Bonelab

Bonelab
Information
VR/AR	Virtual Reality
Developer	Stress Level Zero
Publisher	Stress Level Zero
Platform	SteamVR, Oculus Rift Platform
Device	Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest 3S, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, Windows Mixed Reality
Operating System	Windows, Quest OS
Type	Game
Genre	Physics sandbox, Action, First-person shooter
Input Device	Tracked Motion Controllers
Play Area	Room-scale, Standing, seated
Game Mode	Single-player
Comfort Level	Intense (smooth locomotion, climbing, falls, vehicles)
Release Date	September 29, 2022
Price	US $39.99
App Store	Steam, Meta Quest Store
Website	https://bonelab.com

See also: VR Apps and VR Games

Bonelab is a 2022 virtual reality physics sandbox and action game developed and published by the American studio Stress Level Zero. It is the sequel to the studio's 2019 game Boneworks and was released on September 29, 2022 for Windows PC VR and the Meta Quest 2. The game is built on Stress Level Zero's in-house physics interaction engine, Marrow, which simulates a full physically driven player body and lets nearly every object in the world be grabbed, thrown, stacked, or used against enemies.

Unlike its predecessor, which launched only on PC VR, Bonelab targeted standalone Quest hardware at release, broadening its reach. It set a sales record on the platform by earning roughly US $1 million in revenue within its first hour, the fastest any app had reached that figure in Meta Quest history. By September 2025 more than two million people had unlocked the game's first achievement on Quest alone, and Meta's published ranking of best-selling paid Quest titles places it inside the top ten.

Gameplay

Bonelab is played from a first-person perspective with a fully simulated physical body driven by inverse kinematics, rather than the floating hands common to many VR titles. Movement uses smooth (continuous) locomotion, and players can climb, mantle, push, and grab surfaces directly, with their virtual limbs colliding against the environment. Weapons cover ranged firearms, melee implements, and physics-based oddities; combat relies on manual handling such as racking slides, managing recoil, and swinging melee weapons with real arm motion.

The game's defining mechanic is avatar swapping. Using an in-fiction device, players switch between bodies of different size, weight, and strength, which changes traits such as how high they jump, how fast they run, and how much they can lift. A body-remapping system keeps the player's real-world movements aligned with the in-game avatar regardless of how different the avatar's proportions are.

Beyond the story campaign, Bonelab includes standalone sandbox and arena modes carried over from Boneworks, plus experiences such as a parkour course, a go-kart track, and a tactical sandbox. Players unlock additional props, weapons, and non-player characters (delivered through in-game capsules) for use in free-play sandbox levels.

Development

Stress Level Zero, the studio behind Boneworks, developed Bonelab as a direct continuation built on what it described as two years of additional research on its Marrow physics interaction engine. The project was known publicly only as "Project 4" before its reveal. It was directed by Brandon Laatsch, with a soundtrack by Michael Wyckoff, and runs on a custom layer the studio calls Marrow built on top of the Unity engine.

The game was announced on April 20, 2022 at the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, where Stress Level Zero showed the first gameplay footage and confirmed Meta Quest 2 and PC VR as the launch platforms for a 2022 release. A central engineering goal was running the full physics simulation on the mobile Quest 2 hardware while preserving the heavy object interactivity of the PC original.

After launch the title received only intermittent updates. On June 7, 2024, Stress Level Zero released Patch 4, the first major update in more than a year (an earlier Patch 3 had stayed in beta and never went public). Patch 4 added Meta Quest 3-specific graphics enhancements (a larger texture cache, 4x anisotropic filtering, and improved foveated rendering), reworked the player rig (adding a physical neck and physical twist bones in the arms and thighs, plus improved mantling, lever, and aiming behavior), and overhauled the MarrowSDK modding toolkit, including the ability to connect a mod.io account and download subscribed mods directly in-game.

Modding

Bonelab shipped with an official modding system on both PC and Quest, exposing the MarrowSDK so the community could import custom avatars, weapons, vehicles, and full levels. Mods are distributed through the mod.io platform and can be installed on Quest without a PC, an unusual degree of openness for a standalone headset. The community catalog has grown to include custom maps, additional weapons, fan-made avatars, and a fan project that recreates the original Boneworks campaign inside Bonelab on Quest. Reviewers framed this open toolset as the game's most durable strength, treating it as a foundation for VR experimentation rather than a fixed campaign.

Release

Bonelab launched simultaneously on PC VR and Meta Quest 2 on September 29, 2022, with native support for newer Quest hardware added over time. It was not released for PlayStation VR or PlayStation VR2.

Platform / device	Storefront	Release date
PC VR (SteamVR, Oculus Rift platform)	Steam, Meta Quest Store (PC)	September 29, 2022
Meta Quest 2	Meta Quest Store	September 29, 2022
Meta Quest 3 (enhanced)	Meta Quest Store	Patch 4 enhancements, June 7, 2024
Meta Quest 3S	Meta Quest Store	Supported (Quest 3S launched October 2024)

Reception

Bonelab drew divided reviews. The PC version holds a Metascore of 65 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating mixed or average reviews. PC Gamer scored it 81 out of 100, calling it a game that pushes VR's boundaries, "strange, playful and committed to creativity," while warning that it is intense for newcomers to VR. Road to VR was more critical, giving it 5 out of 10: the reviewer praised the consistent physics-driven interactivity, the avatar-swap interface, the soundtrack, and strong performance on Quest 2, but criticized a thin narrative delivered through a few voice and text logs, bland enemies, weak weapon variety, and frustrating climbing and holstering. Comfort was rated low (5 out of 10), as the game features smooth turning, launches, and height drops aimed at experienced VR users.

Commercially the game outperformed its critical reception. Meta disclosed during its Connect livestream that Bonelab earned about US $1 million in its first hour on Quest, the fastest an app had hit that mark on the platform; by comparison, other notable Quest titles had taken closer to 24 hours. Achievement data indicated more than two million Quest players by September 2025, alongside an estimated half a million owners of the PC VR version on Steam per third-party tracking services. In Road to VR's 2026 analysis of Meta's official list of the 50 best-selling paid Quest games of all time, Bonelab ranked ninth.