There’s something profoundly unsettling about looking down at your own hands in virtual reality and seeing them as someone else’s—especially when those hands belong to a character like Vecna, the mind-flaying villain of Stranger Things. This is the peculiar reality we’re stepping into as two major VR experiences based on the hit Netflix series offer players radically different perspectives on the same fictional universe. One lets you wield Eleven’s telekinetic powers as a hero fighting demogorgons, while the other places you squarely in the villain’s shoes, invading memories and manipulating familiar characters. The choice isn’t just about gameplay preference—it reveals something deeper about how we want to engage with the stories we love.
The Sandbox VR experience, Stranger Things: Catalyst, represents the theme park approach to immersion. You strap on motion trackers, don a headset, and physically move through a space with friends, collectively battling creatures from the Upside Down. It’s designed for accessibility and social fun—the kind of experience you might book for a birthday party or corporate team-building event. Yet there’s an inherent limitation in this approach: the technology prioritizes broad appeal over nuanced interaction. Players report that despite the full-body tracking, the experience feels somewhat simplistic, with hands that remain inert and unresponsive to individual finger movements. It’s immersion at the scale of a group activity rather than personal transformation.
Meanwhile, the standalone Stranger Things VR game takes the opposite approach, diving deep into psychological horror by casting players as Vecna himself. This isn’t just another shooter with a Stranger Things skin—it’s a deliberate inversion of the series’ moral framework. Players don’t just fight monsters; they become the monster, invading the dreams of beloved characters and manipulating their memories. The game explores Henry Creel’s transformation into Vecna, filling in narrative gaps from the television series while forcing players to confront uncomfortable questions about agency and villainy. What does it mean to willingly inhabit the perspective of a character whose entire purpose is psychological violation?
The divergent reception of these two experiences speaks volumes about our current moment in entertainment. The Sandbox VR attraction, despite its technical limitations, offers the comfort of familiar heroics—we get to be Eleven, fighting the good fight alongside friends. The standalone game, with its mixed reviews, challenges players to sit with discomfort, to explore the darkness that makes the series’ heroes necessary. Both approaches have value, but they serve fundamentally different psychological needs. One lets us escape into power fantasy; the other forces us to examine why we need heroes in the first place.
As we stand at the precipice of what might be the final season of Stranger Things, these VR experiences represent more than just marketing tie-ins. They’re testing grounds for how we’ll consume stories in the future—not as passive viewers but as active participants who can choose our perspective, our morality, and our level of engagement. The technology may still be finding its footing, with tracking limitations and mixed reviews, but the direction is clear: immersion is no longer about watching stories unfold, but about deciding which role we want to play in them. Whether we choose to be hero or villain says as much about us as it does about the stories we’re helping to shape.
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