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Welcome to the last entry of UploadVR’s Best of VR Awards for 2025.
The year’s almost over and we’re once again celebrating this year’s best releases across the VR and wider XR industry, highlighting some exceptional releases across software and hardware alike. Just like we always do, each category features one clear winner and varying numbers of honorable mentions. Excluding our specific early access categories, all of our winners are currently in full release.
Like last year, we’ve split the awards across multiple rounds. Our first round covered platform favorites for Quest, PC VR, PlayStation VR2, and Apple Vision Pro, joined by our favorite exploratory experience. It’s here where we recognized Ghost Town, Roboquest VR, Arken Age, Gears & Goo, and The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up.
Round two is where we focused on achievements across mixed reality, hand tracking, and early access releases. Our winners across these categories were Jigsaw Night, Laser Dance, Forefront, Little Critters, and Figmin XR.
Which leaves us with some of our biggest picks still to come, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Here are UploadVR’s Best of VR Awards 2025.
A small number of software packages in virtual reality have grown so large and diverse that calling them games doesn’t really apply anymore. They are places, vast, with interconnected systems that make spending significant time there a delight for many. VRChat and No Man’s Sky come to mind as candidates for this category in future years, and both were considered to inaugurate this award category at UploadVR.
Walkabout Mini Golf is UploadVR’s Best Virtual Place 2025.
In 2025, Walkabout grew from a game to a place as mini golf became secondary to the best place that people congregate in virtual reality.
The artists at Mighty Coconut entered the year realizing Elvis as a course to play on and ended it with the best physical illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ever made. In between, Walkabout’s creative director and mastermind Lucas Martell took golfers to the seat of the gods at Mount Olympus, face-to-face with dinos at Raptor Cliff’s, sneaking into a Mother Goose-inspired theme park at Forgotten Fairyland, and up close with Neko Atsume kitties all over a tiny Tokyo. While Walkabout’s courses always had secrets, like hidden balls and skeletons, now they’ve started adding playable activities like slingshots and chess. Designers continue rooting around the backstage areas as they add the foundations for future activities and new secrets to discover in places players have been hundreds of times.
The design team spent days together in December roughing out courses that will open starting in 2027. From release in 2020 for standalone VR headsets, we see other developers following the precedents set by Walkabout – guest mode for paid add-ons, private rooms by default, and support for a single controller.
Whether you’re looking to introduce yourself to virtual reality or get lost in there for days, Walkabout Mini Golf is the right onboarding experience for most people and a great place to be.
We’ve seen some impressive work from VR developers this year. Mighty Coconut keeps releasing regular DLC courses for Walkabout Mini Golf, Flat2VR Studios continues to deliver impressive VR adaptations like Roboquest VR, while nDreams Elevation and Fireproof Games both showed strong VR-focused gameplay design across Reach and Ghost Town respectively.
This time, our Best VR Developer award goes to VitruviusVR for its work on Arken Age. We previously discussed what we loved about Arken Age when giving it our Best PlayStation VR2 Game of the Year award, praising its exemplary approach to VR-first gameplay design. However, it’s a testament to the studio’s strength that it did so while leveraging the strengths of each platform so effectively. For that reason, we’re giving them this year’s award.
This year saw Meta break its three-year streak of new VR headset releases, Apple upgrade its “spatial computer” with a new chip and strap, Samsung launch the first product running Google’s Android XR, and Bigscreen refine its ultralight headset with improved and adjustable lenses.
Bigscreen and Apple deserve mentioning here, even though they aren’t our winners.
Beyond 2‘s lenses fix a crucial flaw of the original to make it a viable optical experience for far more people, but the device still requires SteamVR Tracking base stations, an expensive technology that Valve itself is abandoning.
Meanwhile, the M5 Vision Pro’s Dual Knit Band is a truly innovative approach to headset ergonomics, combining the benefits of a comfortable soft strap and counterbalance in one design, plus the ability to tighten both bands with a single dial. But other than this, it’s a minimum-effort upgrade.
Our winner this year is Meta Neural Band included with Meta Ray-Ban Display. Surface electromyography (sEMG) is not a completely new input technology, but Meta Neural Band brings it to a sleek, lightweight, and flexible wristband with all-day battery life and IPX4 water resistance.
Meta Neural Band makes it practical and comfortable to control a smart glasses HUD without needing to constantly use voice commands, wear a giant ring, or wave your hands around. And for this, it wins our Best Hardware Award for 2025.
Social gameplay remains one of VR’s most appealing strengths, and this year continued providing strong contenders. While Breachers would have been in contention if it wasn’t in early access, plenty of multiplayer games either launched or finally reached full release.
For racing fans, VRacer Hoverbike entered full release and reached new platforms. Pixel Dungeon was an early highlight, Glassbreakers took us back to the world of Moss, and Titan Isles is a highly compelling co-op adventure. Then we have Deadly Delivery, Table Troopers, Elements Divided, GRIM, and Rogue Piñatas.
Ultimately, our winner for VR Multiplayer Game of the Year 2025 is Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked. Resolution Games brought back 2021’s hit in style, and we considered it a “mostly natural crossover and a fitting evolution” on Demeo. If you can’t commit to a real-life tabletop campaign, this is an excellent option that flatscreen players can also join in on.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale
And so, we now move onto one of our biggest categories. Our previous awards looked at games for individual platforms across Quest, PC VR, PlayStation VR2, and Apple Vision Pro. This is what we believe stands out as the absolute best of the best across all four.
2025’s been another year when the releases seemingly never end, and that’s been especially true these last few months. Hotel Infinity, Roboquest VR, Marvel’s Deadpool VR, Demeo x D&D, Ghost Town, Reach, Arken Age, Lumines Arise, there’s a lot to choose from, but we can ultimately only crown one title.
Same as our best PlayStation VR2 game, our winner for VR Game of the Year 2025 is Arken Age. Ghost Town and Roboquest VR have their own individual strengths on Quest and PC VR, yet Arken Age graced each of its platforms with some of the best VR focused design we’ve seen in 2025.
“Arken Age delivers clever VR-first gameplay design for a great sci-fi adventure,” we said at the time, praising its vibrant presentation and rewarding combat. As mentioned before, our appreciation for VitruviusVR’s action-adventure has only grown since launch, and it’s a strong choice no matter your headset.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale
So then, what’s next? 2025’s brought a strong line-up across Quest, PC VR, and PS VR2, and we’ve seen plenty of promising VR and MR games on the way in 2026.
Some games are already in early access and are currently scheduled or likely to receive full releases next year. That includes Unseen Diplomacy 2, Into The Radius 2, Bootstrap Island, Laser Dance, Pocket Lands, and Forefront.
Several VR adaptations of existing series are on the way too, like Evangelion: Δ Cross Reflections, The Boys: Trigger Warning, Little Nightmares VR, and Orcs Must Die! By The Blade. Then we have Guardians Planetfall, Knights of Fiona, Automa, Aces of Thunder, and Remnant Protocol. Many potential contenders, but what’s our top pick?
Our Most Anticipated Game of 2026 goes to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, an action-adventure that supports single-player and up to four-player co-op. We’ve already had a brief look at what’s to come, and we can’t wait to see how Cortopia Studios adapts the iconic series on Quest 3 and PC VR.
UploadVRIan Hamilton
MR Clean could be the PowerWash Simulator of mixed reality, and it’s heading to Quest 3/3S next year.
Developed by PotamWorks (Smash Drums), MR Clean is a roomscale mixed reality cleaning game designed around hand tracking controls, where you clear virtual dirt off your walls, floors, and furniture. This also comes with a ‘Virtual Objects Mode’ where you clean detailed 3D models piece by piece, alongside a two-player ‘Party Mode’ you can play locally.
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It’s originally inspired by a mixed reality experiment created in Smash Drums, where you can splatter your room with virtual paint.
“While the painting mechanic became a natural fit for Smash Drums, and one of its more iconic environments, the cleaning phase ultimately didn’t align with a game built around chaos and rock ’n’ roll,” states PotamWorks, who revived the idea for the Meta Horizon Start Developer Competition 2025.
Collaborative content and themed challenges are also planned for the upcoming game. Crossovers have already been confirmed with Red Matter 2, Ancient Dungeon, Deisim, Smash Drums, “and over 15 other fan-favorite experiences.” Finally, PotamWorks states MR Clean will also be compatible with the Quest’s Travel Mode.
MR Clean is heading to Quest 3/3S in Q1 2026.
Our second round of UploadVR’s Best of 2025 awards is now live.
We kicked things off earlier today with our favorite games this year across individual platforms: Quest, PC VR, PlayStation VR2, and Apple Vision Pro. This also discussed our top immersive entertainment titles outside of gaming, looking to more film-adjacent experiences.
Now, we’re focusing on mixed reality apps and games as developers continue to embrace this approach. We’re also diving into the best uses of hand tracking across the year, alongside dedicated early access categories for both mixed reality and VR games. While most of our categories are only applicable for full releases, Best Hand Tracking also factors in early access launches.
So then, onto round two. Here are our favorite hand tracking, mixed reality, and early access experiences in 2025.
Demeo x D&D is a great game but fundamentally similar to the same experience we’ve already had in Demeo, and Dimensional Double Shift unlocks the fun of Job Simulator in multiplayer after it left open beta. Hidden Memories of the Gardens Between, Banners & Bastions, Little Critters, and Pocket Lands all caught our eye this year.
There’s one game, though, that stands out in 2025 – Jigsaw Night. You can grab the pieces whether they are close or far away and easily hand them to friends. At any time you can also pick up a controller and use it for more precise grabbing of faraway objects. This robust support, alongside other features like LIV integration, colocation, and puzzling with your own photos, means that solo developer Steve Lukas’ project is an absolute delight to spend time in and a strong reason to bring just your headset with you.
We’ve seen some intriguing first looks at mixed reality games in early access this year. Pocket Lands has been a recent favorite where you create Minecraft-esque worlds, while Loop One: Done is an MR automation game where you record loops with drones and robots. We’d also note Super RC, Jigsaw Night, Galactic Traffic Control, and Healer.
This time around, Laser Dance takes our award for the Best Early Access Mixed Reality Game of 2025. Thomas Van Bouwel delivered what we called “the first essential mixed reality game” and a go-to party game in our review. Offering an instantly relatable premise that feels ripped out of a spy film, it’s one of the first experiences anyone should try when putting on a headset.
UploadVRIan Hamilton
Whether it’s to gather community feedback or bring in crucial funding, more developers continue choosing early access launches across Quest and Steam, and 2025 has plenty of picks.
This year brought us a sequel to one of VR’s earliest roomscale hits with Unseen Diplomacy 2, Another Axiom followed up on Gorilla Tag with Orion Drift, and Final Fury continues showing promise. Rounding this out is Boxing Underdog, The Pirate: Republic of Nassau, How to God, ZIX, and Out of Sight VR.
For 2025, Forefront is UploadVR’s Best Early Access VR Game of the Year. Triangle Factory’s latest game following Breachers provides a 32-player shooter comparable to EA’s Battlefield series. “Combat is exciting and tense, its VR gunplay is tactile and satisfying, and its environments are dynamic and engaging,” we said at the time, and we’ll continue watching its next moves.
UploadVRJames Tocchio
As mixed reality continues to find its footing, we’re continuing to see intriguing projects emerge from across the board. What we’re seeing today feels like an early look at what we can expect in the years ahead. We’re focused on games where mixed reality is the clear focus, and not an optional extra in otherwise fully immersive games.
On Quest 3, Star Wars: Beyond Victory took us back to a galaxy far, far away once again. We explored new worlds in Mythic Realms, raised a fluffy companion in Stay: Forever Home, while both Banners & Bastions and Table Troopers delivered strong tabletop style thrills. Other titles include Project AEROES, BEATABLE, Crystal Commanders, and Detective VR.
This year, our winner for Best Mixed Reality Game is Little Critters by Purple Yonder. Following the studio’s work on Little Cities, we found an innovative take on the tower defense genre that puts you front and center in the fight. Its compelling gameplay has real impact, there’s great strategic depth, and Little Critters keeps us coming back for more.
UploadVRJosh Petersel
Apps like Pencil continue to show promise building out from innovative ideas – you can learn to draw Walkabout Mini Golf characters with a good old-fashioned pencil in hand and a headset on your head, and that’s pretty cool.
Our award for best mixed reality app of 2025, though, goes to the gradually improving spatial playground Figmin XR. The app won last year too, and this year solo developer Javier Davalos essentially brought Tilt Brush to iPhone with the launch of Figmin XR there. Last year, we were able to get a pretty impressive colocation experience going in Figmin XR from Quest to Vision Pro.
This year, I single-handedly logged in with iPhone to the same virtual room as my headset. I could hold a digital object with my finger pressed to the iPhone and carry it around without even looking at it. Capturing mixed reality videos of Figmin playgrounds from iPhone could be a big use of this integration, or to let a friend or family member see into a spatial creation when they aren’t in a headset.
UploadVRIan Hamilton
A viral Unreal Engine 5 render of gritty Mario has fresh voiceover and it’s the best
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From the weirdest little guys to the bravest heroes, here are our favorite characters from this year
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2025 is nearly over, and this year’s seen us explore many new locations across VR and mixed reality. Today, we’re highlighting some of our favorites.
Like last year, we’re splitting the UploadVR editorial team’s top picks for 2025’s best titles across three articles. This first one looks toward the best games across four platforms: Apple Vision Pro, PC VR, PlayStation VR2, and Meta Quest. We’re also discussing our top immersive entertainment experiences beyond gaming, too.
The next article will focus on mixed reality apps and games, alongside a focus on this year’s best uses of hand tracking. Because only fully released games normally count, tomorrow will also include our early access categories.
Finally, our last article features our biggest awards for 2025. In line with last year, this includes the Best VR Game Of The Year across any platform, Best VR Hardware, Best Developer, Best Multiplayer, Best Virtual Place, and Most Anticipated VR Game for 2026.
So, let’s begin with the first round for our best of 2025 awards.
2025’s been another eye-opener in how filmmakers use immersive tech to deliver compelling narratives. On Apple Vision Pro in particular, Apple Immersive Video saw projects like the Metallica concert experience, Bono: Stories of Surrender, MotoGP Tour De Force, and D-Day: The Camera Soldier.
Some experiences touch upon heavier themes: The Reality of Hope used VRChat to cover a life-saving friendship, Reflections of Little Red Dot examined Singapore’s history, while Soul Paint encourages introspection. Other notable projects include Touching The Sky, Alien Perspective, and Black Cats & Chequered Flags.
This year’s award goes to The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up, a free-roaming VR experience based on a Taiwanese short story. While you can’t influence what happens, most scenes are fully explorable as you witness the narrative unfold. It feels like walking into a movie, going that extra immersive mile while backing that up with a compelling narrative.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale
Apple developers only started supporting tracked controllers near the end of 2025 as games like Pickle Pro started supporting the input method. Big name title Glassbreakers made its way to Apple Vision Pro in 2025, alongside the winner of Apple’s own selection for best of the year, puzzler Porta Nubi.
Gears & Goo from Resolution Games is our winner for Best New Apple Vision Pro Game. Resolution’s developers adapted tower defense to Apple’s gaze and pinch interface with a challenging multi-hour campaign, and we’d love to see more Gears & Goo in the future.
UploadVRIan Hamilton
Even without a new Quest headset launch, this year certainly hasn’t lacked for games across Meta’s standalone ecosystem.
Many of 2025’s best Quest games left it late. Alongside big names like Marvel’s Deadpool VR and Thief VR, these last few months also saw Glassbreakers, Arken Age, Hotel Infinity, Reach, Of Lies and Rain, Demeo x D&D, Titan Isles, and Memoreum arrive. Still, Alien: Rogue Incursion, Pixel Dungeon, and GORN 2 ensured the rest of the year had its fill too.
There can only be one winner, and Ghost Town is 2025’s Quest Game of the Year. Fireproof Games delivered what we considered to be an “utterly engrossing supernatural VR adventure” with strong gameplay design and some of the best visuals we’ve seen yet on Quest 3.
It’s a highly worthy follow-up to Fireproof’s previous hit, The Room VR: A Dark Matter, and we’d dearly love to see more of this world in the future.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale
All eyes might be on Valve with next year’s Steam Frame launch, but 2025’s still seen some great PC VR releases. Leading a handful of exclusives were Vertigo 2: Into The Aether, BattleGroupVR2, and Lushfoil Photography Sim.
They were joined by multiplatform hits like Of Lies and Rain, Lumines Arise, Demeo x D&D, Arken Age, Reach, Thief VR, Ghost Town, and The Midnight Walk. That’s before mentioning slightly older games coming to PC VR like Vendetta Forever, Zero Caliber 2, and Dungeons of Eternity.
For 2025, Roboquest VR is our PC VR Game of the Year. Flat2VR Studios’ exhilarating conversion of RyseUp Studios’ 2023 FPS roguelite feels like it was natively designed for the platform, and we called it “an instant classic” in our review.
UploadVRJames Galizio
It’s another year when PlayStation VR2 relied on third party publishers – Climate Station aside – and the hits continued coming. 2025 provided a strong library like Hitman, Maestro, Of Lies and Rain, Demeo x D&D, Reach, Lumines Arise, UNDERDOGS, and Roboquest VR. We’re also not forgetting Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate, which has gradually improved with updates.
For 2025, Arken Age is our PlayStation VR2 Game of the Year. VitruviusVR delivered a strong sci-fi action-adventure with tactile VR-first gameplay design. While it’s also a solid PC VR and Quest 3 game, Arken Age benefits from Sony’s headset with strong haptic feedback and PS5 Pro enhancements. Our appreciation’s grown since launch and if you love action titles, it’s an essential buy.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale
007: First Light will get some extra polish
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The Limited Run Games’ edition is showing up with defects and damage
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Despite being released more than a year ago, Meta’s Quest 3-series headsets are outselling Nintendo’s new Switch 2 console on Amazon, which was released just this Summer.
In the last 30 days (which includes the whole of the Black Friday shopping week), Quest 3 and Quest 3S models have collectively sold 154,000 units on Amazon US. That puts the headsets just ahead of Nintendo’s newest console, Switch 2, which has sold 150,000 units on Amazon US over the last 30 days, and was released in June. The other major consoles (PlayStation 5 / 5 Pro and Xbox Series X / S) which are now much older, have sold less than Quest or Switch 2.
And in Amazon’s ‘Best Sellers’ list in the Video Games category, Meta’s best selling individual headset, Quest 3S (128GB), is just ahead of Nintendo’s most popular Switch 2 bundle, at number #6 and #7 respectively.
Meanwhile, PlayStation 5 is seen at #13, Quest 3 (512GB) at #24, and Xbox Series X at #60 on the ‘Best Sellers’ list.
On one hand, it shouldn’t be entirely surprising to see Meta’s cheapest headset Quest 3S (128GB) with its $250 holiday sale price beating out Switch 2’s $400 MSRP. But on the other hand, those constantly bemoaning the “death of VR” would have you believe that Quest 3S sales volume wouldn’t even be in the same ballpark as a Nintendo console.
Interestingly, the latest generation of Quest headsets appear to be slightly down in sales volume on Amazon US compared to the prior year. It’s possible we’ll see a late spike, but in years past, Quest sales volume has just about peaked by December 23rd.
Despite Quest’s impressive and quite seasonal sales volume, there’s no doubt that the headsets have struggled with retention. Meta has sold its headsets at exceptionally low price points over the years, which has helped move units out the door. But even though there is thought to be tens of millions of Quest headsets out in the wild, the number of active pales in comparison to the major game consoles. Without strong retention and the ability to make back profit on the software side, the subsidized headset strategy has contributed to the major loses that Meta’s Reality Labs division has sustained since its inception.
Meta made moves earlier this year to raise the bar on software and UX design for its wearable devices, which will hopefully improve future retention. But those moves are also rumored to lead to a price hike on the company’s headsets, which is likely to tamp back the impressive sales volume that Quest has seen over the years.
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This streaming stick can handle just about any of your streaming needs.
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