Halloween is almost here. Known for terror and thrills, tricks and treats, Halloween allows everyone to enjoy the spooks and scares of a night to never forget. It’s no surprise virtual reality has entered the scene. There are things that you can only see in movies, or nightmares. Now, you can turn to virtual reality and bring all the scares and creeps to life.
Walking through haunted houses with your friends is now elevated to a new level. You can be completely immersed in the most scary of games and interactive movie-like experiences. From the frightening to the frighteningly real, virtual reality will change Halloween as we know it. Indeed, it has been shown to work particularly well in horror.
There’s another world that awaits you on the other side of a virtual reality headset. Developers and creators have full reign to unleash their creativity, and the potential is endless.
WITHIN, an immersive content creation and distribution company, has been adding new frightening content every Wednesday up until Halloween day. Called the Fright Fest Collection, some of this content includes:
The Caretaker follows the mysterious occurrences at a strange hotel when a couple arrives to wait for a mechanic after their car breaks down on a cold winter night.
The experience charts the unsettling course of a funeral when the man attending realizes he is the sole mourner alongside the deceased’s grieving mother.
11:57 is a first-person POV nightmare in which you are strapped to a chair in a dark cave.
Dinner Party is the pilot episode of a new anthology series called, The Incident. Based on true events, the first installment is based on the story of Betty and Barney Hill, a couple who reported the first nationally known story of a UFO abduction in 1961.
The week before Halloween will bring the launch of Portal, a first-person experience of a Spanish witches’ seance.
KOBOLD, is a new kind of horror experience that blurs the line between cinema and virtual reality gaming. After you’ve seen a short movie, you can put on your VR headset, and interact with the story. A player can begin investigating the mysterious case of a missing boy, and discover the secrets of an abandoned villa set in Germany. The villa itself was even scanned with photogrammetry to make the experience as immersive and realistic as possible.
Maybe you’re looking for a full-on horror experience? Some of the best virtual reality games are horror. These horror games not only get your adrenaline pumping, but you also get to immerse yourself into an unsettling story and environment. Here are some of the scariest horror and psychologically thrilling games out there this year:
Exorcist: Legion VR was released this year for PlayStation VR. You will come face-to-face with different supernatural entities throughout your journey in this multi-series horror game. Split into five chapters at different locations, each experience lasts around 30 minutes. With the slow-building tension, each and every scare feels dangerous, coupled with a sheer sense of terror.
Earlier this month, RED: Lucid Nightmare was released for the Oculus Rift. Mercedes is an investigative journalist who has been given a missing persons case. She must discover the connection between the missing family during the day, and her recurring nightmares at night. Armed with only a lighter and a flashlight, you navigate through Mercedes’ nightmares in order to solve the case.
Resident Evil® 7 biohazard is for PlayStation VR. Set in a sinister mansion in the middle of rural America, players experience first-person survival horror.
Wilson’s Heart is for the Oculus Rift. Also a first-person psychological thriller, it is set in a 1940s hospital. You become a patient who awakens to the discovery that his heart has been replaced with a mysterious device. As the hauntings of the hospital increase, you and fellow patients must explore and overcome the frightening scares of this hospital to find answers.
Transference, for PlayStation VR, Vive, and Rift, has players try to escape the maze-like puzzles of a home as they explore the recreated memories of a man’s obsession and a fractured family. The player decides the fate of a family through the choices that they make throughout the game.
A Chair in a Room: Greenwater is also for PlayStation VR, Vive, and Rift. It is a tense room-scale horror game set in America’s Deep South. The game takes a player through an investigation of institutional corruption by searching deep within your own psyche.
Jack the Ripper Virtual Reality House is located in Santa Clarita, California. This multi-sensory virtual reality experience puts you and up to three friends inside one of history’s greatest mysteries. In this 30-minute experience, you roam through over 3,000 square feet of virtual space while exploring an old abandoned wax museum. Using an HTC Vive, you explore the museum and its displays of Jack and his victims. Designed as an escape room with a series of puzzles, you learn about each of the victims to build a list of clues for finding out who is Jack the Ripper.
Hospital of Horror is also a multi-sensory virtual reality experience that can be shared with up to two friends. You explore an abandoned hospital, not knowing what to expect. This experience is available on select days and locations during October 2018.
The VOID is an exciting, full sensory, virtual reality experience that has taken the country by storm. It’s latest addition for the Halloween season is Nicodemus: Demon of Evanishmen, and is available at select locations. With the help of award-winning video game studio, Ninja Theory, you are now transported back to 1894. You and up to three friends investigate the disappearances of people that occurred at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, more famously known as the Chicago World’s Fair.
???? Something wicked this way comes – and it’s in virtual reality. Wishing you a very scary Halloween! ????
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