Stranger Things VR game casts you as the villainous Vecna
Demogorgon also included.
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Tender Claws, the studio responsible for sinister AI comedy Virtual Virtual Reality (which we dubbed one of thebest VR games), has announced that it’s working on a Stranger Things tie-in horror game. Based on the brief teaser trailer, Stranger Things VR will be about exploring the Upside Down, encountering the monstrous denizens of that dimension, and doing psychic battle with the series' protagonists, all from the perspective of season 4’s big bad, Vecna.
Like all the monsters of Stranger Things, including the Demogorgon we see a glimpse of in the trailer, Vecna is named after a classic enemy from Dungeons & Dragons. In this case, the archetypal lich whose eye and hand became powerful artifacts after his death. (His head too, if you believecertain tales.)
It’s been a good year for the Arch-Lich, who also figured in the first season of Critical Role cartoon The Legend of Vox machina, where he was coyly referred to as The Whispered One.
According to theTender Claws website, in Stranger Things VR players will “Become an explorer of unknown realities as you form the hive mind and tame the void. Invade minds and conjure nightmares in your quest to enact revenge on Eleven and Hawkins.” Sure sounds like what Vecna was getting up to behind the scenes during season 4. It’ll be interesting to see if it can make being Vecna seem scary, though the Upside Down certainly looks as grotesque as ever.
Tender Claws describe Stranger Things VR as a “psychological horror/action game” and say it’ll be “coming to major VR platforms in Winter 2023.”
An earlier tie-in called Stranger Things 3: The Game wasdelisted from Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Storelast year, and aTelltale Stranger Things gamewas unfortunately canceled when the studio went under.
Stranger Things has previously crossed over with plenty of existing videogames too, appearing inDead By Daylight,Fortnite,Far Cry 6, and evenMinecraft.
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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