Dark Trip shows promise, but its abbreviated length and Early Access status make it difficult to fully recommend at this moment
Dark Trip is one of the more unique and weird VR escape room experiences I've encountered, though its Early Access state and brief runtime leave much to be desired. The game places you in the role of an investigator searching for a missing woman in a mysterious laboratory with a dark history connected to Nazi experiments.
The core gameplay loop revolves around solving puzzles in various rooms while uncovering a disturbing past. What sets Dark Trip apart is its unusual "altered state" mechanic - your character can voluntarily enter hallucinatory states that transform the environment and maybe the puzzle mechanics. Now, I say maybe, I don't really know if the puzzles change when you are actually tripping balls. I always took the pill on each of the rooms that I encountered, so I don't know if I hadn't done that. Would the puzzles have been different or would I have not been able to solve them at all if I wasn't tripping?
The visual presentation walks a fine line between surreal horror and excessive sex-cultish imagery. Then when you take the acid, these simple environments morph and twist in unsettling ways like tentacles appear from the walls, eyeballs spawn on walls and track you as you move around in VR, sex-dolls will phase in and out of existence, creepy posters and so on. It's a really cool effect and I just want more of it, like dialed up to 11.
The puzzles themselves are generally well-designed for the escape room genre. Most challenges involve collecting items and slotting them into things, manipulating machinery, and decoding clues - standard fare elevated by the reality-shifting mechanics. The difficulty curve is fairly gentle, with most solutions being intuitive once you grasp the basic concept. The exception is a notably frustrating late-game puzzle involving a radio that feels more like a test of patience than intelligence.
The current Early Access version can be completed in less than an hour, and while the developers promise additional content and story continuation in the full release, the current package feels more like a proof of concept than a complete experience. The game's atmosphere is its strongest asset. Even when puzzle solutions are straightforward, the oppressive environment and constant sense of unreality create genuine tension. The merging of historical horror elements with psychological manipulation makes for an uniquely unsettling experience that leverages VR's immersive capabilities effectively.
The foundations are here for something special - the reality-bending mechanics work well in VR, the puzzle design is competent if not revolutionary, and the atmospheric spooky elements are effectively implemented. However, the current version feels more like a prologue than a complete game. Thanks for reading!
The game was previewed on a Quest 3 via a promo copy provided by the publisher. Dark Trip is available on Meta Quest.
