Dungeon crawlers are a common sight with VR releases, which makes the fact that Pixel Dungeon stands out from the crowd all the more impressive.

Some of the best VR games are the ones you can sink either a few minutes into, or a couple of hours, and it never feels like your time is wasted. Pixel Dungeon is one such case; a dungeon crawler with a decidedly retro-inspired aesthetic. Player models, environments, and enemies utilize voxel-like graphics across three different dungeons – with more coming in later updates.

At its core, it’s a simple dungeon crawler. Players spend 15–20 minutes crawling through one of three randomly generated dungeons, based on a classical dungeon, a mystical library, and interconnected floating islands all available at launch, with more coming in later updates. You can use weapons attached to both hips and your shoulders, also stowing resources gathered in the dungeon – namely, healing apples and hand grenades – in a pack strapped to your chest.

Along the way, players deal with puzzles, fight off enemies, and gather items and equipment. Finding keys lets you unlock Loot Chests that will drop randomly rolled weapons that will be added to your inventory after leaving the dungeon (deaths allow you to keep earned weapons).

Even accounting for the limited number of tiles that dungeons can be made from, different rooms can have any number of secrets. False walls that can be bashed down, ropes that can be climbed to bring the player up to the rafters. Pits players can drop down, filled with enemies and treasures both. Each of the three dungeons comes with its own occasional unique gimmicks, exclusive monsters, and entirely different final boss encounters, too.

Visually, Pixel Dungeon looks stunning, and it runs great on a Quest 3. When things get hectic in multiplayer on higher difficulties, the performance holds up without any noticeable dips, even when you might be surrounded by a veritable horde of spiders. While the game’s visuals might not be technically impressive, it nails that aspect where it counts, with both a pleasing art style that makes it easy to read what’s going on at any given time and rock-solid performance.

Combat is simple, but feels responsive in practice – especially with ranged weapons. Crossbows force you to manually reload by pulling back the string, and feel incredible to use by smoothly reloading quickly in the heat of battle. Bows and Magic Wands feel similarly great, too. If anything, melee feels a bit undertuned compared to ranged weapons at higher difficulties; though this is balanced out a bit with the ability to throw melee weapons straight at enemies alongside the standard hack-and-slash. I haven’t encountered any noticeable issues with controls, tracking, or the like – even the bag at the front of my chest isn’t an issue, despite some initial concerns I harbored due to some recent VR experiences.

In between runs, players can spend gold to upgrade their unlocked weapons – either increasing their base damage, or to reroll their randomized perks. Maybe a crossbow will deal extra damage when hitting a weak point, or have a 50% chance to fire 3 arrows at once. Perhaps your axe will deal 50% extra damage to bosses across two combined perks. Every run will grant you XP, and with each level up you can invest into a skill tree over time. Potentially, dodging an attack at just the right moment will give you invincibility, or when revived you’ll have more health available before healing.

You won’t find too much depth in terms of “builds” – everyone will eventually max out the same skill tree. That’s good considering, as far as I could tell, there’s no option to reset your allocated skill points. It’s still enough to make the game have a real sense of progression, beyond an oblique sense of getting “stronger”. It also means that even if other players you queue up with may have similar setups, depending on what has dropped for them, there’s still individuality in how players treat the game in their unique ways.

Speaking of multiplayer, we spent a few hours checking out multiplayer online with some randoms, and found a pleasantly smooth experience. Personally, I can’t report noticing any lag spikes, and overall connectivity has been great. Voice chat is also clear once the in-game music gets turned down – the default setting is slightly too loud to parse other players, which would be my one main issue with the experience. Even then, it feels like a nitpick.

We also tackled a few higher difficulty dungeons and it’s a blast, especially in a group setting. Presently, the gameplay loop revolves around tackling harder and harder difficulty dungeons, gathering 3-star equipment with special perks as you go; while there are only 3 dungeons to do it with currently. Even if you only do each dungeon a handful of times, chances are you won’t see everything they have to offer. Suplife doesn’t have a formal roadmap, though it claims that players can expect a fourth dungeon to be added sooner rather than later, with more updates to come. Even just accounting for the state of the game at launch, it’s hard to say the amount of content isn’t adequate, all considered.

Pixel Dungeon – Final Verdict

Put another way, Pixel Dungeon already feels like a complete package. It’s fun, polished, and packs a decent amount of content to play through at launch. Even if the promised post-launch updates never came, I’d still be likely to return to the game in the weeks and months to come.

Though it’s still early days, the fact that I can instantly queue into a lobby weeks after launch rather late at night bodes well for the game’s activity, too. Pixel Dungeon is exactly the type of game that’s easy to recommend to anyone looking for something to strap into, whether they’re only in it for a shorter session or if they plan to spend a Saturday night getting sweaty with some friends.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.

Just Add Water’s comedic construction simulator, DIG VR, makes its PlayStation VR2 and Steam debut this May.

In DIG VR, you become a construction god, digging up pesky dirt around the comically named Diglington in the County of Digshire. As you progress, you’ll become privy to hidden lore across the city while unlocking complex machinery and crevice-creating tools like a Circular Saw, Compactor, and Grabber.

PS VR2 and Steam players will have their chance to work through the building simulator’s quirky campaign and enjoy DIG VR’s handful of minigames and sandbox game mode, too. While it previously targeted a March 20 launch, that’s now been delayed “like any real construction project” to May 1 for “extra time to add polish.”

We enjoyed our time with DIG VR and gave it a 3.5/5-star review, describing it as “an enjoyable premise backed by a vibrant presentation, comically silly minigames, and beautifully British humor.”

DIG VR launched on Quest last November and recently received fresh content in its follow-up Winter Update. The update welcomed new cosmetics, a time trial mode, and an online leaderboard. Developer Just Add Water also introduced two new radio stations, Oceanic Beach Radio and Cultural Rhythms Radio, for players to listen to as they work.

DIG VR is available on Quest now, and it’s coming to PS VR2 and SteamVR on May 1.

DIG VR Review: This Humorous Light Sim Has Its Charms

DIG VR delivers an entertaining light sim with a great sense of humor, and it’s out this week on Quest. Our full review.

UploadVRHenry Stockdale

I went to a Metallica concert in Mexico with my Apple Vision Pro.

After Whiplash, I left my couch in Manhattan to find my AirPods Pro in another room. I needed to hear One and Enter Sandman a little bit louder. As I type this, I’m now considering what a pair of AirPods Max can offer when it comes to future concerts like this one. I’ve never really been drawn to headphones, but as I ponder attending concerts like this I guess I’m now in the market.

Somewhere on Staten Island my buddy sang along. I could barely hear him over the music, so I upped his volume, maxed the venue’s and started head-banging as a sustained chill ran down my spine.

The video is 25 minutes long and represents a landmark moment in the history of virtual reality. Some Metallica fans will walk into Apple Stores, hear Whiplash during a demo, and then make a $3500 purchase to experience One and Enter Sandman at home too.

The concert cuts between wide views of the entire venue and intimate eye-to-eye contact with both the band and crowd. One of the angles is set up inches from Lars Ulrich, close enough to feel sweatier at the sight, another sees you looking down at the crowd as if you’re surfing over them, others set the vibe backstage or walking out with the band. When an inflatable ball that was dropped on the crowd came toward me I tried punching it away.

Apple says it built a custom stage layout featuring 14 Apple Immersive cameras. Some of the best moments here are floating toward the band above a sea of iPhones recording their views underneath.

“Heavy Metal is godhead,” they say at one point.

That’s a vibe delivered. If you could be the spirit of Heavy Metal for 25 minutes it would feel like this, disembodied and floating in space between the music and fans.

I saw Metallica in reality once in Los Angeles and again, decades later, with my VR headset when they played in Mexico. Many of us have a mental model of VR experiences eating physical ones, but this isn’t exactly right. I went to a Metallica concert with a friend in VR and listened to their music for hours afterward. I then looked up tickets to one of their physical shows for the first time in years and started making plans for how I can intersect with their ongoing tour.

There’s absolutely a marathon haptic, visual and auditory experience to be had with Metallica at a physical concert. I needed VR this good to remind me how great physical reality can be.

Check out Metallica now on Apple Vision Pro or get a demo in an Apple Store.

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People Can Fly, the publisher behind Bulletstorm VR and Green Hell VR, will stop publishing VR games after this year.

The Warsaw-based studio recently confirmed it’s phasing out publishing VR titles once the next game from developer Incuvo, currently known as Project Bison, releases in Q4 2025. Spotted by MauroNL, People Can Fly says its market analysis found a “significant reduction in investments in the production of new VR games by VR hardware platform holders.”

As such, People Can Fly explained that this negatively affected its assessment, leading to this decision. Therefore, the studio “will not commission Incuvo with development work on the production of new VR games,” and further activities related to publishing VR games will not be carried out. People Can Fly’s other subsidiaries will stop working on VR development, though it notes Incuvo is excluded from this.

It’s not particularly clear what will happen with the People Can Fly-owned studio long-term following this news. Alongside Bulletstorm VR and Green Hell VR – the latter of which recently added a co-op mode on Quest and PS VR2 – Incuvo’s previous work also includes working with Bloober Team on Blair Witch: Oculus Edition and Layers of Fear VR.

People Can Fly’s statement also underlines an increasing concern about wider investment. While the studio doesn’t name Meta or Sony specifically in this report, this suggests funding isn’t as readily available from either company as it might have been previously for other Quest and PlayStation VR games.

With the wider video game industry facing mass layoffs these last few years, which includes numerous VR studios – People Can Fly’s move could be interpreted as a means of avoiding such measures. It’s something we’ve recently seen with PowerWash Simulator dropping VR support, a decision developer Futurlab advised was made for the team’s job security.

Dreampark wants to use Meta Quest 3 and mixed reality to transform public spaces into digital amusement parks.

The post Dreampark aims to provide downloadable mixed reality amusement parks for public spaces appeared first on MIXED Reality News.