While growing up, many of us are lucky to have experienced playing board games and putting together puzzles with our siblings, friends, and family. You can still experience that same feeling of accomplishment and bragging rights as you play a VR puzzle game or escape a puzzle room.
VR puzzles and puzzle rooms are good for your brain health because they make you think of various ways to put pieces of objects or information together to create a larger picture, idea, or object. Solving puzzles has been known to increase short term and long term memory as well as improve analytical thought.
VR Fitness Insider recently covered how VR games can make users motivated to be physically active and how playing VR video games improves brain fitness, memory, and even reduces stress and anxiety. Playing with virtual games that rely on looking at and manipulating objects in a different way will have you thinking outside the box and have you laughing at yourself while doing it.
VR Puzzle Games
VR puzzles aren’t taking the place of standard tabletop puzzles of the past, they’re just raising the stakes… a lot. These brain-flexing games are fun and addictive but aren’t intense or adrenaline inducing in any way. So, sit or stand and enjoy thinking creatively.
Water Bears VR
Play this single player, no-pressure, tropically themed puzzle game after you unwind from the day. Solve puzzles by building interconnected pipes and viewing them from all angles as you help your tiny water bear friends get the water they need.
Developer/Publisher: Schell Games
Compatible with: HTC Vive, with tracked motion controllers
Price: $9.99
Link: Water Bears VR
XING: The Land Beyond
Surround yourself in mystical virtual environments that will have you solving increasingly difficult puzzles and changing structures. Watch out for traps and find hidden treasures around each puzzle stage and gain control over the virtual weather.
Developer/Publisher: White Lotus Interactive
Compatible with: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, OSVR, with tracked motion controllers
Price: $19.99
Link: XING: The Land Beyond
Rangi
Make connections and use your wand to teleport and make your way around temples using magic and logic to solve puzzles. Help get back the Musiki tribe’s stolen music as you collect artifacts and try not to evade wall spikes and other hidden obstacles waiting for you at every turn.
Developer: Funsoft
Publisher: Digigo
Compatible with: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, with tracked motion controllers
Price: $9.99
Link: Rangi
VR Escape Games
If you’re more of an adrenaline junkie, you’ll likely enjoy playing games where you’ll be locked in a room or situation where you’ll have to escape. Don’t buckle under the pressure — use logic or luck to solve these hard to escape VR puzzle experiences. If you’re claustrophobic don’t play these games.
VR Escape The Puzzle Room
Video Credit to: SteamTrailers for The Puzzle Room VR: Escape The Room Trailer (HTC Vive)
You’re locked in a room with unfamiliar objects. What do you do? Search around for clues and piece them all together. Look high and low, leave no object unturned, and try to destroy things to uncover more secrets to escape.
Developer/Publisher: TiStar Game
Compatible with: HTC Vive, with tracked motion controllers
Price: $3.99
Link: VR Escape The Puzzle Room
I Expect You To Die
You’re a secret agent who’s trying to escape various rooms, cars, and tricky situations by using common sense, logic, and plain old luck to survive. Try to beat each level by keeping your life. Don’t feel bad if you die, it’ll happen a lot.
Developer/Publisher: Schell Games
Compatible with: PlayStation VR, HTC ive, Oculus Rift, with tracked motion controllers
Price: $24.99
Link: I Expect You To Die, I Expect You To Die
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
This is a great VR puzzle and escape game to play with a group of friends. In separate rooms, you’ll be given a time bomb and your friends will be giving you the directions on how to deactivate it. Tip: Print out the bomb defusing instructions ahead of time.
Developer/Publisher: Steel Crate Games
Compatible with: PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, OSVR, with tracked motion controllers
Price: $14.99
Link: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Statik
You’ve woken up and don’t know who you are and why you’re here. You’ll start and continue the game by being locked into a trap puzzle as you make decisions to solve others. This game will have your brain thinking on various levels due to its psychological storyline and puzzle challenges.
Developer/Publisher: Tarsier Studios
Compatible with: PlayStation VR, with tracked motion controllers
Price: $19.99
Link: Statik
Play some of these VR puzzle games to have some fun, stretch your mind and earn those bragging rights that come with solving any complex problem!