11 Essential Green Hell VR Tips and Tricks to Survive the Jungle

Green Hell VR (aka Green Hell Quest Edition) is a VR Survival game set in the Jungles of the Amazon available on the Oculus/Meta Quest 2. As far as Virtual Reality Survival games go Green Hell VR is brutal. Just like you would guess from the name the jungle can cut you down to size pretty quickly. Whether it’s by starving, poison, vomiting, insanity, or just plain being eaten, staying healthy in the Green Hell is not easy. That’s why we’ve got 11 Essential Tips and Tricks for Green Hell VR to help you out. So let’s get into it with tip number 1.

A video version of this article can be found on the Reality Remake youtube channel here: https://youtu.be/7O7C4qRMSXM

1. Listen Closely

Danger comes in many forms in the jungle, and some of those are actually pretty easy to see coming if you pay attention. Spiders and scorpions are actually pretty loud, and can be heard clacking as they creep towards you. Listen closely so that you can smash them before they get close enough to hurt you. The same goes for snakes, hearing their rattling from far away gives you the chance to easily spear them or shoot them with an arrow, rather than suffer their venomous bite.

The same goes for the animals that should be afraid of you. A tapir or armadillo makes a distinct noise when running away, and listening closely while hunting for meat can give away where they are, and let you know which direction to chase them in.

Beware though, not all threats are as loud as you think they would be.

2. Watch your Macroelements

In Green Hell VR you can stuff yourself as much as you like and never vomit… but what you stuff yourself with is more important than how much you stuff yourself with. Keep an eye on your macroelements and what foods you need to keep those bars full. Varying your sources of food is vital to survival in this Virtual Reality jungle.

As a rule of thumb carbohydrates (the yellow bar) are easy to fill with fruits such as bananas , and various mushrooms and other vegetables that can be found growing around the Amazon. Fats (the green bar) can be found in the meats of certain animals, like the Tapir, and in nuts and seeds. Protein (the red bar) can be found in meats, preferably cooked or dried to avoid sickness… and insanity. More on that in another tip.

3. Watch your Arms

All sorts of little parasites are going to try and find their way on to your body in the jungle. Who can blame them? Clearly you are very tasty. So it’s a good idea to make a habit out of checking for them, and chucking them off of you as quickly as possible, especially after taking a dunk in some water. Leeches will attach themselves pretty consistently. Injuries and some status effects, like parasites, will also show themselves on your arms as lesions or cuts.

Even worse things can burrow themselves into your arms, especially if you sleep on the ground. More on that in another tip.

4. Knowledge is Power and Eating is Knowledge

Knowing which plants will make you vomit up all of your macroelements is an important trick to have up your sleeve. An even better trick is knowing which plants will cure certain status effects, such as stomach parasites from drinking unclean water. Unfortunately the only way to know what plants do for sure… is to eat them. This will sometimes have bad consequences. Fortunately with this knowledge that can be mitigated by following our next tip.

5. Keep some Medicinal Herbs with you

Keeping an herb or two that will cure status effects can keep a single snake bite, or a vomiting spell from eating a poisonous fruit, from ending in a game over in Green Hell Quest Edition. Tobacco leaves, which are colored a bright pink, cure venomous bites and stings.

Vomiting can be cured, but by plants that are a little harder to find. Water lilies, which can be found on lily pads sitting on top of water, as well as Ficus Leaves, take care of vomiting. Make sure to eat them quickly before you vomit out all of your macroelements and have to eat a massive meal to get back to full health.

None of these plants will go bad over time, so keep a couple of each in your pack in case things don’t go as planned. Stomach parasites can be cured by eating certain mushrooms too, but those go bad over time. Still, if you need to drink unclean water it may help to find a few of the blue mushrooms (Indigo Blue Leptonia) or little brown bowl looking mushrooms (Copa Hongo) first. Both of those naturally kill the parasites in your stomach.

Oh and the same goes for bandages, keeping some of those spare can really help recover from a puma mauling.

6. Nonperishables can keep you from Perishing

Canned food is rare in the middle of a jungle, and so are protein and candy bars. Anything modern really, even the simplest machete or axe, is a luxury in this Virtual rainforest. So as in any survival game it is good to keep some spare food and supplies in your pack. Since they never spoil you can keep them for when bad luck or poor decision making has left you hungry and desperate.

It is also important to note that keeping your food from perishing for longer can help you spend less time hunting for more meat to sustain yourself. While meat has a meter which lasts for about a day before it spoils, cooking it resets that meter. Even better, when you get a drying rack you can keep meat from spoiling for almost a week by drying it!

7. Coconuts are Jewels of the Jungle

Coconuts are generally great, and you should utilize them whenever possible. First of all they are a very easy source of clean water. Just bash a green coconut a few times and have a drink! After drinking out of one, cutting it in half reveals the coconut flesh which is an easy source of fats.

Even after you’ve drunk and eaten the coconut, it is still useful. The shells can be used in water collectors, or just left open side up on the ground. When it rains the rainwater will collect in the shell, and rainwater does not contain parasites. Water without parasites is precious in Green Hell VR. Just as coconuts are. Did I mention they also don’t spoil over time? They’re basically the canned food of nature.

8. Sleep Somewhere Nice

Sleeping on the floor of a jungle is as inadvisable in Green Hell VR as it is in real life. Laying directly on the floor of the rainforest for hours is not good for your health, and can lead to all sorts of parasites infecting your body. Also, a bed makes for much better rest, and the less time spent sleeping the more time you can get busy surviving. While a bed of leaves is good, a log or bamboo bed is even better.

9. Save Early and Save Often

Green Hell VR, as an unforgiving game, comes with the same tip that all unforgiving games come with. Save early and save often. You don’t want to lose an hour of exploration when a Caiman slinks out of the water and bites you in half before you even realize it is happening. It’s better to only lose ten minutes or so when the unexpected happens. At a minimum saving every time after you sleep for the night or eat enough to replenish your nutrients is a good rule of thumb.

10. Mental Health is as Important as Physical Health

It’s hard not to have sympathy for the character we embody in Green Hell VR. As immersive as the game is, at the end of the day we are comfortably flailing our arms in an Air Conditioned living room, and they are in a hot rainforest fighting for survival. That’s not an easy situation to be in, and it’s tough on the mind.

For that reason taking care of your character’s sanity is vital. Lose enough sanity and your character’s grip on reality will start to slip. He will hear things, making it harder for you to hunt or listen for threats (as in tip 1). Lose enough sanity and make believe phantoms will attack you as well, and they will actually hurt you.

Keep your character sane by feeding them good food and not subjecting them to too much hardship. Try not to feed them foods they don’t like, like snake meat.

11. Stay Armed and Stay Ready

Sometimes the jungle of Green Hell VR can become too familiar, and suddenly you start to feel safe. You sprint around like you own the place, barely cognizant of the 5 snakes and 3 spiders you passed right by. Secure in your mastery of the game, and then bam, a jaguar eats you out of nowhere.

That is why you always need to have a weapon at the ready, and be prepared to use it at the drop of a hat. Deadly animals with a taste for human explorer are littered around the jungle. This is a survival game after all, and so Green Hell VR will easily punish you for not taking it seriously enough. Spears are great weapons with a long reach. They can keep a jaguar or other big cat far away from you while you poke it to death.

A bow and arrow can work even better against certain opponents, like the Caiman. One arrow to the head and you’re safe again. For really close encounters a bone knife is also a good quick stabbing weapon, though a tool like an axe or machete can also do some damage. Be careful though, even with a weapon, there are greater threats than mere animals in the Amazon…

Conclusion

Thanks for reading. Green Hell VR is a fantastic example of a Survival Game in Virtual Reality. I heartily recommend it for survival game or VR buffs. It can be purchased for 29.99$ on the Oculus Store. Green Hell VR will also be coming to Steam for PCVR in the near future. Happy hunting, and good luck in the jungle.

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Battle Talent: An Awesome Free VR RPG on the Quest 2

Do you like Virtual Reality RPGs? Hack and slash VR Games? Fighting in Virtual Reality? You like Blade and Sorcery? Hell, maybe you even like Gladius or Gorn. Well then you will love Battle Talent, a VR Hack and Slash Action RPG that you can get through the Oculus/Meta Quest App Lab for Free. Battle Talent is definitely a contender on the Quest 2 when it comes to fantasy VR combat, and as far as price goes you definitely can’t beat free.

Skeletons Goblins and Elves Oh My!

Battle Talent is a high fantasy Virtual Reality game, even more so than Blade and Sorcery. Sure Blade and Sorcery has magic too, but there it’s nothing but humans to fight. Here in Battle Talent we’ve got Goblins!

Skeletons!

And… well other stuff, but I won’t spoil everything for you. Battle Talent, by it’s own description, is an action game focused on “combat fantasy” and “physics”. You can knock enemies around, up into the air, and parkour around yourself. Though for the time being you’ll have to do so mostly in underground corridors. The high fantasy of Battle Talent VR does not extend to the setting. The arena and maze modes all take place in the “Tomb” setting, which is mostly stone walls and ancient pottery.

Don’t let that get you too down though. Battle Talent’s main menu is a Tower among the clouds.

From here you can buy upgrades with coins (which you get from bashing up enemies). These upgrades are insane stuff like the ability to tear enemies in half or knock them upwards with your weapons ridiculously far. Mostly they add new weapons to the game that will then appear on enemies or in chests. Instead of having a “Normal Sword” now you can experience the joy of cutting a Goblin in half with a magical Wind Blade. That is a combat experience I haven’t found in any other game on the Quest 2… or Steam… or PCVR for that matter.

Not your Grandfather’s VR Fighting Arena

Outside of a couple of tutorials the levels of Battle Talent boil down to two types. Arenas and Mazes.

Arenas are basically what you would expect if you’ve played other Virtual Reality Fighting/Combat/Action/Hack and Slash/Whatever else they’re called games like Gorn or Gladius. You, the player, are dumped with a couple of weapons into an arena, and enemies start to pour into that arena and try to murder you before you murder them. If you’re still standing and they’re not, then you win.

Now the concept is basically the same in Battle Talent but its a little more spicy in a couple of ways.

First of all there are traps. At least in the first arena level you can take out some of the Goblin and Skeleton hordes before they get to you by pressing a button and watching a gout of flame push them off of a narrow walkway and into an abyss. There are other traps too, like in the maze levels. All sorts of flame, dart and spike traps litter the hallways and rooms to surprise you or your enemies. Something to force you to pay more attention to your surroundings and watch your step, or something to lure a skeleton into.

The other thing is that after a sweaty hack and slash session taking down the enemies trying to swarm you (Battle Talent can end up being kind of a workout) a final big enemy will appear, a boss if you will, and boy are they tough.

If you defeat them, then you win the level! Battle Talent is a challenge. You need to block incoming attacks, make attacks where the enemy is not blocking, and watch your back all at the same time. Especially when the number of enemies goes up, outnumbering you more than 4 at a time, the action can be very intense. So defeating the boss feels like quite the accomplishment… even if there aren’t very many levels for now. Just two arena options and two maze levels, but don’t worry. Those two maze levels will keep you occupied for a long time.

Mazes Monsters and VR Roguelikes

While the game is still in development the real meat of it is not found in the Arena. Rather the roguelike… or roguelite gameplay of the mazes is where Battle Talent shines as a Free VR RPG. Most similar games have fighting, but are really lacking on actual character progression, character choice, or other basic RPG mechanics. There is no strategy to craft, role to play, or “build” to create in Gorn or Blade and Sorcery, just a choice of weapons.

Well in Battle Talent you get to choose your weapons, and how those weapons are enchanted, and what powerups you take for your character, and whether or not you take curses, and what magic gems to use, and so on and so forth. Whether to lure your enemies into traps, blast them with magic, or pelt them with arrows from far away is not only dependent on what weapon you have but also on what your statistics are. Sometimes you are even forced to make those choices based on what is available to you. You know, actual RPG stuff. Good luck finding that elsewhere on the Meta/Oculus Quest 2.

Mazes generally start you off with a weapon, possibly enchanted, or maybe a spell. Then you advance through the hallways of the maze, fighting sporadic monsters and finding upgrades. These can be a simple chest with a nice weapon in it. Or they can be a choice of enchantments like more Mana, more Health, or more melee damage or ranged damage, and more.

Over the course of the maze you craft your strengths and weaknesses for the run based on what you find and what you prefer. Found a spell early on and keep getting Magic Damage plus runes? Looks like you might want to try spellcasting this run. Not into that? Well you can always hold out for melee damage runes later on, but that might make the run even harder.

This is what Battle Talent does that no other game on the Quest 2 does, it forces you to make tough choices and then fight in combat based on those choices. Speaking of combat, there’s tons of it in Battle Talent’s VR mazes. While the hallways are sporadically filled with enemies, they lead to junction rooms which contain waves of attackers for a brief arena fight. So your mettle is constantly tested, and your mind too.

Each of these arenas, big or small, will have something unique. Maybe some spike traps in the ground, or a modifier to the combat inside. There’s a popup when you enter the arena, magic does more damage, traps do more damage, something like that. Once again Battle Talent says, “You can do it your way if you like… but maybe try something a little different, and this fight will be way easier.” As someone who has learned to love watching spike traps launch goblins into the air, I can say I’m glad that I listened.

More to come

Battle Talent is a great VR Fantasy Action Game, or whatever you want to call it, but it’s not done yet. It has and is still receiving updates. Also, it’s not only on the Meta/Oculus Quest 2. I tend to emphasize the Quest 2 because I just like not having wires hang from my face, but call me crazy. You can find the demo on Steam as well, also for Free. There are even mods in development for the game. The Developer of Battle Talent is on Twitter as well if you want to hear more about the game.

As always thanks for reading Reality Remake, and have fun in Virtual Reality.

Thrill Of the Fight: Extra Opponents Breakdown

Here we breakdown each of the “Extra” opponents in Thrill Of the Fight by Sealost Interactive. These are the opponents in the “Extra” menu of the main menu in the game. Each is some variation of a Halloween monster, and each is a unique challenge.

For a breakdown of the normal fighters check out our original article. If you’re new to the game and want to get better at it then you might want to check out our Beginner’s Guide.

Table Of Contents:

• Ghostly Boxer

• Zombie Joe

• Ichabod

Choose Your Character

Ghostly Boxer

The Ghostly Boxer is a dark, ethereal version of Ugly Joe. He is in most respects a pretty average foe and has many of the qualities of his normal counterpart. He hits fairly hard, but needs to land quite a few blows to knock you out. He can take a pretty solid beating himself before going down. He’s also not particularly fast, and not overly aggressive either.

So he is average in every respect except that he cannot be hit. Pretty poor circumstance to find yourself in during a boxing game, fighting an opponent that can’t be punched, well except for a single caveat. He can be punched when he is punching. Visually this is shown as Joe’s ghostly dark form turning white whenever he can be hurt. Since this window is only when he is attacking it is awfully short.

So the Ghostly Boxer is a fighter which tests your reflexes above all others. The natural response is to try and attack very quickly while the Ghostly Boxer is throwing a punch. Don’t get hit, while also counter attacking with extreme swiftness. A pretty fun exercise in and of itself, and good for practice counter attacking. Wait for the three rounds to finish, and win on points.

However, there is another way. Instead of waiting for the Ghostly Boxer to attack you while your guard is up, why not put your guard down on purpose so that he will take a swing? Better yet, have your guard down while you are swinging. So the moment the Ghostly Boxer takes his swing your first will already be slamming full force into the side of his head.

This can be easily be achieved by throwing a constant barrage of hooks at him while your guard is down. Be prepared to throw a lot of them, and be patient when he is recovering from taking a hit. He will inevitably take the bait and try to take a swing. If your strike is true you will interrupt his attack with your own before he can strike you. With this method it is possible to win by technical knockout instead of landing jabs and running out the clock.

Zombie Joe

Zombie Joe is another spooky version of Ugly Joe. Now he is corporeal, but with no pupils in his eyes, just the whites. His reach towards you and his jaw is slack. He moans and groans, just like a zombie should. His gloves are dirty and his shorts say “DEATH”.

Luckily there’s nothing keeping you from hitting this version of Joe. Unluckily he is far more aggressive than his still-living counterpart, and even more surprisingly he is not much of a boxer. Zombie Joe hardly uses his hands at all. He is more partial to boxing with his mouth by leaning in whenever you are close and chewing on you.

Whenever Zombie Joe latches on you will take a lot of damage fairly quickly until you are knocked down. The only way to stop this is to hit Joe in the side of the head, or step backwards. Hopefully you have a pretty big space to fight in because defeating Zombie Joe is all about footwork. Footwork and endurance.

There is no quick way to beat Zombie Joe because he will keep coming straight for you no matter how hard you hit him. The best thing to do is get eaten as little as possible while landing as many blows as possible. Unfortunately Joe isn’t deterred by a constant barrage of punches. Rather the way to keep his mouth away from your brains is to constantly back up and run around him while throwing punches whenever possible. It’s a constant game of keepaway that can quickly become exhausting, making Zombie Joe a test of both speed and stamina.

There is one trick that may help. Stay just inside of Zombie Joe’s lunging range, and when he lunges quickly jump backwards while peppering him with punches. This is a little less exhausting than constantly running in circles, though it requires precise timing. Each time you back up far enough Zombie Joe will take a second to regroup before attacking once more. Giving an opportunity to get some hits in while not being eaten.

Be careful to keep an eye on your Guardian Boundary, and if you don’t have a lot of room to box then maybe skip this fighter. Boxing a zombie is not worth running into a wall.

Ichabod

Unlike the other two Extra Opponents Ichabod does not take the form of Ugly Joe. Instead he takes the form of The Lightning… except minus a head. Well, he sort of has a head, but not one that qualifies as human, or as one that can feel pain.

Yep, the challenge of Ichabod is boxing an opponent with no head. For a boxer this is… difficult to say the least. You will need to rely entirely on body shots in order to defeat Ichabod. Hitting his pumpkin head doesn’t hurt him at all, and just causes bits of it to fly off as he maniacally laughs.

Since you will be constantly attacking Ichabod below the neck, he will be blocking his body pretty often, though his coverage lacks on the far sides of his rib cage. Not to mention there is also a weak point on the left side of his body (your left, his right) just as there is on the practice dummy. One tip is to take useless swings at his head, which will still get him to move his guard a little more upwards, and then go for his body.

You’ll know when you’ve hurt Ichabod by the pained screams that he will let out, though he might still do his creepy laugh when he gets a good hit on you. A fight against Ichabod is a war of attrition. You want to get more hits on his body than he can on your head when you duck down to take shots. Since Ichabod is based on The Lightning, he hits pretty quickly and has decent footwork.

You will find that trying to duck in quickly and land a hit or two can be difficult without getting knocked in the head. You can try keeping one arm up to try and block the incoming blow while you land your own, though this can be very difficult, especially if Ichabod attacks with his opposite arm. It’s even better to wait for Ichabod to attack, block him, and then counter attack his belly. As long as you block his original attack consistently and counter quickly you can get a body shot or two without any repercussions.

Well that’s it for our breakdown on the Extra opponents in The Thrill Of the Fight by Sealost Interactive. It is a great experience on the Oculus Quest 2 (or if you prefer, Meta Quest 2) available for $9.99 on the Oculus Store. It is also available for $9.99 on Steam. Thanks for reading, and happy boxing!

Into The Radius is STALKER in VR

Do you enjoy deadly anomalies? Dangerous mutants? Exploring the unknowable and untamable? Maybe a certain Ukranian series of games set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone? Do you also like VR? Well then you must try Into The Radius.

Its the STALKER experience, but in VR. Well, it’s not exactly the same. The core elements are there, and the gameplay often feels very similar, and even more immersive. Just minus the other people. There are enemies, just as enemy STALKERs and mutants would oppose you. Yet in Into The Radius they are… stranger. Shadows of something strange, not human and yet shaped like humans. Some with tentacles made of dark particles, others with guns, and all overwhelmingly hostile.

Everything is stranger. The zone of STALKER has many intact buildings, vehicles, roads. All of the scenery there forms some coherent semblance of what once was, though it is covered in mutants and anomalies. The zone of Into the Radius is… different. Eerily still and constantly covered in immovable ash. Rocky black figures stand motionless and crumble to the touch. Like silhouettes in the wake of the raw energy of a nuclear bomb. Buildings can be recognized, and vehicles too, but just as often they float in the air, or their twisted remains stand in the air. As though some invisible giant froze while dismantling it. Gravity is not a hard and fast rule anymore.

Just as the buildings of Into the Radius are recognizable as something that once was familiar, though they are mostly husks, so too is the DNA of STALKER. The hostile black figures, some made of dark swirling matter, and some just like humans but completely devoid of color, fill the role of enemy STALKERs and mutants. The anomalies, and the artifacts which are inside them, are just as common and just as deadly. Though they work in different ways, some infest buildings and are pacified by light, some twist their ways between the trees, barely visible and waiting for an unwary traveler to walk between them. The elements of STALKER are all present, but stranger, different. More unbelievable and more unnatural. Overseeing it all, in the fabled center is not a powerplant, a thing of human construction, but a giant black orb which bends light as it bends the clouds around it. Something unknowable in its makeup, origin, or purpose.

The feeling of traversing the zone of Into the Radius is akin to that of one of STALKER’s underground laboratories. The places where no other STALKERS dare roam. Danger is almost guaranteed, but what form it comes in can be unexpected, and so the oppressive and dilapidated atmosphere leaves the player constantly on their guard.

All that Into The Radius lacks is the camaraderie of other STALKERS. Instead it doubles down on an oppressive and alien atmosphere. There is nothing but the automated systems of your home base and the alien unknown of the zone to keep you company. This is possibly the most alarming difference. Nowhere in the zone of Into the Radius has friendliness or the comfort of friendly NPCs, just degrees of danger.

There is still the excitement and dread of wading through a field of anomalies, detector beeping as you draw closer to an artifact. All the while you wonder if your next step will land you in a anomaly and your death. The tenseness of a firefight and the knowledge that the report of weapons might bring more horrors down on your head. The quiet melancholy of the ruins and monuments to long gone normalcy that you pick over for stashes of supplies. So many moments just like STALKER can be found in Into the Radius. So if you’re hankering for the release of STALKER 2, but want something to tide yourself over, then try Into the Radius. It’s pretty great.

Problems Zenith: The Last City Has Going Forward

It’s not easy to be a pioneer. Zenith: The Last City definitely is, and that means that they have to cross a lot of hurdles that are known and also unknown. It is likely a common occurrence both from a design and technical perspective that Zenith has problems or is forced to innovate in a way that nobody has before. Such is the purview of VR games that break into new territory. There’s great opportunity to bring new ideas to Virtual Reality, but also a lot of potential pitfalls. As far as Zenith is concerned… well here’s some places they may have some trouble.

Bugs

Look, every game is going to have some bugs. Every piece of software ever in existence is going to have bugs. The problem with games is that the bugs in them can lead to exploits. Any game ever with a sufficient number of them will definitely have exploitable bugs. Even in my first day of playing Zenith I noticed quite a few.

Zenith has a lot of bugs, some more minor, some more major. If you’ve read our previous article then you’ll know about the broken player skeleton that I had the first time I launched the game.

Also, when I misclicked the background of a guild invite, and somehow broke guild invitations sent to me. Both of these were fixed with a restart, but the bugs get worse. In the first proper levelling zone, the Galain Planes, which goes up to level 6, there are some underground mines that have a few quests associated with them. In those mines you can just climb up through the walls and on top of the ceiling if you know the right place to try. A very easy geometry glitch.

That’s not even all of the bugs that I ran into, but you can see how they can get worse from here. Remember AQ40 from World of Warcraft? There was a geometry bug there that allowed players to skip the whole raid and go straight to the final boss. If there are glitches in one zone or in one portion of the game there will be in others where they could affect player balance and gameplay. Infinite money glitches, item duplication, they all arise in games that have such simple problems.

Just look at what happened to Fallout 76. At launch it was buggy to the point that some considered it unplayable purely from a stability perspective. Textures which turned into dark voids, T-posed enemies, falling through the world, and character models contorting into insane positions. To others with a smaller mind for aesthetics they seemed pretty innocuous, but any game that has such obvious bugs always has such poor Quality Assurance in the more important backend aspects.

Item duplication glitches tanked Fallout 76’s economy shortly after it launched, and players found a secret way to access the developer’s room, which was basically a room with every item in the game. Players could just take items out of the room, and Bethesda had no idea how. This as well as the amount of bugs which broke immersion and made the game frustrating or impossible to play at points drove a large portion of the userbase away.

The same happened to New World which released earlier this year to a lot of hype. Item duplication glitches and mass reporting of enemy war leaders has resulted in a poisoned PvP scene and unusable player economy. New World also had another problem, players reached the maximum level very quickly, and soon found that there was very little to do but farm crafting levels and slightly better equipment. In response Amazon Games patched certain aspects of the game to require a lot more time and effort in order to achieve a max level and max geared character. These ended up making the endgame much grindier, and were not received well by players, resulting in more players leaving. Rather than making more content, Amazon Games tried to stretch what it had.

Lack of End Game Content

Leave it up to gamers to quickly master a new experience. Just a few days after Zenith’s release the first players started to hit level 40. Even in a game that requires some movement and possibly a good deal of standing, though a lot of grinding could supposedly have been done while sitting down, this is a bit of a shocker. It seems that there are no physical limitations to a gamer determined enough. I had hoped that possibly due to the more physical nature of Zenith as a VR title, this level of speedrunning to the top, which is seen in all multiplayer games in the age of the internet, would be a little slower.

The thing is, those who have now made it to the top have found that there is little to do. Zenith is still in active development despite it’s release, and is not really a completed game yet. Sure a player can get to the highest level, but there is no difficult end game content that most MMORPG players demand. Some even see levelling in MMORPGs to be just a stepping stone to that greater end game content. Acquiring the best equipment, defeating the hardest dungeons and bosses, and getting a lot of kills in PvP. Zenith doesn’t have any of that, and there’s really nothing for these new level 40s to do except for twiddle their thumbs and level each subclass to 40 as well.

The developers will no doubt take care of this in due time with content updates but… what if the community has moved on by then? Developing a game like Zenith is not easy and Ramen VR is a small indie studio. It will probably take them a long time to add significant end game content. What if another similar game has come out by then and splits the community? What if players simply get bored and no longer want to come back?

Right now more endgame content is one of the roadmap goals for the devs. Not to mention a new class, new crafting options, player housing, and “much much more.” These all sound like additions which will certainly help to retain an active playerbase, or at least cause some to come back for a short time to level a new class or check out a new crafting system.

These promises are all well and good but it remains to be seen if the developers at Ramen VR will be able to add features in a timely manner. The roadmap doesn’t even include specific timetables for when certain features are planned to be implemented, or in which order. All it states is that they are planned for 2022. We already know Ramen VR is a small company, and maybe they’ll hire more with the success of their game at launch, but right now Zenith is in an ocean of bugs. It will take some time to iron those out, and who knows how that will impact the timeline for new features.

Update: Short after this article came out Ramen VR released a patch with some new endgame content! While some elements of this patch seem to be focused more on adding more grind to the game (Godstones now need to be levelled after 40). This is a great step in the right direction.

So how long will it be until these new features come out? Weeks? Months? It would be understandable if it was a long time, but that doesn’t mean players are necessarily going to stick around. Maybe Zenith’s playerbase will survive for a time by surging upwards with every content update. It is, after all, one of only two existing VRMMORPGs, and in our opinion the greatest.

Despite these problems Zenith: The Last City is well worth the money on Steam for 29.99$ or on the Oculus Store for the same amount.