The road to UploadVR’s Best of 2019 awards starts here! We’re getting close to revealing our Overall VR Game/Experience of the Year after counting down to the reveal of our full list of categories and nominees soon. Today we’re looking at Vacation Simulator, the follow-up to Job Simulator that delivered an expanded playground balanced with wide access.
Plenty of VR games in 2019 tended toward playfulness, but you’re not going to find anything that invites as many players into such a comfortable and relaxing place as Owlchemy Labs’ Vacation Simulator.
The sequel from the Google-owned VR developer launched across PC VR, PS VR and Oculus Quest in 2019 — a feat in and of itself not achieved by many. But what makes Vacation Simulator so powerful is the way it offers so many different things for players to do — so many more than the original — while ensuring that players are almost never lost and practically never uncomfortable. Late in the year Owlchemy even added subtitle support for six languages and carefully integrated them into the game to even further expand the game’s appeal to more people.
As Jamie wrote when he reviewed it, “Vacation Simulator is limited to the things that work in VR and it’s not ready to cut corners. That’s why, for one of the first times since VR’s launch, I was able to sit back on a couch and laugh away at my partner playing for an hour without needing to explain how to carry out specific actions or convincing her to keep playing. VR should be this accessible and Owlchemy’s no-compromise approach is to be championed.”
That sentiment stands the test of the year, and should for some time longer.
You can get Vacation Simulator on Steam for PC VR headsets, on PSVR, or on Oculus Quest, and it is also available from the Oculus Store for Rift.
