Killing Floor: Incursion

Killing Floor: Incursion
Information
VR/AR	VR
Developer	Tripwire Interactive
Publisher	Tripwire Interactive
Platform	Oculus Rift (Platform), SteamVR, PlayStation VR
Device	Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, PlayStation VR
Operating System	Windows, PlayStation 4
Type	Game
Genre	Action, Horror, Shooter
Input Device	Tracked motion controllers
Play Area	Room-scale
Game Mode	Single-player, Co-op
Release Date	16 August 2017 (Oculus Rift); 14 November 2017 (Steam); 1 May 2018 (PlayStation VR)
Price	US$19.99 (Steam and Meta store listings, October 2026); US$39.99 at launch
App Store	Oculus Store, Steam, PlayStation Store
Website	https://store.steampowered.com/app/690810/

See also: VR Apps and VR Games

Killing Floor: Incursion is a first-person VR horror shooter developed and published by Tripwire Interactive, the studio behind the Killing Floor series. It is a story-driven spin-off of the series that can be played alone or with one other player in online co-op. Oculus announced it in June 2016 as a cooperative shooter designed for Oculus Touch, and Road to VR described it as Tripwire's first VR project.

The game was released for Oculus Rift on the Oculus Store on 16 August 2017, came to Steam for HTC Vive and Rift on 14 November 2017 together with an endless Holdout mode, and was released for PlayStation VR on 1 May 2018. The PlayStation 4 and PC versions both have a Metacritic score of 68, which the site classes as "mixed or average".

Reviewed 15 October 2026. All claims checked against the cited Road to VR, Tom's Hardware, UploadVR, Oculus Blog (archived), PlayStation Blog, Steam, Meta Store, Metacritic, OpenCritic and TheSixthAxis pages; speaker attributions and dates corrected. About review dates.

Gameplay

The player is a trainee of the Horzine Security Forces who fights the Zeds, the series' name for its zombie-like enemies. In the story set-up described by Tripwire for the PlayStation VR release, the soldier has been wounded fighting the Zeds and is placed in a neurological simulation while Horzine medics repair the body. A training officer, Emma Rose, guides the player through the simulation until viral corruption fills it with genetically engineered monsters. The voice actor Morgana Robinson plays Emma. A robot companion called NODE sends the player transmissions and can be told to look for ammunition and health.

Tripwire describes the story campaign as five stages, fully voiced, across environments that include farmhouses, trailer parks, virtual training facilities and the catacombs of Paris. In an Oculus Blog interview at launch, project lead Leland Scali said the game adds "a layer of puzzle-solving inside a full-story campaign", and John Gibson, then Tripwire's president and co-owner, said it is "not a 'jump scare' game". Weapons include pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, a sniper rifle, axes and knives, and players can dual-wield. Zeds are decapitated and dismembered when hit, and their severed limbs can be picked up and used as weapons. Enemies named by the developers include the spider-like Crawler and the nine-foot-tall Fleshpound.

Holdout and Hardcore

Holdout is an endless survival mode in which increasingly tough groups of Zeds attack until the player dies; it has its own weapon, power-ups and leaderboards, and can be played in co-op. In a sponsored post on UploadVR, Tripwire design director Leland Scali listed the power-ups as Unlimited Ammo, Vampire, Berzerker, Zed Time, 4x Damage and Nuke, and said players are ranked by score and time. The same update, which was free for existing owners, added a Hardcore difficulty for the story mode, in which NODE no longer gives puzzle hints or supplies health for revives and boss fights are more aggressive.

Movement

The game was originally built for a front-facing sensor setup with snap-turning. Shortly before the Rift release, a Tripwire representative told Tom's Hardware that it also supported room-scale tracking and experimental 360-degree tracking: "It can be done on Rift with two sensors, but it is best with three sensors for optimal tracking." Point-and-teleport movement is the default, with an optional smooth free movement mode. The November 2017 update removed the experimental label from free movement and added a smooth turn option.

On 21 May 2019 Tripwire released a patch that added Espire Control Theater, a comfort system developed by Digital Lode, a Melbourne-based VR studio and Tripwire publishing partner, together with a reworked Free Move system. According to Tripwire, the Control Theater draws a small, translucent, non-moving room at the edges of the player's view during free movement to reduce motion sickness. Players can choose between teleport movement and Free Move with Control Theater, and the overlay can be turned off; the Steam version also lists both options.

Development

Oculus revealed Killing Floor: Incursion on 13 June 2016, ahead of E3 2016, as a Touch-enabled cooperative shooter with first-person gun and blade combat. Tom's Hardware reported that it was announced as a launch title for the Touch controllers, but it was not available when Oculus released Touch in December 2016 and came out after more than half a year of extra development time. The same outlet had played a demo at the Oculus Connect conference in 2016 and found its snap-turn movement out of keeping with the game's atmosphere, since players would naturally turn around when monsters approached from behind.

The game is not an Oculus Studios title. UploadVR reported in August 2017 that Tripwire published it itself, and that it was releasing first on Rift. Scali told the Oculus Blog that early in development the team planned more of a defense game with minimal story, in which players would hold a location until they died, before choosing a narrative-driven single-player and co-op design instead. He said the story gives a different take on key characters and covers story elements not told in the other games, while newcomers can start without knowing the series. In the PlayStation Blog post announcing the PlayStation VR release date, the developers called it "the first time we've done a game with an entire story arc in the Killing Floor universe".

The PlayStation VR version added a Holdout map called The Crucible, which has a "Tron-style" virtual look. The same post said the level began as the development arena it used to test gameplay ideas for Holdout. The map was a timed exclusive on PlayStation VR. On 1 August 2018 Road to VR reported that a content update had added The Crucible and that the Steam page now listed support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

Release

Platform	Store	Release	Notes
Oculus Rift	Oculus Store	16 August 2017	Launch platform; pre-orders were US$35.99 with a 10% discount
HTC Vive, Oculus Rift	Steam	14 November 2017	Released with the Holdout mode update
PlayStation VR	PlayStation Store	1 May 2018	US$30 / 30 euros; includes The Crucible Holdout map
Windows Mixed Reality	Steam	By August 2018	Support listed on the Steam page
PlayStation 4 (PlayStation VR)	Retail and PlayStation Store	21 May 2019	Part of Killing Floor: Double Feature with Killing Floor 2, US$39.99

UploadVR's review gave the Rift price as US$39.99 on the Oculus Store. The Steam and Oculus Store versions use different online back-ends, so players cannot matchmake between them. The PlayStation VR version is played with PlayStation Move controllers. Killing Floor: Double Feature, a PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR exclusive bundle of Killing Floor 2 and Killing Floor: Incursion with all content updates released up to then, launched on 21 May 2019.

As of October 2026 the game is still sold on Steam and on the Meta store's PC VR section at US$19.99. On Steam it requires a SteamVR headset, with a recommended specification of Windows 10, an Intel Core i5-4590 or equivalent, 8 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 480.

Reception

On Metacritic, the PlayStation 4 version has a score of 68 based on 19 critic reviews, and the PC version a score of 68 based on 6 reviews. OpenCritic lists a Top Critic Average of 69 from 21 critic reviews, with 48% of critics recommending the game.

In UploadVR's review, David Jagneaux called the game "a great example of how to take an existing IP and make it work inside of VR". He praised the melee and gun combat, the gore, the large explorable levels and co-op play, which he considered the best way to play. He criticized the length (he counted four levels and finished the campaign solo in about three to four hours) and difficulty spikes in boss fights, and judged Arizona Sunshine the better VR zombie game. Reviewing the PlayStation VR version, Jim Hargreaves of TheSixthAxis gave it 7/10 and wrote that it is "a great adaptation of the series but lacks longevity", citing repetitive enemy tactics and a flat story while praising the weapons and online co-op.