Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes has one of the best premises ever for a cooperative virtual reality game. One player wears a headset and can manipulate a Hollywood-style bomb — the kind with a timer and a bunch of wires. Another has no headset and can’t see the bomb, but can read a complicated instruction manual printed from the game’s website. To forestall certain death, the two will have to talk their way through each procedurally generated explosive device.
The world’s best virtual reality bomb defusing game is now on Gear VR
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
We got to play Keep Talking at the 2015 Game Developers Conference, and for now, that’s where games like this usually stay: at conferences and meetups, or in the catalog of games for Oculus’ finicky development kit. The major headsets don’t even have release dates yet, and while Google Cardboard works well for some experiences, complex games usually don’t fit the bill. But the Samsung Gear VR is already on sale, and even if it’s still strangely expensive at $200, it’s close to a real consumer product. Now, if you’re one of the early adopters, you can buy Keep Talking for $9.99 on the Gear VR’s store.
Why does this matter to everyone else? First, it’s a preview of how Keep Talking will play on the Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus, where it’s also slated to launch. Second, it’s part of a relatively small, early group of VR games that will test the waters for everything that’s coming later. Third, if most of the virtual reality projects you’ve seen are just traditional video games with a better screen, it’s an example of how fun, interesting, and even social the medium can be.
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