Vanishing Realms [VR}

Vanishing Realms is a first-person action RPG built exclusively for room-scale VR, and it wears its D&D-meets-Zelda heart proudly on its sleeve. You play an unnamed knight working through hand-crafted chapters of undead-infested dungeons, moonlit forests, and ancient tombs. The narrative is deliberately thin - there are no dialogue trees, no branching story choices, no stat spreadsheets to sweat over. What it does instead is make your physical body the character sheet. Every sword swing, every shield block, every potion you physically pull from your inventory waist socket and actually drink - all of it is routed through your real-world arms. As an RPG purist I will note: if you come in expecting BG3-depth writing, you will leave disappointed. The worldbuilding is atmospheric but light, and choices are basically nonexistent. This is a combat-and-exploration game wearing an RPG coat. The weapons are the system. You start with a sword and shield, eventually unlock a bow, and later gain access to a wand for magical attacks. The inventory management deserves specific praise: rather than floating 2D menus, items sit in physical sockets around your waist, and you grab what you want by literally reaching for it. Swapping mid-combat - shield out, wand in, back to sword when a skeleton gets close - creates a satisfying tactical rhythm that no button-mapped flatscreen game can replicate. Combat requires reading enemy animations, timing parries, and hunting for gaps in their armor. It is genuinely tiring in a good way after a tough encounter. The bow feels somewhat looser than dedicated archery VR titles, and hit detection on sword strikes can occasionally misfire when you are certain the blade connected - minor frustrations but real ones. Length is the elephant in the room. The base game's two chapters clock in at roughly 2-3 hours of focused play. The Sundered Rift expansion (sold separately) adds a third chapter that reviewers consistently describe as larger and more open than the entire original game, bringing total playtime with both to 6-plus hours across varied zones with close to a dozen new enemy types and additional weapons. The expansion is the stronger argument for purchase if you want to actually stretch your legs in this world. Community players have noted there is no meaningful replay hook once you have cleared everything - this is a linear, curated adventure, not a roguelite. The developer, Kelly Bailey, is a former Valve Half-Life franchise veteran who built the game largely solo, and the craft shows in ways a bigger studio might have ironed away: the puzzles feel personal, the enemy encounter design has real intentionality, and the dungeon atmosphere holds up in headset even years after release. The cartoonish-but-clean art style sidesteps photorealism sensibly, given the hardware demands of VR. Room-scale of at least 2m by 1.5m is required, and movement defaults to teleportation with an optional smooth locomotion toggle for those who can handle it. If you are a VR newcomer, the teleport default is the right call. For RPG fans specifically: your character growth here is entirely physical skill, not a leveling system. You do not unlock new passive trees or spec into builds. That is a genuine design limitation worth flagging for anyone who farms build variety past hour 40. But within its scope, Vanishing Realms is one of the most carefully considered VR action-RPGs available on SteamVR, sitting at 90% positive across over 2,000 Steam reviews. It does what it sets out to do with conviction.

Monika · Scout Team

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