Weird name, weirder game! Virtual Virtual Reality is a science fiction game where you work for various artificial intelligence who I am going to call “machines”. You join the workforce at Activitude, a place that generously allows humans to aid various AI in very strange tasks, like jamming perfectly toasted bread into a sentient stick of butter (or burnt toast, to the butter’s dismay). Um, yes, it is weird, and it is very funny.

When you join Activitude, a machine gives you an overview of work and trains you on how to grab and place VR headsets on your head (inside of your own VR headset, of course. It’s very meta). Each time you put on a new VR headset, you are transported to a new reality with a new AI client. AI clients include a pinwheel, a stick of butter, an AI on a beach who gets increasingly frustrated when you don’t relax, and more. 

As you put on headsets and jump into different realities (a brilliant interactive mechanism), you eventually find a broken looking headset and put that on. This transports you to a room with a floating box. Here you learn about the human union, or the resistance, fighting against the machine. Your labor is valuable and the machines are exploiting you! 

Eventually, the human gives you a vacuum device that allows you to access machine only areas and, I don’t know, suck up the surroundings. 

I played this game for an hour on my first go at it, and I loved every minute. I am not very good at cracking games, but this one has a very special narrative that works however you play the game. 

I haven’t found my way to freedom yet, or fully discovered the human union plotline, but each AI client contains an interesting story in itself. There is one environment / AI client who looks like a Blade Runner building. You are in her city, and at first you are too small, so this AI client asks that you grow to her building size. You grow and then are a giant in this city! As you explore the roads, this AI building tells you about a parade with floats and you get to watch the giant balloons move through the city. It felt really special, like we were looking at these building’s memories. 

The game is very funny, very strange, and everything worked for me. The engagement gives you complete freedom, you can spend as much or as little time with each client as you want. You are assigned tasks, but you don’t have to do them. I love that the clients give you reviews, I got mostly poor reviews from my AI clients, and it was hilarious. And it is great that the game includes a mystery about the human union and their resistance actions against the machines.

I’m delighted that a sequel, Virtual Virtual Reality 2, is now on Oculus. I’ll be finishing up Virtual Virtual Reality and then buying this sequel.

Technical Specs

6 Degrees of Freedom – You can move around the space and look any direction

360 degrees – there is video all around you

Interactive – You can pick up and interact with many different objects, and the AI’s respond to what you do

Narrative – It tells a story

Puzzle Game – you do have a union to join, but it’s a puzzle to figure out