I’ve played a wide variety of VRChat escape rooms and had countless hours of entertainment along the way. I’ve been seriously impressed by the quality and variety on offer, as well as the dedication of the talented creators of these worlds. This article is going to highlight the best VRChat escape rooms I’ve found and tell you a bit about what to expect with each.
The VRChat escape rooms I’m going to cover are;
- Pop Escape!
- The Great Inventor Escape
- Macavity Manor
- The Devouring
- Crypt Of The Spirits
- Backend
- Pink’s Escape
- Paper Zoo
- The Snooze’s Scary Maze
Pop Escape!
I’ve been to quite a few real escape rooms, and Pop Escape! perfectly captures everything that’s fun about the experience. It is so well made, with interesting, challenging puzzles, a little humor, and loads of fun. You can play it with a group of up to four people, or by yourself, but I’d strongly recommend playing with friends, as having a few brains working on the puzzles is a big help and reduces the chance of you getting stuck.
Everything about this VRChat escape room screams quality, with beautiful graphics, excellent art design, immersive audio, and an experience that flows well through the 2-4 hours it will take most groups to complete it.
I’ll admit that I’m not terribly good at escape rooms, and I tend to need the help of others in my group a lot of the time. Pop Escape is no different, but I found the difficulty of the puzzles very much in line with what I have experienced in real escape rooms.
This is a PC-only VRChat escape room and can be played in both VR and desktop mode. It’s a more immersive experience in VR, and it’s easier to hold and move the many props that you need to complete the puzzles, but the desktop controls are perfectly adequate too.
If you only want to play one VRChat escape room, this is the one to choose. If it was a standalone PC game I’d be very pleased with the experience.
The Great Inventor Escape
From one awesome VRChat escape room to another, The Great Inventor Escape is a fantastically well-made world that takes you on a time-traveling journey to explore the life and work of Nikola Tesla. This is a beautifully made escape room, with terrific attention to detail, excellent audio and voice acting, and a narrative that kept me interested right until the end.
There is good variation in the puzzles you are presented with, and the difficulty was pitched just about right. I played this escape room with friends, and we found the puzzles genuinely challenging, without being overly frustrating. It did take us a little while to get the solution to the first puzzle, but after that, we got into a good rhythm of working together.
Once again, this escape room just feels far too good to be a map within VRChat, and Flowersrite, the creator of this VRChat escape room deserves a lot of credit. The Great Inventor Escape is PC only at present, which isn’t surprising as it has quite a large file size and the graphics are excellent.
Macavity Manor
Macavity Manor is one of my favorite VRChat escape rooms and it is a really well-made map. It’s set in an old mansion that you must explore, looking for props and clues that allow you to find keys to open a series of locked rooms, drawers, and boxes, to allow you to progress through this really enjoyable experience.
This VRChat mansion is beautifully made and must have taken the creator Naticus a huge amount of time to build. You’ll need to keep your eyes wide open when exploring this map as almost every prop and piece of scenery holds clues that will help you solve the next puzzle.
Make sure to spend plenty of time walking around this map taking note of all the features and props that you see, as you are often required to take something from one room to another to complete a puzzle.
You definitely need to be in an “escape room mindset” to progress through this map, but once you get the idea of what to do, many of the puzzles have similar solutions, so you’ll pick up the pace as you go. I played this PC-only VRChat escape room solo and it took me about two hours to complete it.
The Devouring
The Devouring is a top-class VRChat escape room and one of the highest quality VRChat worlds you are likely to visit. It is a story-driven experience for up to four people and will take you about 5-6 hours to complete on average. You’ll wish it was even longer, as the quality of this game is at the standard of many standalone PC games.
You start this VRChat world as you set off on a road trip with your friends, but somewhere along the road, you have an accident, and the next thing you know, you wake up in a creepy mansion, where you find a note warning you not to leave the room. This instantly ramps up the level of intrigue and starts a suspenseful experience that had my heart racing.
As you explore the house, you are tasked with solving tricky puzzles, with many interesting gameplay mechanics that keep the experience feeling fresh and unique. The audio, graphics, and attention to detail are terrific, and the creators, Lakuza, Cyanlaser, Fionna, and Legends, deserve a huge amount of credit.
The Devouring is a PC-only VRChat map and is suitable to play in VR or in desktop mode. If you have the choice, I’d definitely recommend playing in VR, as it is much more immersive and easier to complete in VR compared to desktop mode.
Crypt Of The Spirits
Crypt of the Spirits begins with you exploring a beautiful and peaceful island, with swaying green grass, sunshine, and the bright blue ocean. Soon you’ll notice a number of stones and large jewels scattered across the island, and it won’t take you long to realize that these are part of the first puzzle you must complete in this excellent VRChat escape room.
Once you complete this, you’ll unlock the key to the Crypts, where you delve deep into the underground tunnels of this mysterious VRChat map. You must negotiate your way through a number of tunnels and caverns, filled with tricky puzzles and treacherous traps.
I loved this VRChat map as it was really well designed, had a good variety of challenges, and the difficulty slowly increased as you progressed through the crypt. At first, I thought the difficulty level may be a little too low, but as I progressed, I started to feel more challenged, and with this, the satisfaction of getting past each puzzle increased.
Crypt of the Spirits is definitely worth a visit if you want some challenging puzzles and enjoy the challenge of escape room worlds. It’s available for PC and Quest and can be played in VR and in desktop modes.
Backend
Backend is a cross between a platformer and an escape room and uses some really innovative gameplay features to make this a really enjoyable VRChat world that is definitely worth a visit. Each level required a bit of thought and some trial and error to understand how it worked, and it was hugely satisfying to work out how to successfully navigate each section.
The creator keeps mixing things up as you play, introducing new gameplay mechanics to keep things feeling fresh. My only frustration with this game was that I kept unintentionally falling off the blocks at first, and I suspect this is due to the way VRChat is designed, which is clearly not optimized for this type of gameplay. Thankfully, once I understood the limitations, I adjusted my technique and my enjoyment was not impaired.
Backend has really simple graphics, but it has an appealing design and clear visuals that make it a joy to play. Backend is a PC-only VRChat escape room and it can be played in VR or in desktop mode.
Pink’s Escape
This is a fairly challenging VRChat escape room that tasks you with solving a series of puzzles in a room that changes as each puzzle is completed. There is a hard and easy mode, and I’d have to say that I found the easy mode to be quite difficult enough for me. The puzzles are solved by entering the correct sequence of numbers into a keypad on the wall, triggering the next puzzle.
Many of the puzzles in this VRChat escape room require you to think laterally, and previous experience with escape rooms will help considerably as you try to tune in to the type of puzzles that you are being presented with. Make sure to play with a normal-sized avatar, as using a character that is either too short or too tall can impact your ability to complete some of the puzzles.
This is a pretty creepy escape room, with a real sense of dread as you progress further through it, and a few jump scares really got my heart racing. Pink’s Escape is only available for PC VR headsets and can also be played in desktop mode. This is a well-made escape room and I really enjoyed playing through it. I’d advise opting for easy mode unless you’re with a group of experienced escape room players.
Paper Zoo
This story-driven VRChat escape room is really entertaining to play and has you assuming the role of a character in a weird world of 2D paper creations. Your journey is guided by an eccentric narrator, who guides you around a number of scenes, instructing you on how to proceed. This is a pretty comedic experience from start to finish, with good voice acting and a colorful art style.
It only took me about 15 minutes to complete this map and the puzzles weren’t excessively difficult, but it’s really different from many of the other escape rooms I have played in VRChat, providing a refreshingly unique experience.
I never knew what was going to happen next in this VRChat escape room, and I only wish that it was a longer experience. Thankfully, it’s compatible with PCVR and standalone VR headsets such as the Quest 2, but you can also play it in desktop mode.
The Snooze’s Scary Maze
This VRChat map is partly an escape room and partly a horror experience, but it’s a lot of fun if you like plenty of suspense, the challenge of finding your way around a maze, and sudden scares. The idea of this map is to enter a maze and navigate your way around it while avoiding a number of monsters that either chase you, or jump out suddenly into your path.
You go back to the start if you’re caught, so it helps to pay attention to where the dangers lie, particularly if you’ve been caught a few times. There is an option to play with hints, which gives you more clues about how to avoid danger and navigate your way around the maze.
You’ll need to use your equipped flashlight to help you see into the gloom of the maze, and this really adds to the tense atmosphere as you anticipate the next terror that awaits you. Everything is designed to increase the sense of dread, from the dark lighting, driving rain, and gloomy skies.
Snooze’s Scary Maze is another PC-only VRChat escape room, so if you want to use a standalone headset such as the Quest 2, you’ll need to connect it to a VR-capable PC by cable or airlink. You can also play in desktop mode, although it is a much more immersive and intense experience playing in VR.
Last Word
There are plenty more excellent VRChat escape rooms to explore, and more are being created all the time, so I’d encourage you to speak to other players to see what worlds they would recommend. I can thoroughly recommend all of the escape rooms on this list, many of which are of an exceptionally high standard and provide hours of entertainment.