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UploadVR's Best of VR 2025 Awards – Game Of The Year, Hardware & Most Anticipated Of 2026
Welcome to the last entry of UploadVR's Best of VR Awards for 2025.
The year's almost over and we're once again celebrating this year's best releases across the VR and wider XR industry, highlighting some exceptional releases across software and hardware alike. Just like we always do, each category features one clear winner and varying numbers of honorable mentions. Excluding our specific early access categories, all of our winners are currently in full release.
Like last year, we've split the awards across multiple rounds. Our first round covered platform favorites for Quest, PC VR, PlayStation VR2, and Apple Vision Pro, joined by our favorite exploratory experience. It's here where we recognized Ghost Town, Roboquest VR, Arken Age, Gears & Goo, and The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up.
Round two is where we focused on achievements across mixed reality, hand tracking, and early access releases. Our winners across these categories were Jigsaw Night, Laser Dance, Forefront, Little Critters, and Figmin XR.
Which leaves us with some of our biggest picks still to come, the moment we've all been waiting for. Here are UploadVR's Best of VR Awards 2025.
Best Virtual Place 2025
A small number of software packages in virtual reality have grown so large and diverse that calling them games doesn't really apply anymore. They are places, vast, with interconnected systems that make spending significant time there a delight for many. VRChat and No Man's Sky come to mind as candidates for this category in future years, and both were considered to inaugurate this award category at UploadVR.
Walkabout Mini Golf is UploadVR's Best Virtual Place 2025.
In 2025, Walkabout grew from a game to a place as mini golf became secondary to the best place where people congregate in virtual reality.
The artists at Mighty Coconut entered the year realizing Elvis as a course to play on and ended it with the best physical illustration of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ever made. In between, Walkabout's creative director and mastermind Lucas Martell took golfers to the seat of the gods at Mount Olympus, face-to-face with dinos at Raptor Cliff's, sneaking into a Mother Goose-inspired theme park at Forgotten Fairyland, and up close with Neko Atsume kitties all over a tiny Tokyo. While Walkabout's courses always had secrets, like hidden balls and skeletons, now they've started adding playable activities like slingshots and chess. Designers continue rooting around the backstage areas as they add the foundations for future activities and new secrets to discover in places players have been hundreds of times.
The design team spent days together in December roughing out courses that will open starting in 2027. From release in 2020 for standalone VR headsets, we see other developers following the precedents set by Walkabout – guest mode for paid add-ons, private rooms by default, and support for a single controller.
Whether you're looking to introduce yourself to virtual reality or get lost in there for days, Walkabout Mini Golf is the right onboarding experience for most people and a great place to be.
Best VR Developer
We've seen some impressive work from VR developers this year. Mighty Coconut keeps releasing regular DLC courses for Walkabout Mini Golf, Flat2VR Studios continues to deliver impressive VR adaptations like Roboquest VR, while nDreams Elevation and Fireproof Games both showed strong VR-focused gameplay design across Reach and Ghost Town respectively.
This time, our Best VR Developer award goes to VitruviusVR for its work on Arken Age. We previously discussed what we loved about Arken Age when giving it our Best PlayStation VR2 Game of the Year award, praising its exemplary approach to VR-first gameplay design. However, it's a testament to the studio's strength that it did so while leveraging the strengths of each platform so effectively. For that reason, we're giving them this year's award.
Best New Hardware
This year saw Meta break its three-year streak of new VR headset releases, Apple upgrade its “spatial computer” with a new chip and strap, Samsung launch the first product running Google's Android XR, and Bigscreen refine its ultralight headset with improved and adjustable lenses.
Bigscreen and Apple deserve mentioning here, even though they aren't our winners.
Beyond 2's lenses fix a crucial flaw of the original to make it a viable optical experience for far more people, but the device still requires SteamVR Tracking base stations, an expensive technology that Valve itself is abandoning.
Meanwhile, the M5 Vision Pro's Dual Knit Band is a truly innovative approach to headset ergonomics, combining the benefits of a comfortable soft strap and counterbalance in one design, plus the ability to tighten both bands with a single dial. But other than this, it's a minimum-effort upgrade.
Our winner this year is Meta Neural Band included with Meta Ray-Ban Display. Surface electromyography (sEMG) is not a completely new input technology, but Meta Neural Band brings it to a sleek, lightweight, and flexible wristband with all-day battery life and IPX4 water resistance.
Meta Neural Band makes it practical and comfortable to control a smart glasses HUD without needing to constantly use voice commands, wear a giant ring, or wave your hands around. And for this, it wins our Best Hardware Award for 2025.
Best New Multiplayer Game
Social gameplay remains one of VR's most appealing strengths, and this year continued providing strong contenders. While Breachers would have been in contention if it wasn't in early access, plenty of multiplayer games either launched or finally reached full release.
For racing fans, VRacer Hoverbike entered full release and reached new platforms. Pixel Dungeon was an early highlight, Glassbreakers took us back to the world of Moss, and Titan Isles is a highly compelling co-op adventure. Then we have Deadly Delivery, Table Troopers, Elements Divided, GRIM, and Rogue Piñatas.
Ultimately, our winner for VR Multiplayer Game of the Year 2025 is Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked. Resolution Games brought back 2021's hit in style, and we considered it a “mostly natural crossover and a fitting evolution” on Demeo. If you can't commit to a real-life tabletop campaign, this is an excellent option that flatscreen players can also join in on.
UploadVRHenry StockdaleVR Game Of The Year 2025
And so, we now move onto one of our biggest categories. Our previous awards looked at games for individual platforms across Quest, PC VR, PlayStation VR2, and Apple Vision Pro. This is what we believe stands out as the absolute best of the best across all four.
2025's been another year when the releases seemingly never end, and that's been especially true these last few months. Hotel Infinity, Roboquest VR, Marvel’s Deadpool VR, Demeo x D&D, Ghost Town, Reach, Arken Age, Lumines Arise, there's a lot to choose from, but we can ultimately only crown one title.
Same as our best PlayStation VR2 game, our winner for VR Game of the Year 2025 is Arken Age. Ghost Town and Roboquest VR have their own individual strengths on Quest and PC VR, yet Arken Age graced each of its platforms with some of the best VR focused design we've seen in 2025.
“Arken Age delivers clever VR-first gameplay design for a great sci-fi adventure,” we said at the time, praising its vibrant presentation and rewarding combat. As mentioned before, our appreciation for VitruviusVR's action-adventure has only grown since launch, and it's a strong choice no matter your headset.
UploadVRHenry StockdaleMost Anticipated Game Of 2026
So then, what's next? 2025's brought a strong line-up across Quest, PC VR, and PS VR2, and we've seen plenty of promising VR and MR games on the way in 2026.
Some games are already in early access and are currently scheduled or likely to receive full releases next year. That includes Unseen Diplomacy 2, Into The Radius 2, Bootstrap Island, Laser Dance, Pocket Lands, and Forefront.
Several VR adaptations of existing series are on the way too, like Evangelion: Δ Cross Reflections, The Boys: Trigger Warning, Little Nightmares VR, and Orcs Must Die! By The Blade. Then we have Guardians Planetfall, Knights of Fiona, Automa, Aces of Thunder, and Remnant Protocol. Many potential contenders, but what's our top pick?
Our Most Anticipated Game of 2026 goes to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, an action-adventure that supports single-player and up to four-player co-op. We've already had a brief look at what's to come, and we can't wait to see how Cortopia Studios adapts the iconic series on Quest 3 and PC VR.
UploadVRIan Hamilton
