Looking for the best spatial games available on Apple Vision Pro? Here are our current recommendations.
Offering a standalone headset more focused on productivity and media watching, Apple Vision Pro hasn't exactly set the world of gaming alight. It's a considerably different proposition than Quest due to the lack of tracked controllers, relying instead on hand tracking and pinch gestures. That significantly limits the games available, so don't expect major names like Gorilla Tag or Assassin's Creed Nexus, let alone Meta-owned titles like Beat Saber.
Some developers have adapted their existing titles for pinch gestures, while others have built new experiences from the ground up. We'll touch upon this with individual titles, but hand-tracking in faster-paced games often feels sluggish, an assessment David Heaney noted in our Apple Vision Pro review.
David Heaney
Right now, the spatial gaming experience feels limited compared to Quest, and I certainly couldn't recommend buying this $3500 headset solely for gaming. Still, what we've found so far is an intriguing mix of genres and content types.
We're not including flatscreen Apple Arcade and iOS games in this list as they don't offer a true spatial experience, but they are major parts of Apple's effort since these are projected into your living space and can multitask alongside other apps. I enjoyed testing Sonic Team Dream and Fantasian through Apple Vision Pro with an Xbox Series gamepad and resizing the virtual display by dragging its corners works well. Importantly, this virtual window still registers pinch and direct touch inputs for titles that don't support gamepad.
With that in mind, these are our top 5 picks for the best Apple Vision Pro games so far:
Game Room
Game Room is a spatial board and card game collection from Resolution Games (Demeo, Racket Club). The only headset it's available on is Vision Pro, but it also has an iPhone and iPad version with crossplay. Offering six different games with online multiplayer and AI opponents, this includes Chess, Solitaire, Hearts, Yacht, Flip It, Sea Battle and Checkers.
While you can choose to place these tabletop games in your own environment, I much preferred the colorful, fully immersive setting. Each game has a strong presentation with nice interactive effects, and the slower pace makes it ideal for getting around Apple Vision Pro's hand-tracking issues.
LEGO Builder's Journey
LEGO Builder's Journey offers a completely different experience from what we saw in LEGO Bricktales last year. Previously released on flatscreen platforms, Builder's Journey is a tabletop game where you place bricks across miniature LEGO dioramas to solve puzzles.
What follows is an atmospheric, minimalist narrative adventure that's a joy to experience. Picking up individual LEGO bricks with my fingers worked well and for anyone after more freedom, there's a limited but enjoyable Creative Mode that lets you build your own designs.
Proton Pulse Vision
A mix between Pong and Breakout, Proton Pulse was one of the earliest demos available for the Rift DK1 and DK2, so it's surprising to see it return on Apple Vision Pro. Menus and a slowdown ability use hand-tracking and you control the paddle using your head movements, hitting the ball toward blocks on the other side.
Featuring over 50 levels and boss battles across fully immersive environments, Proton Pulse Vision keeps gameplay varied by offering different powerups like additional balls, exploding blocks or laser fire from your paddle. More than a decade later, it remains an entertaining experience.
Soul Spire
Soul Spire is an exclusive Apple Vision Pro game set inside an extra-dimensional hotel. You're tasked with freeing friendly ghosts through solving creative puzzles, which involves dragging all the matching color blocks onto the same line using hand-tracking.
It's a straightforward premise that slowly builds up the challenge and Soul Assembly has delivered an engaging spatial puzzler. Thanks to recent quality-of-life adjustments and Panic Mode, which ups the challenge as blocks continue cascading down, it's only improved since launch.
Synth Riders
Synth Riders rebuilt the hit rhythm game "from the ground up" on Apple Vision Pro. What you see here is not exactly the same as on other platforms, though Kluge Interactive delivers a close match that lets you swap between mixed reality passthrough or a fully immersive environment. Featuring 70 songs between nine music packs, there's a strong soundtrack here with a good rhythm.
It's a great porting effort for Apple Vision Pro, and out of all the spatial gaming experiences currently available, I'd consider Synth Riders the most replayable. However, the faster-paced gameplay means playing on hard difficulty struggles with Apple Vision Pro's low update-rate hand tracking skeleton. So, while it's still a fun time, it's hard to recommend playing this version over the others.
Honorable Mentions
During my testing of the Apple Vision Pro games library, there are a few titles I'd like to give honorable mentions to.
Just Hoops is an enjoyable arcade basketball experience, though picking up the ball and judging throws was often fiddly. Puzzling Places, a 3D jigsaw puzzler that's one of the best Quest 3 games, is free-to-play on Apple Vision Pro but currently has very little content. Mindway, a holistic wellbeing app that's also free-to-play, works well but has a similar content issue.
Super Fruit Ninja offers a surprising amount of variety with several modes, though the faster-paced gameplay often struggles to keep up with hand tracking. What The Golf? uses hand gestures to fling golf balls and other objects across a course, while Wylde Flowers offers a more relaxing life and farming sim.
We're still waiting for several major games to reach Apple Vision Pro, including Demeo, Rec Room, Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator. As more experiences arrive on Apple's headset, we'll revisit our recommendations.
If you're an Apple Vision Pro developer with a game you'd like us to consider, please email tips@uploadvr.com or use our Contact Us page to get in touch.
Looking for more Apple Vision Pro games? Check out our full round-up of all upcoming VR and spatial games we're currently aware of:
Henry Stockdale
