I Expect You To Die [VR]

My first session with I Expect You To Die went like this: I started a car, got lasered in the face, restarted, got gassed, restarted again, and then finally ducked a laser beam with my actual body because the answer was never a button press. It was just physics. That moment crystallizes exactly what Schell Games built here - a seated VR escape room series that makes you feel clever through failure rather than despite it. The setup is Bond-flavored but knowingly goofy. You play as an unnamed psychic secret agent working for a handler with a smooth British accent, tasked with foiling the Zoraxis Corporation and its villain, Dr. Zor, across a handful of hand-crafted scenarios. The opening credits are a full James Bond title sequence parody rendered in VR, and it sets the tone perfectly: this game has a sense of humor about the genre without becoming a comedy. Each mission drops you into a single location - a car inside a cargo plane, an underwater escape pod, a boardroom rigged with trapdoors - and gives you no instructions beyond the objective. From there you grab objects, pull levers, mix chemicals, and occasionally just physically duck. Because there is no room-scale walking or teleportation, the design stays tight and intentional. The telekinesis mechanic (your agent is also psychic, naturally) lets you yank objects from across the room, float them mid-air, and keep multiple items managed at once - a practical solution that also doubles as an in-universe bit of world-building. The core loop is die-and-retry, and the game leans into that fully. There are no checkpoints inside missions, which means a late-stage mistake sends you back to the start. For most levels this is fine because once you know the solution the run time collapses fast - some missions clock under four minutes once mastered. The frustration only bites when a puzzle chains several steps and one fumbled grab restarts the whole sequence. The flip side is that failure almost always teaches you something: a new hazard gets revealed, or you notice an object you had ignored. Beyond finishing the missions, each level contains optional souvenir objectives that unlock after completion, hinting at things like lighting a cigar with a burning log or putting a hat on a bear. These collectibles decorate your hub office and push replayability past the main run. A developer commentary mode unlocks after the credits, offering real insight into how the levels were designed. The elephant in the room is length. The game's total playtime for a first run sits around two to four hours depending on how quickly puzzles click. That is short by any standard, and the number of missions is limited. If you need sixty hours of content per dollar spent, look elsewhere. But the quality-per-minute ratio is genuinely high. Every scenario is polished, the voice acting is sharp and funny, and the tactile feel of reaching out and grabbing a wrench in VR never loses its novelty. For VR newcomers especially, the seated format eliminates motion sickness concerns while still delivering full physical immersion. It supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and related PC headsets, and was designed from the ground up for motion controllers, though flat-screen controller play is technically available. Who is this for: anyone with a VR headset who wants a tight, clever puzzle experience with strong production values and a playful spy aesthetic. If escape rooms are your thing, this is one of the best VR implementations of that format. If you want sprawling open worlds or action, the concept will feel too small-scale. Two direct sequels followed - I Expect You To Die 2 and 3 - so finishing the original also opens a full trilogy worth of content if the format grabs you.

Alex · Scout Team

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