Gaming is littered with technological dead-ends, and I'll admit that when I first heard about the Oculus Rift I imagined it would be blindly stumbling down a cul-de-sac of its own design. VR had already failed, how could it possibly work again? But the price was right, the technology compelling, and the backing of John Carmack gave it the legitimacy that it needed. Now, just over a year after its successful Kickstarter, the state of Rift development is on an upward curve. The device isn't even on general sale, but there are hundreds of games, both in development and released, that show just why a VR headset is so exciting. Here are just ten that caught my eye.

Private Eye

This is the game that sold me on the immersive possibilities of the system. It's basically Rear Window: The Gam. You're a wheelchair-bound voyeur/detective watching a building through his binoculars. You can only move your head, so your own gaze becomes a tool to help solve the mysteries of the neighbourhood. For a small block of flats, there's a lot going on: you need to find cats, uncover the Mafia's plans, help kids find a lost football. But the real reason you're there is to catch a killer in action, and all you know is that he'll strike at 22:00.

Sight Line

The way people deal with reality is to assume that it's a constant. If you have a table and turn your head away from it for a moment, the table should be there when you turn back. That makes complete sense in the real world, but games aren't reality, and not enough of them admit that. Sight Line realises unreality in the best possible way, keeping track of your gaze and allowing things to happen just out of sight, creating a world that can change in the blink of an eye or the turning of your head.

Alone

Meta-gaming is a theme of a few Rift enabled games, but Alone looks like it really nails that notion. In Alone you are a gamer sat on his couch playing a horror game. As you play the game-- a simple top-down horror game on your giant screen--the world around starts to react. Curtains twitch, noises thump, the game and the room creating a feedback loop where you're not sure what's happening on the screen and what's happening to the player sat in the sofa. And let's not forget that it could be coincidentally happening to you in the real-world, but you can't tell because you have the Rift on. Just a thought.

Titans of Space

Titans of Space is more of an experience than a game, but it's had me open a tab in my browser to see if the consumer version is on sale more than once. It's essentially Sky At Night: The Game; an interactive trip through our solar system to give the Rift wearer a notion of the scale of the Sun, the planets, and a few extra-solar suns from the night sky. It's gorgeous and awe-inspiring, and a horrible reminder of just how small you are: you're hanging in space, a tiny ball of meat in front of our churning, roiling sun that's then dwarfed by a succession of larger stars.

Euro Truck Simulator 2

This makes complete sense to me. If the Rift's killer feature is immersion, then sitting in the cab of a lovingly realised truck and thundering across the highways of Europe is the perfect setting. It's not just putting you in the seat and allowing you to glance at the mirrors to check your angles, but it's also putting you in the mind of the game designer who took the time to make sure that the Renault Magnum's sunshade is just so. As the video below shows, it's so immersive that you can crash while you're admiring the scenery sliding by.

Rogue System

If you're looking for something that's a bit more glam than Euro trucking, then there's always Rogue System. It's one of a raft of Rift-enabled space sims, including Star Citizen, Enemy Starfighter, and Elite: Dangerous. All of those are exciting games, and each could have a spot on this list, but Rogue System's immersion is incredible. All the ship's systems flow through the cockpit, so you have intimate control over everything. Controlling the flow of power through the ship's systems with the weight of the Rift strapped to your head seems almost meditative.

EVE: Valkyrie

Oh alright, you can have one proper space shooter. If Rogue System is Euro Truck Simulator 2 in space, Eve: Valkyrie is basically a Battlefield 4 jet in Eve. It was built by CCP as a test, and teased at 2013's Eve Fanfest before finally being announced. It was always going to happen, and perfectly fits with the rift's immersive capabilities: darting in one direction in your fighter while spinning your head about in the cockpit as you look out for friends, hunt enemies, and check your systems. I can almost guarantee someone is going to get too involved in this and pull a neck muscle.

Windland

All these games, but so far nothing that takes advantage of the Rift's potential to make your stomach lurch and your head feel, ooh, odd. Windland is the beginning of such a game, a tech demo where you leap through tree-tops and swing through the skybox with a grappling hook. It's distressingly effective and tricking your brain into thinking you're swinging along at high-speed, as you power through an abstract world of floating blocks and lumpy trees. I actually clenched while testing it out.

Crashland

There are a few shooters that have retroactively enabled Rift, including Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2, but this is the first I've seen that's been built with the Rift in mind. You can tell with the way the UI is integrated into the gun, and not floating on edges of the screen, that it's solving problems traditional games would encounter. But it's also tackling all new problems: how to aim a gun in a gaming environment where your head moves freely. The solution is to use the Razer Hydra (Wiimote-style movement controllers) to aim guns. Does the full-body awareness motion work? I think so.

Asunder: Earthbound

Asunder: Earthbound is an adventure game set on a (potentially?) doomed airplane. I'm almost convinced that it's a secret chapter of the original Bioshock, perhaps leading up to the plane crash. It's not really a game that needed Rift integration, but it caps off the list because the idea of exploring a richly detailed environment as you hunt for clues is one of the most exciting things about the headset. Well, that and being in a demonic plane crash.

Craig Pearson is a freelancer, which explains the dressing gown, the beard and the crumbs, as well as the volume of cat-related tweets on his Twitter account.