By The fifth VR Games Showcase dropped Monday with over 30 announcements, and today The Boys: Trigger Warning landed on Meta Quest 3. That timing is not a coincidence. After years of throat-clearing about VR as the future, this showcase felt like the medium's first real programming slate — a lineup you could actually critique rather than just root for.
So let's do that. Not a recap. A reckoning.
The one that gets it: The Boys: Trigger Warning
ARVORE spent three years on this. They started by prototyping hand-driven telekinesis before they even had the IP, which is exactly the right order of operations. Build the VR mechanic first. Find the story that demands it second.
Ricardo Justus, ARVORE's founder, told 80 Level that the team's core question was always "how does VR make the game more interesting, different, and engaging?" That philosophy carried over from their Pixel Ripped series, where physical alignment between the real and virtual world was the whole point.
The result is a stealth-action game where you play as Lucas Costa, a new character with unstable Supe powers — telekinesis and laser eyes controlled through your actual hands. Laz Alonso and Jensen Ackles reprise their roles from the show. The story is canonical, written with the showrunners, and timed to land two weeks before the fifth and final season premieres on April 8 on Prime Video.
What matters from a medium perspective: ARVORE didn't adapt a flat-screen game. They built VR-native interactions first, then wrapped a known IP around them. Justus was explicit — "designing for VR is fundamentally different" and hybrid experiences need to be designed that way from the start. Otherwise, you risk making a weaker VR game and a weaker non-VR game.
That's the thesis for this whole showcase, whether the other developers realize it or not.
The announcements that understand the assignment
Compass, from Trebuchet Studios (Prison Boss, Broken Edge), is an open-world piloting adventure about navigating uncharted clouds. Quest, PSVR2, and PC VR, arriving Spring 2026. Piloting in VR is one of those mechanics that simply does not translate to flat screens — the spatial awareness of scanning a hazard-filled sky while physically leaning into your cockpit is a VR-native verb. Trebuchet has a track record of building for presence.
The Amusement, from Curvature Games, uses redirected-walking techniques to translate your real steps into in-game movement through a 1920s amusement park. Roomscale narrative adventure, arriving April 16 on Quest and PC VR. This is the kind of design that could only exist in VR. If it works — and that's a genuine if with redirected walking — it's closer to theater than gaming.
pits a VR player against up to four flatscreen challengers in asymmetric hide-and-seek. The original nailed the power fantasy of being a giant, omniscient overseer while tiny players scurried below. The sequel leans harder into what makes VR socially different: the asymmetry of embodiment.
