Cosmonious High debuts for the Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR

You can now join the cosmic chaos at Cosmonious High, a new virtual reality game launching today for Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR.

It’s the latest VR adventure from Owlchemy Labs, creators of hilarious Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator VR games. Austin, Texas-based Owlchemy Labs (owned by Google) has been working on the title for a few years with the hope of amusing fans again with its quirky characters and a vibrant and silly world.

I played a demo of it last week and stepped into the body of a cartoonish alien experiencing high school for the first time. It’s a rich place that Owlchemy Labs has been working on for almost three years. The tutorial was quite easy and I was in high school in no time.

In Cosmonious High, you play as a Prismi alien who crash-lands into their first day at an alien high school. This welcoming place is alive with funny characters but plagued by mysterious malfunctions. Players will unlock powers, take classes, make friends, and restore Cosmonious High to its former glory.

Featuring VR gestures built to make interactions feel more natural, the game lets you say hello to your best alien friend by waving your real hand. Characters have unique personalities and will react to the world around them, whether that’s throwing a ball or starting a conversation. The characters and environment come together to make Cosmonious High Owlchemy’s largest sandbox world to date where players can interact intuitively with almost anything.

Cosmonious High also offers a wide range of accessibility features, including a mindful color palette, single-handed playing, dynamic subtitles, and more. Owlchemy Labs applies its “VR for everyone” motto as a key development principle to each of their games, allowing more people to enjoy the full Cosmonious High experience.

“With Owlchemy’s signature VR gestures, character interactions, and reactive environments, Cosmonious High pushes the boundaries of what you’ve come to expect from VR games. We put so much into making the world feel intuitive, responsive, and most importantly, satisfying. We’ve also made accessibility a core pillar of our studio’s development pipeline, ensuring anyone can experience Cosmonious High. We cannot wait for everyone to jump in and see what chaos they can create,” said Devin Reimer, CEO of Owlchemy Labs, in a statement.

The game has VR interaction with dynamic characters that respond to natural gestures. You can high five, fist bump, and converse with them. The entire school is one big interactive playground for your powers. And it has a lot of exploration, with places like a Grand Hall where you can hang out.

I performed a coup of experiments in the Chemosophy lab. You can also get creative in Visualetics. You can talk to the aliens and discover they are like normal kids with their own problems and needs. Your powers can relate to water, wind, fire, and more. You have telekinesis power, and you can read minds. It has perhaps five hours of content. All told, there are 80,000 lines of dialogue or double that of Job Simulator. That’s should give VR fans a lot of material to engage with.