There’s something deeply unsettling about being handed the keys to the Upside Down and told to make yourself at home. For years, we’ve watched the heroes of Hawkins battle against the darkness, cheering as Eleven raised her hand to repel monsters and close dimensional rifts. Now, in a bold narrative pivot, two new VR experiences are inviting us to step into the shoes of the very forces we’ve been taught to fear. Sandbox VR lets you wield Eleven’s telekinetic powers to escape the Rainbow Room, while Tender Claws’ standalone game hands you Vecna’s consciousness and says, ‘Go ahead, haunt some minds.’ This isn’t just gaming—it’s an invitation to explore the psychology of power from both sides of the moral divide.
What fascinates me most about these experiences is how they force us to confront our relationship with villainy. Playing as Vecna isn’t just about crushing things with telekinesis or opening portals—it’s about understanding the architecture of trauma. The game positions you as Henry Creel during his transformation, letting you explore his memories of Hawkins Lab and witness the events that twisted him into the monster we know. This isn’t redemption arc territory; it’s something more complex. By inhabiting Vecna’s perspective, we’re asked to consider how pain can calcify into cruelty, how isolation can curdle into a desire for dominion over others.
Meanwhile, the Sandbox VR experience offers the more traditional heroic fantasy—wielding Eleven’s powers to protect your friends and escape confinement. Yet even here, there’s an interesting tension. You’re not just using telekinesis as a weapon; you’re learning to control it as an extension of yourself, much like Eleven had to. Both experiences, despite their opposing moral alignments, share a common theme: power requires understanding, and understanding demands empathy. Whether you’re fighting to preserve memories or corrupting them, you’re engaging with the emotional landscapes that define these characters.
The timing of these releases feels particularly meaningful as we await the final season of Stranger Things. They’re not just tie-in products; they’re narrative experiments that expand our understanding of the show’s central conflicts. By letting us experience both the creation and application of psychic abilities, these VR experiences become philosophical playgrounds. What does it feel like to hold someone’s mind in your hands? How does power change when it’s no longer abstract but something you physically perform with your own body? These questions linger long after the headset comes off.
What strikes me as most revolutionary about these VR interpretations is how they transform passive viewership into active participation. We’re no longer just watching characters make moral choices—we’re making them ourselves, feeling the weight of those decisions in our muscles and nerves. The medium becomes the message: virtual reality, with its capacity for embodied experience, makes the abstract tangible. When you physically reach out to push away a monster or mentally invade someone’s memories, you’re not just playing a game—you’re exploring the very nature of agency, responsibility, and what happens when the lines between hero and villain blur beyond recognition.
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