Stranger Things VR lets you walk in Vecna's fleshy mutant shoes
The upcoming VR game casts you as the Season 4 villain
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Stranger Things up close
🥽 Stranger Things VR is on the way
📺 Netflix announced the upcoming game in a teaser trailer
👻 It’s billed as a “psychological horror” adventure in which you play as Vecna
🤔 It’s not yet clear which VR platforms it will release on
Netflix has announced a Stranger Things VR game, scheduled to release in winter 2023.
Described as a “psychological horror/action” game, Stranger Things VR will put you in the mutated fleshy feet of Season 4 antagonist Vecna.
According to the game’s description, you’ll “become an explorer of unknown realities as you form the hive mind and tame the void”. Expect to “invade minds and conjure nightmares in your quest to enact revenge on Eleven and Hawkins”.
The game was revealed alongside a short teaser trailer that gives us a glimpse of its illustrated art style and world. It looks like you’ll mainly be wandering around the Upside Down using weird psychokinetic abilities in combat and puzzles. Eleven pops up in one shot and what looks like the Demogorgon appears in another.
Watch the trailer below:
Weirdly, developer Tender Claws didn’t announce which VR platforms the game will release on. The studio has previously created games for SteamVR and Meta Quest 2, so it’s likely to hit those, but we’ll have to wait and see if it joins the many PSVR 2 games that are on the way.
With the Meta Quest 3 likely to release next year, the PSVR 2 release date set for early 2023, and Apple reportedly tinkering away with its mixed reality gear, we could end up playing Stranger Things VR on a headset that hasn’t even hit shelves yet.
The announcement of this tie-in is just the latest example of Netflix moving further into gaming. It recently acquired dev studio Spry Fox to “add to the growing variety of Netflix’s games catalog”, according to its VP of games studios Amir Rahimi. But it looks to be struggling to actually grow that division – less than 1% of subscribers have tried the subscription service’s games, which come free with every membership.
Netflix has a long way to go if it wants to make a splash in the already dense gaming market.