NightKnight
Guard Princess Day as the Night Knight. Build up the castle or at least try to keep it intact and use archery skills to kill an army of the dead. Use specialized Fire, Ice, Poison, and other arrow types to crack some skulls and collect some ghosts. Protect the castle from destruction and use TNT to blow up armored foes. This is an early access game.
Fitness Potential
This is an archery defense game that uses a lot of upper body movement. Bow and arrow games use repetitive arm movement to aim, pull back the arrow, and strike hostile and destructive skeletons from clawing at and destroying the castle.
Developer/Publisher: WeRVR Studio
Release Date: August 28, 2018
Compatible with: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, with tracked controllers
Price: $14.99
Link: NightKnight
Gun Club VR
Practice your shooting at the virtual gun range in this FPS simulation. There’s no blood or players to shoot, only pancake targets that are impressively detailed. Select from a list of fully reloadable pistols, SMGs, shotguns, automatic rifles, or a weapon loadout of grenade launchers and more. Practice shooting gun range targets and moving zombies, save hostages (don’t shoot them), earn in-game currency, and unlock upgrades and customizations.
Fitness Potential
Shooting flat hostiles and zombies at the range or in action events in Gun Club VR will be a decent upper body exercise with lots of practice. This game is played standing and in room scale, so you can intentionally lunge from side to side to get a better angle. This is a great coordination game to set up targets at the range in any way you choose and fire away for unlimited amounts of time.
Developer/Publisher: The Binary Mill
Release Date: August 27, 2018
Compatible with: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality, with tracked controllers
Price: $14.99 to $19.99
Link: Gun Club VR
Firewall Zero Hour
This is a 4v4 team-based FPS game that has two roles of attacker and defender but also has different characters with special abilities. Strategize with teammates to set up door jams C4 or prox mines, or hide around corners and go in for the attack. Strike the opposing team as a group with different guns like rifles, shotguns, SMGs, and pistols. Listen carefully for directions from the contract handler to help with tactics. This game is said to be at its best when played with the PS Aim controller.
Fitness Potential
This is light to mid-range upper body game because of the shooting element with some lower body movement when players duck out of the way of fire. There are lots of corners, doors, and staircases, so the amount of gunfire is situational. Videos online show some players standing in one place, which doesn’t bode well for fitness, so you’ll want to intentionally do squats and lunges during any downtime.
Developer/Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Release Date: August 28, 2018
Compatible with: PS VR, with tracked controllers
Price: $39.99
Link: Firewall Zero Hour
Xion
Build and upgrade your own spaceship (the controllers) in a voxel virtual world and fly it around in this 90s shoot em’ up and side scroll throwback in VR. Shoot enemy turrets, tanks, airships, drones, and debris with onboard shells, cannons, launchers, lasers, and more. The whole world is destructible, so fly around and blast away! Look forward to spraying pixelized ammo! This game also has big bosses (hello huge tank) that are satisfying to shoot.
Fitness Potential
Xion is played standing and for room scale so you’re able to casually look around and swerve your ship around tanks, structures, and shells. A single controller is the ship and the ship is essentially a gun. Single arm use is light but builds up a little bit more when you get further along, which makes the game a cool down activity. There doesn’t seem to be rapid crouching, lunging or maneuvers that would tone leg muscles but you could do so under and around structures when they appear.
Developer/Publisher: Zenz VR
Release Date: August 29, 2018
Compatible with: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, with tracked controllers
Price: $8.99 to $14.99
Link: Xion
Voronium – Locust Sols
Drop to a location and protect the supply of Voronium from ground drones, air drones, and big beefy spider mechs. Aim or scatter laser bullets and leveled up weapons to zap and blast these mechanical energy suckers out of the sky or before they crawl or fly in and take over the stronghold. Voronium – Locust Sols is an FPS and tower defense game with some story to it. It’s also an early access game.
Fitness Potential
With 15 levels of mech bugs to blow apart, there’s enough time to use this as a warm-up game or an actual workout for the upper body. Use room scale and standing to your advantage and defend the area by not standing in one spot. The arms, if they’re held out in front of you, will get tired out when you play for longer sessions. Strap a weighted vest on to add muscle-building resistance to the workout.
Developer/Publisher: Gamalocus Studios
Release Date: August 31, 2018
Compatible with: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, with tracked controllers
Price: $14.99
Link: Voronium – Locust Sols