VR Escape the Room Trilogy (Verdict: Avoid)

Hello VR Followers, for today's review: The VR Escape the Room Trilogy.

VR Escape the Room Trilogy.

These 3 games aren't a trilogy in terms of any continuity, only that they are 3 escape room games from the same developer that likely use the same engine. At the moment you can buy them in a bundle with 57% off in the Steam sale, which peaked my interest enough to take a chance on them.

To explain to the uninitiated, escape rooms are where you are put into a locked room, and in order to escape you have to solve puzzles that build up to letting you open the exit, whether it is finding keys, numbers to a keypad code, whatever.

In fact escape rooms are a new trend in real life as well. I haven't been to one in the UK yet, but I have been to 2 in the US and 1 in Israel and I can tell you the general experience is very similar, it's just the setting and puzzles are different. I do quite like escape rooms because they appeal to the puzzle solver in me, so this is another reason I was interested in these games.

A key difference to real life vs VR escape rooms is that in real life you tend to be a team locked in the room, whereas in VR you are on your lonesome.

A Bad Experience

Don't drop a book on the floor, you won't be able to pick it up again! WTF?

Unfortunately, this game series did not work well for me. I only actually played The Cabin: VR Escape the Room and then I asked for a refund. I will tell you why.

If you look in the Store Page for this game, you will see the words "This VR game requires a play area of at least 2.1m x 1.8m." My play area is 2.3m by 2.2m, should I should be fine, right?

Wrong. The game operates by relying completely on room scale to let you move around the VR space, there is no other method of moving in the game except to physically move yourself. This is what it is important that you have sufficient space.

The problem is, the game does not render the VR world properly into your space. For me it was off centre, and the result was that one of the walls was rendered about 30cm past my real wall. I managed to play the game for a bit, but then found a button on this wall that I needed to press, and I couldn't because my real wall stopped me from getting there.

So I couldn't continue, stopped dead by a technical issue.

Another thing I found is that the VR world's floor was rendered about 20cm below my real floor. The result of that is that if you drop books on the floor, you can't pick them up.

I say this to the developers, "Come on guys!" If you are going to create a game that relies on room scale then you can at least make sure the game world maps properly onto the real world, otherwise
what is the point?

So it is a thumbs down and a recommendation on me to avoid this series of games. I don't care if the bundle is 57% off, if the game is technically unplayable it could be £1 for all I care. Luckily, Steam gave me a refund (good ol' Steam, they have never done me wrong).

I've been on Steam since Half Life 2 came out and now I've only ever claimed 2 refunds. One for The Solus Project and now one for this game bundle. This shows you what a crap shoot the VR game industry is right now.