Blumhouse Launched a VR Experience in Meta Horizon Worlds Today; Here’s What It’s Like

Earlier today (May 22nd), Blumhouse launched the “Blumhouse Horrorverse,” an interactive VR experience for users of the Meta Quest VR headsets. I have a headset, so I decided to try it out. This was my experience.

Blumhouse Horrorverse is one of the many worlds in Meta’s social gaming platform Horizon Worlds. As I walked up to the entrance, I saw that around 250 people were already in the event which is called the “Blumhouse Horrorverse Launch Event.” Once you step into the world you’re grouped with a maximum of only eight other people, so you’re not overwhelmed with people running around everywhere. I’m not much of a fan of being stuck with lots of random people online, so capping the room limit to only a few is definitely a positive for me.

The Hub World (aka Target Practice)

Once you arrive, you’ll see the iconic Blumhouse house directly in front of you. That’s where the main attraction is, but we’ll get to that in a little while. First, there are things to explore in the hub.

There are different areas and activities themed for various movies. For Wolf Man, you can climb on top of the greenhouse from the movie and throw axes at cutouts of one of the werewolves from the movie. At The Black Phone area you throw axes to pop balloons coming out of the Grabber’s van. And The Purge allows you to, you guessed it, throw axes at cutouts of Purge killers. So, three target practice areas. The Purge area is the most enjoyable, mostly because there is a nail gun available there in addition to the axe.

To be fair, I probably could have tried grabbing a different weapon from the armory and taking it over to the games to see if it would let me use them. The armory has five weapons to play around with: a nail gun and insecticide sprayer from M3GAN, an axe from The Black Phone, a bear trap from Wolf Man, and an exploding cupcake from Happy Death Day. But frankly, after playing the three target games for just a few minutes, I was done with them. They’re mildly amusing, but only for a very short time.

The only other area of note in the hub is an outdoor theater where you can watch videos, consisting of Blumhouse trailers and explanations for the main game in the Horrorverse. Which brings us to the main event.

Getting Killed By Blumhouse Villains

The big attraction in Blumhouse Horrorverse is an asymmetrical multiplayer game called “Survival Lockdown.” One person plays as a killer, and everyone else (up to seven) play as victims. The game is set inside a large structure that contains recreations of many Blumhouse movies. I ran through the observation room from M3GAN, the basement from The Black Phone, and a bedroom with objects from Happy Death Day. There were probably other things I ran past but didn’t notice, because the game can be rather frantic.

The goal of the victims is to collect key cards spread throughout the stage and bring them back to a control room. Collect all the cards and your team escapes. The goal of the villain is to prevent the victims from getting all the cards either by killing the victims, or by obstructing them long enough so that the four-minute time limit expires. I played three games, all as a victim, and I lost every time. But I’m also terrible at these types of games.

Players can grab weapons and activate traps, but not much I did seemed to slow down the killers. I threw an axe directly at the Babyface Killer from Happy Death Day, but it just bounced off their head as they proceeded to run straight at me and murder me. Again though, I was probably doing something wrong. I had better luck when M3GAN was coming after me, but I also don’t think the player playing M3GAN was trying very hard to eliminate anyone.

Overall, Blumhouse Horrorverse is fun enough for what it is. But after spending about thirty minutes in it, I’ve had my fill. It’s fun seeing some of the locations from the movies, and seeing M3GAN scoot around with an axe in VR is entertaining, but the game itself feels like a watered down version of much better games of its genre. The Horrorverse is probably best used as a hangout for friends rather than as a place to play games with random people.