Pine Studios, the team behind the Escape Simulator franchise on PC, announced its bringing SteamVR headset support to the studio’s hit title next month.

Update (March 18th, 2024): While we thought Escape Simulator was set to be a standalone title, Pine Studios however announced it’s bringing VR support as free DLC to the base game on Steam, coming April 2nd. Starting April 14th, the game will be re-priced from $15 to $20.

“We believe this approach is not only more fair to our players but also addresses technical challenges, making maintenance more manageable for our small team,” the studio says in a news update. “Experience your favorite puzzles and adventures in a completely immersive VR environment, at no extra cost. This major update brings a new depth to the gameplay, making your escapes more thrilling than ever.”

The studio hasn’t made any mention of native Quest support, however it has released a new trailer for the VR update. The original article follows below.

Original Article (June 8th, 2023): Called Escape Simulator VR, the game is slated to bring both solo and online co-op, the latter of which supports up to eight players. Pine Studios says however two to three players is the best number for its swath of escape rooms, with is said to include 25 original rooms made in collaboration with real-world escape room designers.

Here’s how Pine Studios describes it:

Following the unprecedented success of the original version Escape Simulator VR was rebuilt from the ground up to be a comfortable and highly immersive VR experience. Pick up and examine everything, break objects, solve locks, and decipher puzzles to escape! After finishing the main game, watch for free content updates and explore 3000+ rooms built by the community.

The game is said to include all standard locomotion types such as teleport, smooth move, controller-based movement, and being able to be played in the full room-scale setting. There is also snap-turning, seated, and stationary mode.

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Since it’s a VR version of the studio’s original Escape Simulator (2021), the studio is also promising cross-platform co-op. Escape Simulator VR is coming to SteamVR headsets and Quest 2/3 “soon” the studio says. You can wishlist it now on Steam here.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Christian Schildwaechter

    They had a post titled “[VR] Yes, we are working on a VR version of the game! [VR]” pinned on the Steam discussion board for about a year now to stop the apparant deluge of people asking for a VR port. Escape Simulator is one of a number of highly rated flat Steam games that seem like a natual fit for VR and use a style that many associate with Quest games, so a lot of people are astonished when they find out that these aren’t VR games to begin with.

    Other examples are “Kill it with fire”, the VR version of which was recently released on Steam and Quest, or “SuchART: Genius Artist Simulator”, who now have moved the “Will there be VR? A VR version is currently under development (although still in pretty early stage).” pretty much to the top of the FAQ. I’m sure there are many flat games that would work great in VR, often even a lot better than the regular version, only the developers never seriously considered it, either because they themselves never got into VR, or because they assumed that VR sales would be too low.

    I really hope it pays off for the developers, so it will encourage others to follow. The original “Kill it with fire” got 2.4K+ 95% overwhemingly positive ratings in three years on Steam, the VR version only about 1% of that at 92% positive so far. It sold significantly better for Quest, which is not unusual, esp. for games that feature a lowpoly style that wouldn’t exactly challenge even an entry level PCVR system. On the Quest store it collected about 10% as many ratings as the flat Steam version at 4.6/92% within two month. So hopefully with more time and sales, these ports will turn out to not only be great games, but also a financial success.

  • Nice!

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Cool, I really like escaperoom games in VR, on flatsscreen I can’t be bothered. And it’s really cool it will be a free DLC, IMHO they could also have asked a little for it.