The Light Brigade

The Light Brigade
Information
VR/AR	Virtual Reality
Developer	Funktronic Labs
Publisher	Funktronic Labs, Creature Label
Platform	Meta Horizon OS, SteamVR, PlayStation VR2
Device	Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro, Meta Quest 3, PlayStation VR2, Steam Frame
Operating System	Meta Horizon OS, Windows, PlayStation 5
Type	Game
Genre	Shooter, Rogue-like, Action
Input Device	Tracked motion controllers, PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers
Play Area	Seated, Standing, Room-scale
Game Mode	Single-player
Release Date	February 22, 2023
Price	US$24.99
App Store	Steam, Meta Horizon Store, PlayStation Store
Website	https://www.lightbrigadevr.com/

See also: VR Apps and VR Games

The Light Brigade is a single-player virtual reality roguelike shooter developed and published by Funktronic Labs. Players join the Light Brigade, described in the store listing as humanity's last line of defense, and fight through procedurally generated battlegrounds with firearms modeled on World War-era weapons and with light magic. It was released on 22 February 2023 for Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro, PlayStation VR2 and PC VR through Steam, the same day as the PlayStation VR2 headset launched.

Funktronic Labs supported the game with five major content updates over three and a half years. The last of them, Update 5.0, was released on 17 August 2026 and renamed the game The Light Brigade: Definitive Edition. The PlayStation 5 version holds a Metascore of 79 on Metacritic, and the game was one of six nominees for Best VR Game at the 2023 Golden Joystick Awards.

Reviewed 4 October 2026. Release date and platforms, developer and publishers, Steam update posts 1 to 5.0 and their dates, Definitive Edition rename, store prices and PS VR2 requirements, Metacritic score, Road to VR and NME review quotes, Golden Joystick nominees and Meta editors' list against the cited sources. About review dates.

Gameplay

The game is set in a world plunged into eternal darkness. The player enlists in the Light Brigade and travels through procedurally generated battlegrounds to free the souls of the fallen that are trapped there, while uncovering what caused the world's downfall and what the Obsidian Forces want. Writing on the PlayStation Blog, Funktronic Labs president Eddie Lee said the levels are generated with "WFC (wave function collapse) technology".

Players aim, shoot and reload bolt-action rifles, machine guns and pistols by hand, and in the PlayStation Blog post Lee described infusing a rifle's bullets with light magic to turn them into explosive or armor-piercing rounds. Spells such as raining fireballs on groups of enemies complement the guns. A run starts with a standard-issue rifle, and players loot attachments such as explosive charms, poison barrels, scopes and silencers from chests and enemies. Tarot cards found during a run grant powers, buffs, debuffs or passive abilities, and stronger versions of a card stack their effects. If the player dies, they must survive long enough to retrieve their fallen soul; dying again before reaching it causes permadeath and the loss of the run's progress.

Between runs, cleansed souls raise the player's rank in the Brigade. Rank points buy upgrades for weapons, passive abilities and spells, and unlock new classes with their own weapons and loadouts. In its review, Road to VR noted that the game has no melee combat.

Comfort options

Road to VR reported smooth and snap turning, smooth and teleport locomotion, optional blinders, head- or controller-relative movement and a seated mode, although it recommended playing standing because of where the belt holsters sit. The PlayStation Store listing gives a minimum play area of 2 m x 2 m for roomscale play.

Development

Funktronic Labs is a studio based in Los Angeles. Its founder Eddie Lee had worked on PixelJunk 4am, and the studio's earlier VR titles include Cosmic Trip and Starbear: Taxi. The studio also received a Magic Leap developer grant. XR Source contrasted The Light Brigade, a "hardcore roguelike", with the studio's earlier games, which it said have "soft edges and delightful exuberance, suitable for players of all ages". In the launch announcement the team said it had worked on the game for "nearly 3 years".

Funktronic Labs announced the game in November 2022 with a Q1 2023 release window. UploadVR reported that the studio drew on flatscreen roguelikes such as Risk of Rain 2 and Hades, and that the announcement trailer used narration from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade". Funktronic Labs opened beta testing on 25 January 2023, with access arranged through its Discord server. The game is built in Unity; the April 2024 update moved it to Unity 2021.3.35f1 and split the Quest 2 and Quest 3 versions into separate packages.

Release

The game launched on all of its platforms on 22 February 2023; Road to VR gave its price as US$25. The November 2022 announcement also listed the original PlayStation VR, but the current PlayStation Store and PlayStation.com listings name only a PS5 version that requires the PlayStation VR2 headset and PS VR2 Sense controllers. As of October 2026 each store lists a regular price of US$24.99. The Steam store lists Funktronic Labs and Creature Label as publishers.

Platform	Release date	Notes
Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro	22 February 2023	Quest Pro gained local dimming and eye-tracked foveated rendering in Update 1 (March 2023)
PlayStation VR2 (PS5)	22 February 2023	Launched at 60 fps with reprojection; native 90 Hz from Update 1
PC VR (Steam)	22 February 2023	Supports Oculus PC or OpenXR runtimes
Steam Frame	17 August 2026	Support added in Update 5.0

Updates

Update 1, released in March 2023, contained more than 240 changes across platforms. Besides the PlayStation VR2 frame-rate change, it added an NG+++ difficulty, rebalanced bosses and weapons, and reworked aiming and locomotion, with the earlier scheme kept as a "legacy mode". The main content updates are listed below.

Update	Date	Main additions
2.0 "Memories of War"	31 August 2023	Breacher class with a Winchester 1897 shotgun; Engineer class with an MP35 submachine gun and a pilotable drone; tactical items; hand-crafted "Lost Memories" stages; a firing range; custom runs
3.0 "Shadow Hunter"	18 April 2024	Hunter class with a recurve bow and throwing knives; new world "Sunless Keep"; nature tarot card set
4.0 "Phantom of Time"	14 November 2024	Saboteur class with a revolver and a cloaking timepiece; new world "Memorial Grounds"; remade Necropolis world
4.5 "Phantom of Elites"	11 March 2025	Elite enemies with special passive abilities, including a new Captain type; an in-game recording camera from the LIV Creator Kit
5.0 "The Definitive Edition"	17 August 2026	New world "Lebes"; three tarot sets adding 38 cards for 99 in total; new crystal attachments; challenge, marathon and custom runs; GPU optimizations; Steam Frame support

UploadVR reported that Funktronic Labs called Update 5.0 the game's final update. At release it was live on Meta Quest and Steam, with the PlayStation VR2 version to follow later. Funktronic Labs said the GPU work in 5.0 lets many players raise the render scale by about 10-20% without losing performance.

Reception

On Metacritic, the PlayStation 5 version has a Metascore of 79 based on six critic reviews, which the site classes as "generally favorable".

Road to VR scored the game 8.5 out of 10 after playing it on Quest 2, both natively and over PC Link, and completed one full run after many failed attempts spanning about eight hours of play. Scott Hayden wrote that the game's "WWII-era weapons make for welcome and familiar additions while adding a measurable level of realism", but found its color palette "a bit too muddy" and missed having any melee combat. Reviewing the PlayStation VR2 version for NME, Jordan Oloman wrote that it is "worth celebrating for bringing a convincing and consistently engaging roguelike experience to virtual reality" and praised its "gripping physics-based combat, sticky progression systems and comfy controls".

Accolades

In July 2023, Meta included the game in an editors' list of 15 picks for the best Quest releases of 2023 so far. At the 2023 Golden Joystick Awards it was nominated for Best VR Game alongside C-Smash VRS, Synapse, Vertigo 2 and F1 23; the award went to Horizon Call of the Mountain.