Rogue Piñatas: VRmageddon is a colorful VR co-op action roguelite coming to Quest and Steam in early 2025. Read on for our full preview.
Vampire Survivors has left an undeniable impact on gaming, and that certainly applies to VR too. Alongside recent games like Survivors of Xcalibur, Rogue Piñatas: VRmageddon wants to make similar strides with the intent of letting you feel like a badass against 100 or more enemies at once, swapping garlic and bibles for makeshift weapons in a family-friendly package.
I recently went hands-on with a preview build on Quest 3, playing some solo rounds alongside a 3-person multiplayer session with the developers, Nerd Ninjas. The comical premise starts off on a ridiculously silly note, as the now sentient Piñatas have grown tired of being battered with sticks by humanity. An uprising soon follows as local neighborhoods fall, and our goal is to simply swipe through them.
Between a small child, the towering Dad and an ex-Marine granny, six characters are available with different stats for health, damage and more. Not all of the weapons, stages, and characters are available immediately, though my build having everything unlocked means I can’t directly judge the long-term progression system just yet.
What follows is basically sweeping through zombie hordes; only this time, candy pours out instead of blood and guts. Collecting these sweet treats will gradually level you up during missions to unlock some helpful perks, like gadgets that cause attacking enemies to suffer counter damage or new weapons with dual wielding available.
There’s a creative weapon range a younger audience will enjoy. The Dad using a weaponized pizza paddle that’s been turned into an axe gave me a laugh, while seeing six baseball bats taped to another baseball bat is frankly smart engineering. That’s assisted by decent enemy variety with different weaknesses, like how shielded enemies require getting up close since they’re resistant to ranged attacks.
My session involved exploring two large maps with goals that were signposted well by a radar on your HUD. In one map, we didn’t get much further than simply fending off these villains. Another map involved activating generators by standing within a radius surrounding it. It’s pleasing to see them encourage exploration with events or hidden secrets, like loot with increased rewards, and each level ends with a boss fight.
My biggest criticism so far is that Rogue Piñatas would benefit from greater physicality that really uses VR’s capabilities beyond aiming weapons. There’s a lot of flatscreen-derivative design which, while certainly easier for younger players or VR newcomers to understand, leaves something to be desired. Standing around an area and fending off foes isn’t the most exciting thing, though I need to try more stages before I can fully judge the objectives.
Even if it’s simple actions like having pushing a power-on button on those generators to activate the countdown, this would go far in letting you feel more involved in the action over just wandering from area to area. There’s also no on-body inventory system, either. You need to push A to switch between weapons, which is a little disappointing.
At launch, the game will feature 20 weapons, 18 gadgets, six stages, and 27 different enemies. Mixed reality support isn’t included and though Nerd Ninjas isn’t opposed to such an idea, I’m told the team is prioritizing development resources elsewhere.
Ultimately, I need more time with Rogue Piñatas: VRmageddon before making any further judgements, but smashing through piñatas in co-op is entertainingly silly. I certainly want more VR interactivity, what’s here is often flatscreen-derivative, but it’s a humorous, family-friendly twist on the tired idea of killing zombie hordes. So far, I think younger audiences will have fun.
Rogue Piñatas: VRmageddon reaches the Meta Quest platform and Steam in Q1 2025 with support for cross-platform multiplayer. A closed beta begins this week and you can register here.
This article was originally published on uploadvr