative padding

• Virtual Virtual Reality – $15 – Fun & funny, highly creative story adventure, very tactile and immersive

• A Fisherman’s Tale – $15 – Short story-puzzle game, charming, fun, thoughtful with creative gameplay/puzzles

• Tetris Effect – $40 – Beautiful, emotive, comforting

• Fujii – $15 – Relaxing, pleasant adventure, creative expressive elements. Not finished but liked what I played enough to include it

• Polybius – $7 – Mind-melting psychedelic visuals, stressful and challenging until it’s not – then it’s super zen

• REZ: Infinite – $25 – Audio-visual synchronicity, challenging but relaxing

• Racket Fury: Table Tennis – $20 – Great fun, active. I reviewed it

• Downward Spiral: Horus Station – $20 – Dark atmospheric solitude, adventure, space, abstract narrative

• In Death – $30 – Challenging rogue-like, fun, great aesthetic/atmosphere, enjoyable space to ‘be’ in

• OhShape – $20 – Super active, fun, physical beat game. Strike poses in a fluid way that gets you feeling the music

• Trover Saves the Universe – $30 – Funny, vibrant, immersive platform-ish adventure

• Tin Hearts – $20 – Tactile, unique puzzle game, some narrative accompaniment

• Pistol Whip – $25 – Fun, pretty active, kind-of-rhythm game, makes you feel super cool!

• Transpose – $20 – Innovative puzzle game with great atmosphere

• Vertigo Remastered – $25 – Only played an hour or so, so far, but fun/funny/engaging adventure

• Falcon Age – $20 – Only played an hour or so, intending to return to it soon. But enjoyed the beginning very much, interesting and engaging adventure

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EXPERIENCES

Must-have titles

• Synthesis Universe -Episode 00- – $10 – Incredibly designed interactive audio-visual experience with ‘aesthetic storytelling’. I made a music video to express my love of it, and wrote a review on Steam as well

• Emergence – FREE – Beautiful, odd, immersive artistic experience

• Museum of Other Realities – $20 – Incredible art installations, step into creations, interact with some… most engaging ‘museum/art gallery’ I’ve ever been to! Really wonderful. I made an art-video out of some of my experiences in the museum

• Where Thoughts Go – $10 – Remarkable game/experience. Emotional/cathartic, you basically listen to audio clips of real players sharing stories and then share your own. It’s AMAZING, as per my written Steam review

• Eleven Eleven – $20 – Sci-fi narrative game/experience with an excellent, thoughtful, highly relevant and politically-involved story. I created a review/politically engaged video about it

• Electronauts – $20 – Empowers creative expression in an accessible, fun way. Basically a DJ game, but you don’t need to have musical experience. A joy to spend time in. Immersive. Good for brain

• Tea For God – FREE – Amazing! Will blow your mind. Roomscale – you need some space to walk around. Fun with great aesthetic

• Host – $11 – Short (~15 minutes), exceptional sci-fi experience/game, immersive, unique, fantastic art/design. Roomscale: requires playspace of about 3x2m. My short Steam review

• Wolves in the Walls – FREE – Fantastic, semi-interactive movie-game, very well made

• Dawn of Art – FREE – Really gorgeous VR short interactive film experience. When you turn it on you have two options: Film or Tour. Pick film

• Particulate – $10 – Artistic/expressive/visual experience. Make pretty particles move around you. Beautiful, best of its kind that I’ve played. I wrote a Steam review

Other recommended

• The Line – $5 – Semi-interactive VR animation, enjoyable story and beautiful art.

• Looking Glass – $5 – Super scary the first couple times I played it. Immersive, atmospheric, and aesthetically cohesive. I wrote more in my Steam review

• A VR Game About Ducks in Capitalism – FREE – Thoughtful, cute

• Gloomy Eyes – $9 – Beautifully animated and wonderfully immersive in VR. Thoughtful story. I wrote a review on Steam

• Art Plunge – $2 – Some beautiful artworks recreated in VR. The first is my favourite, really quite beautiful. The overtly ‘white Christian gaze’ was unfortunate to me. I share my thoughts in my Steam review

• Emergence: Fractal Universe – $10 – Beautiful fractal tool, allows for manipulation of fractals as you move around, can really be quite stunning

• A Ton of Feathers – $2 – Surreal cinematic storytelling. Emotive and intense. I feel that among the abstract imagery is a naive/ignorant Christian undertone that should be challenged, I wrote about it in more detail in my review on Steam

• Echo Grotto – $8 – Immersive, adventurous, ‘caving’ game. Kind of relaxing

• Fugl – $10 – Aesthetically interesting, relaxing flying game, morph into different creatures, explore aimlessly

• The Invisible Hours – $30 – Engaging narrative, immersive storytelling. Ran into a frustrating glitch (PSVR version) and never finished, but still putting it here

• Batman: Arkham VR – $20 – Immersive, puzzle-‘museum’, like being in a Bat-museum+short story where you are Batman

• Train Trip – FREE – Free, short, impactful abstract story game

• Catch & Release – $20 – Relaxing, pretty fishing game. Kick back on the water

• DMT: Dynamic Music Tesseract – $5 – Beautiful VR music visualizer, great music reactivity. Best music visualizer I’ve tried in VR (I’ve tried a bunch). My Steam review

• Old Friend – $3 – VR music video, a few minutes long, with SO much character, amusing and a joy to experience

• Conscious Existence – A Journey Within – $5 – Immersive, beautiful journey, visual experience

• Ayahuasca – $13 – Ditto to above

• Visionarium – $8 – Ditto x2, music-centered

• Sacred Siren – FREE – Ditto x3, music-centered

• Explore Fushimi Inari – $5 – Pleasant, high fidelity, realism style VR space. Also, Mýrdalssandur, Iceland VR

• Euclidean – $5 – Requires gamepad controller, frustrating at first, but a unique and immersive experience

• Art Pulse – $13 – Expressive art-music-creative-flow. I reviewed it

• GNOG – $10 – Whacky puzzle game with fun colourful visuals

• Vestige – $5 – Emotive, immersive VR short film

• Twin Peaks VR – $10 – Messy, undercooked, but some great, unique moments and interesting aesthetic. My written Steam review