Valve and HTC’s Vive VR headset continues to give me confidence that experiences rather than games are the best thing virtual reality has to offer. I would never play Dota 2 using a VR headset — especially this one, which differentiates itself with room-sized playing fields you literally walk through — but I would pay repeatedly for Dota-themed vignettes like the one I played at The International 5

Loading

Developed off-and-on for the past 18 months, the latest Vive demo puts players inside the cabin of the charming Secret Shop merchant, who appears long enough to deliver you a magical light before leaving you to roam his shop freely. His wares, iconic items such as the Hyperstone and Skull Basher, hang from ceiling, rest on displays, and live in impenetrable cases. This is the closest I will get to touching a Divine Rapier.The Secret Shop Vive demo is a gigantic, interactive Easter Egg.It’s a small space, but it becomes considerably larger when you spot glowing symbols scattered across the room, pull your controller’s trigger, and shrink to ant-size onto the symbol. This gimmick allows you to get up close with enormous versions of the Necronomicon, a glowing Tango bundle, the Maelstrom, and other notable Dota 2 things.It’s a very hands-off sort of exploration. The Secret Shop is a more limited demo than, say, Valve’s Aperture Science experience , which had more active participation and object manipulation, but for the obsessive Dota 2 player — ahem — the payoff is consistent, overwhelming joy.I asked a Valve developer what I might have missed. She explained that the Blink Dagger — hidden in a corner I didn’t shine my light on — blinks away when discovered, encouraging you to find it again. An "Axe in the Box" pops out of his cubic prison predictably, if you’re not too enthralled looking through cracks in the cabin, listening to the sounds of Heroes casting spells in the distance, or lighting the darkness beneath tables.What’s unmissable is the loud, frightening finale.Regardless of your knowledge of Dota, seeing Roshan — a roaming, humongous dinosaur — rip the roof off the cabin and stick his roaring head inside is terrifying. It’s also the sort of space-invading surrealism that makes Vive special. I’d spent 10 minutes learning this room, walking around it, seeing it from different angles and from varied perspectives. To see it destroyed and occupied by something else, something that feels like it genuinely took up space around me, seriously disrupted my sense of reality.I suspect this is the entire purpose — and I hope that things like this, rather than 100-hour role-playing games, drive Vive to success.

Mitch Dyer is an Editor at IGN. Talk to him about Dota 2, movies, books, and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD and subscribe to MitchyD on Twitch