Home Plate Baseball
Baseball is a sport that seems like it was made for VR – if only Abner Doubleday could see where technology could go. That being said, many baseball games available in VR offer very simple, stripped down experiences. Home Plate Baseball takes a different approach, including batting and catching modes as well an umpire mode. We’ve never thought about calling balls and strikes in VR, but now we want to!
Fitness Potential
As a baseball game, you’ll be swinging your tracked motion controllers in Home Plate Baseball. If you want to have a marathon session, you can play the game’s home run derby mode. For more experience players in need of a challenge, there is also a hard mode that greatly increased the pitching speed. With any luck, you should see improvements to your reaction time when you pick up a real baseball bat.
Developer/Publisher: Beep2Bleep
Release Date: April 24, 2019
Compatible With: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality
Price: $3.94 to $4.99
Link: Home Plate Baseball
OrbusVR: Reborn
You got VR in my MMO! You can MMO in my VR! OrbusVR: Reborn is the new and improved expansion for OrbusVR, a full-scale online game with an open world, dungeons, and crafting. Developer Orbus Online promises more than 100 hours of content, and there are five different classes to choose from. There is even open-world player-versus-player combat, and dungeon scaling so players of all levels can enjoy them together.
Fitness Potential
OrbusVR is a massive game with many activities, including hunting, swordplay, and archery. All of these make use of the tracked motion controllers, and you often have to raise them above your head. When mining objects, you’ll swing your arms repeatedly into the ground, and you will need to crouch down to pick things off the ground. As a room-scale experience, you can even do fancy footwork to avoid obstacles.
Developer/Publisher: Orbus Online, LLC
Release Date: April 23, 2019
Compatible With: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive
Price: $39.99
Link: OrbusVR: Reborn
Fantasy Smith VR
VR games don’t have to be super-intense, even if you want to use them for fitness! In Fantasy Smith VR, you are a blacksmithing apprentice responsible for building creative fantasy weapons. The world is fully interactive, and designed to be played as you see fit. You can mix gems and other parts of weapons together to create your masterpiece as you interact with the game’s cute characters.
Fitness Potential
As a blacksmithing game at its core, Fantasy Smith VR makes use of the tracked motion controllers as you hammer your metal into shape. Once you have your weapon, you’re free to swing it around, and other objects can be swung or manipulated quickly, such as bellows or bells. If you want, you can even annoy other characters by flinging coins at them. You’re nice, though, so you certainly won’t do that.
Developer/Publisher: Gunben3
Release Date: April 23, 2019
Compatible With: HTC Vive
Price: $11.69 to $12.99
Link: Fantasy Smith VR
MonteCube Dodge
Wave-based survival games have found a perfect home in VR, but none of them are quite like MonteCube Dodge. You must protect a cube in a small area as enemies attack from outside, smashing them with a bat. You’ll also need to physically move and dodge incoming obstacles, and you must also ensure the cube doesn’t hit the floor or ceiling.
Fitness Potential
MonteCube Dodge is an extremely frantic game, and you’ll be turning and batting at enemies from all sides. During later stages, you’ll have to dodge incoming projectiles, and you’ll have to keep scanning your environment for stealthy enemies as well. The challenges will only get more difficult, requiring even more dexterity and quicker reflexes in order to keep the cube safe.
Developer/Publisher: MonteCube
Release Date: April 22, 2019
Compatible With: Oculus Rift
Price: $2.99
Link: MonteCube Dodge
Icarus – Prima Regula
Want to know what it’s like to speed through a spaceship in a jetpack without the risk of violent death? That experience can be yours in Icarus – Prima Regula, a spin on the infinite runner genre that sends you speeding through obstacle-filled lanes. Only your wits and reflexes can keep you alive, because crashing will end the game, but you have upgrades to help you out.
Fitness Potential
There is no time for relaxation in Icarus – Prima Regula. You’ll hold your controllers like they’re two control sticks on a vehicle, leaning quickly from side to side in order to avoid crashing. With upgrades further increasing your velocity, it will fully put your skills and speed to the test as you move further into the procedurally-generated levels.
Developer/Publisher: MCGames Studio
Release Date: April 22, 2019
Compatible With: HTC Vive
Price: $4.99
Link: Icarus – Prima Regula
