Game details Developer: Owlchemy Labs

Publisher: Owlchemy Labs

Platform: SteamVR (reviewed), Oculus Rift (coming to PSVR, Oculus Quest)

Release Date: Apr. 9, 2019

ESRB Rating: E for Everyone

Price: $30

Links: Oculus | Steam | Official site Owlchemy Labs: Owlchemy Labs: SteamVR (reviewed), Oculus Rift (coming to PSVR, Oculus Quest)Apr. 9, 2019E for Everyone: $30

When I think about the history of virtual reality as viable, consumer-grade tech, I think about a certain "game jam" in early 2015. Valve had been putting the final touches on its first SteamVR system, and the company invited a wave of interested developers to get in on the ground floor and make whatever weird demos they wanted, all in order to promote the nascent concept of "room-scale VR."

Four years later, those early efforts remain some of VR's must-play games, apps, and experiences. Chief among those is Job Simulator, a hilarious mini-game reaction to the idea that the rise of VR and robots would lead to a future in which humans forgot what real jobs were like.

That absurd premise was met by a quality still unmatched by most VR games: if you can reach for something in an Owlchemy Labs game, you can grab it, play with it, use it, throw it, juggle it, and more. The game's designers built a world whose best quality was somewhat invisible and therefore often overlooked: you likely won't realize how awesome Job Simulator is until you boot into another VR game and yell at its static, dead environs. Like, why can't I pick up that animal, throw it into a microwave, nuke it, put it between two pieces of bread, add some cheese and sauce, lift that sandwich to my real-life mouth, eat it, and see my VR avatar puke up the result?

Job Simulator enabled that kind of "if you see it, you can mess with it" fun, only without much of a game-like structure. 2017's Rick & Morty: Virtual Rick-ality added a "campaign" to this idea, but the results felt a little thin. With today's Vacation Simulator, out now on SteamVR and Oculus Rift (and coming soon to other platforms), Owlchemy Labs has learned from its prior games to deliver the pinnacle of VR goofiness—and all of the antics (and limits) that such a description implies.

Let your roasted freak-waffle fly

Owlchemy Labs

Owlchemy Labs

Owlchemy Labs

Owlchemy Labs



Owlchemy Labs

Owlchemy Labs

Job Simulator's oddball premise has been carried forward in Vacation Simulator with an even sillier idea: if humans of the future don't have to work, they also don't need to go on vacation. Thus, this simulator takes humans to a getaway with three virtual, cozy locales: a beach, a snowy resort, and a mountain trail.

Spread across these locales are roughly 30 attractions, which either play out as mini-games, puzzles, artistic canvases, or tinker toys. Some of these are unique to a locale, like the beach's sports zone (which includes volleyball and basketball challenges), the forest's rowing-to-the-music challenge (which plays like a simplified version of Beat Saber), and the snowy resort's jigsaw puzzle challenge.

Other attractions repeat across all three locales with mild twists to each. The beach has a fun, tricky series of sandcastle puzzles that ask players to build 3D sandcastles that match a 2D diagram, while the snowy resort has a reverse version of this, where players have to chisel specific chunks out of a solid block of ice to match a 2D diagram. And each locale has its own version of cooking, which enlarges the "kitchen simulator" from Owlchemy's first game.

Want to make a waffle out of any solid or liquid object across all three resorts? And then roast said freak-waffle between marshmallows over an open flame? And then dehydrate that combined abomination and stuff it into a sealed pouch? And thennnn convert that pouch into a leafy plant, to be planted in a garden full of other plant-ified objects? By all means.

Works anywhere

In great news, each attraction and mini-game works well no matter how huge or tiny your home's VR space might be. If you only have one central tracking VR camera, so be it. So long as you can sit in front of said camera and reach forward with your hands in roughly 180-degree fashion, you can manipulate each of the game's silly scenes without much trouble. (Standing helps, but it's not required.)

And the hand-tracked feeling in each of these cases is delightful. Grab a paintbrush in the forest's arts-and-crafts room, and you'll have a canvas on which to weirdly smoosh your brush's tip and paint in a way I've never seen in a VR art app. Both of the aforementioned spatial puzzle games are fun to manipulate, whether you have the real-life space to look all around them or need to use helpful "turn the blocks" sliders. Gosh, the wall-climbing simulator in the snowy resort alone is a new part of my VR workout routine; it's that fun, fast, and refreshing.

Good times, but not necessarily a “campaign”

Owlchemy Labs



Owlchemy Labs

Owlchemy Labs

Owlchemy Labs

Owlchemy Labs

Owlchemy Labs

Should you prefer some structure in your virtual vacay, Owlchemy Labs has you covered by way of a breezy "campaign." One of your hosts, a grumpy robot named EfficiencyBot, asks you to accumulate "memories" so he can study your vacationing metrics. Memories can be accrued by playing mini-games or finishing errands for the various robots hanging around the three locales.

In many of these cases, you'll see an order board near an attraction with requests on it. Those include an eight-patty hamburger for CampingBot, or a photo of a snowman wearing a certain kind of hat, or a new painting to be hung over HikingBot's mantle. As you proceed further in the campaign, these kinds of order boards become more complicated, usually asking you to grab items from one locale, tuck them into your backpack, and use them in other locales.

If you're looking for an epic gaming "quest," Vacation Simulator's campaign won't cut it. This structure instead works as a gentle nudging to flex your silly-gaming muscles across three locales, but even through some of the redundant tasks, it at least asks players to take on a larger variety of mini-games and puzzles than Virtual Rick-ality ever delivered. (Plus, it's easy to "complete" enough of the campaign to unlock a few extra zones, and it's a fine enough carrot-dangle to keep the experience engaging.)

In addition to the solid VR experience, Vacation Simulator gets a healthy boost from its delightfully silly writing, spread across voiced dialogue and scattered, written notes. In some ways, the game's sense of humor is a bit limited, often repeating a "robots don't have actual emotions" schtick for the lulz. Even so, Vacation Simulator errs on the side of fun-for-all humor, and the result somehow feels both family-friendly and witty, like a good batch of Futurama episodes. (Albeit, episodes without robo-hookers or the biting of shiny metal asses.) It's hard to leave a session of Vacation Simulator without remembering at least two laugh-worthy robo-ruminations.

A vote in the “game challenge” debate

Ultimately, the game contains roughly eight truly catchy mini-games, along with a wander-and-manipulate ecosystem that rewards players for picking through hundreds of objects and experimenting with their combinations. Is that worth $30? If you are in the habit of sharing VR experiences with friends, with a nearby TV hooked up so that everyone can follow along with the goofiness, I'd say yes.

Vacation Simulator is effectively a Job Simulator replacement in terms of scope, accessibility, humor, and sheer VR tactility, and no VR kit should be without at least one good Owlchemy game to hand to newcomers. What's more, a future version of this game for the impressive, wholly wireless Oculus Quest should be a no-brainer purchase, assuming that version scales well to the Quest's weaker hardware.

On the flip-side, if "family-friendly mini-game compilation" turns your stomach, nothing about Owlchemy's impeccable design vision or VR chops will likely change your mind. But I appreciate that about Vacation Simulator. Heck, the game's "ending" pokes fun at the kind of gamer mentality that obsesses over challenge, progress, unlockables, and metrics. Want to accrue points? Want to simply mess around? Either way, there's a boatload of fun to be had here, should you be up for it.

The Good:

A solid variety of mini-games and across-the-resorts challenges

The undeniable Owlchemy Labs charm of making sure every VR object is manipulable

A beating heart of nerdy, family-friendly humor, like a Bender-less episode of Futurama

Easter eggs, Easter eggs, Easter eggs

The Bad:

A few too many mini-games and attractions repeat to pad the experience

If Job Simulator didn't do it for you, neither will this sequel

The Ugly:

Why can't I cook and eat the cute butterflies? Let me indulge my basest VR urges, Owlchemy

Verdict: All VR headset owners should own at least one Owlchemy Labs game, and this is the company's best yet.