Wilson's Heart
More actions
| Wilson's Heart | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| VR/AR | Virtual Reality |
| Developer | Twisted Pixel Games |
| Publisher | Oculus Studios |
| Platform | Oculus Rift (Platform) |
| Device | Oculus Rift |
| Operating System | Windows |
| Type | Game |
| Genre | Adventure, Horror |
| Input Device | Oculus Touch |
| Play Area | Standing |
| Game Mode | Single Player |
| Release Date | April 25, 2017 |
| Price | US$39.99 (at launch); US$29.99 (Meta Horizon Store, October 2026) |
| App Store | Oculus Store (now Meta Horizon Store) |
| Website | https://www.meta.com/experiences/pcvr/wilsons-heart/1225484597472435/ |
Wilson's Heart is a first-person psychological thriller adventure game for virtual reality, developed by Twisted Pixel Games and published by Oculus Studios. It was released on 25 April 2017 as an exclusive for the Oculus Rift with the Oculus Touch motion controllers, at a launch price of US$39.99. Oculus Studios funded the game, which was the Austin studio's first virtual reality project.
The game is set in a 1940s hospital and is presented entirely in black and white, in the style of classic monster movies and The Twilight Zone. The player is Robert Wilson, a patient in his sixties who wakes to find that his heart has been replaced by a mysterious glowing device. Peter Weller voices Wilson, and the cast also includes Rosario Dawson, Alfred Molina and Michael B. Jordan.
Wilson's Heart won the Best Virtual Reality Game award at Gamescom 2016, ahead of its release, and was later nominated for two immersive reality awards at the 21st D.I.C.E. Awards. It is still sold as a PC VR title on the Meta Horizon Store.
Gameplay
Wilson's Heart is a narrative adventure played from a first-person perspective, with one Touch controller in each hand. Wilson moves by node-based teleportation: the player looks for a ghostly outline of Wilson at a fixed spot and presses a button, and the screen fades to black while the character shuffles into place. There is no free artificial locomotion. Twisted Pixel chief creative officer Josh Bear said the node system kept the game comfortable to play.
Most of the game is exploration and object puzzles. Players open doors and drawers, read clipboards and notes, dial phones and combine items. Important drawers are highlighted, and a portal-style inventory opens when a key item is picked up; items are stored and retrieved automatically, and objects that are no longer needed are discarded, so most puzzles have one intended solution. One early puzzle asks the player to find the combination to a spinning number lock, pull on rubber gloves and reach into a bathtub of murky water to unplug its drain. Some puzzles change the room itself, such as a padded cell whose gravity the player shifts. The game has no menus, health meters or other heads-up display. Characters make eye contact with the player, and their eyes follow the player as they speak.
The device in Wilson's chest drives the game's main mechanic, which the developer calls Heart Powers. There are four. Wilson pulls the device out of his own chest and throws it; the first power, The Wanderer, lets the player guide it with a wave of the hand, and a single throw can hit several enemies before the heart returns to Wilson's hand. Other settings pull objects toward Wilson, switch on light sources that keep away dangers lurking in the dark, and electrocute nearby enemies when the orb is thrown into water.
Combat takes place in set encounters against monsters such as an undead soldier in a gas mask, a fly man, amphibious creatures and a squid-like creature in a bathtub. Wilson is a man in his sixties fighting with his fists: the player blocks a telegraphed attack by raising both hands, then counters with punches, and harder swings do more damage. Some fights use objects in the room, for example catching grenades and throwing them back, or throwing an electricity-generating box into the mouth of the squid-like creature in the bathtub. Fights take place from a stationary position, so attacks cannot simply be dodged.
Optional side areas contain comic books, newspapers, photographs, posters and radios that play period radio dramas and music. Twisted Pixel estimated before release that the story would take 8 to 10 hours to finish; reviewers reported finishing it in between a little over five hours and about eight hours.
Plot
Robert Wilson, a World War I veteran, wakes up restrained in an abandoned 1940s hospital during a thunderstorm and discovers that his heart has been replaced with an orb that appears to run on occult magic. The hospital is overrun with monsters linked to the experiments of the insane Dr. Harcourt, including a killer teddy bear that is murdering the nurses. Wilson meets other survivors, among them Elsa Wolcott (voiced by Rosario Dawson) and Bela Blasco (voiced by Alfred Molina), and their behavior leaves the player unsure which of them can be trusted.
Development
Twisted Pixel was best known for Xbox games such as The Gunstringer (2011) and LocoCycle (2013), and it became independent of Microsoft again in the fall of 2015. Wilson's Heart was its first VR game. The team had early access to prototype Touch controllers and built the game around them. Studio chief executive Bill Muehl said that Touch let players who might be put off by controllers with many buttons concentrate on exploring, solving puzzles and following the story.
Josh Bear said that while prototyping the game, the team found it could influence players' moods and reactions through where it placed non-player characters relative to the player's personal space, which opened narrative options that would not work outside VR. Muehl said the team had to give up camera control to the player, so it put a lot of attention into sound design and subtle visual cues to guide players without breaking immersion. He also pointed to physical moments such as reaching into a bathtub of sludgy water or pulling the heart out of one's own chest.
The score was written by Christopher Young, the composer of Hellraiser, Spider-Man 3 and Drag Me to Hell. Varese Sarabande announced a CD release of the soundtrack for 1 June 2018.
Release
Oculus announced Wilson's Heart on 13 June 2016, the day before E3 began, as an Oculus Touch title for 2017, and the game was demonstrated at E3 2016. Peter Weller, Rosario Dawson and Alfred Molina were named as the voice cast at the announcement. The release date of 25 April 2017 and the US$39.99 price were announced in late March 2017. Oculus head of content Jason Rubin described it as the April entry in Oculus's plan to release at least one Oculus Studios game for the Rift every month that year.
At launch, an NVIDIA promotion gave Wilson's Heart, SUPERHOT VR and The Unspoken free to buyers of a Rift and Touch together with a qualifying GeForce GTX 1080, 1070 or 1060 graphics card, system or laptop, until 13 June 2017.
| Platform | Release date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Oculus Rift (Oculus Store) | 25 April 2017 | Requires Oculus Touch; US$39.99 at launch |
| Meta Horizon Store (PC VR) | Current listing (October 2026) | US$29.99; listing notes "Now with 360° Tracking Mode" |
Before release, a hands-on preview found that reaching the next teleport node often meant turning almost all the way around, which it expected to be awkward for players with front-facing sensor setups; at launch, a review found that the nodes nearly always left the player facing the action, so a standard two-sensor setup was enough for standing play. As of October 2026, the Meta Horizon Store lists the game as a PC VR title for US$29.99, and the listing states that it now includes a 360-degree tracking mode. Meta Platforms closed Twisted Pixel on 13 January 2026 in a round of layoffs tied to a shift of investment from the metaverse toward AI glasses and wearables; the studio's last game was Marvel's Deadpool VR.
Reception
Wilson's Heart received generally favorable reviews. Critics praised the black-and-white 1940s monster-movie presentation, the campy tone, the voice cast (especially Weller's deadpan delivery as Wilson), characters who make eye contact with the player, and how comfortable the game was to play. One review called it one of the most visually impressive VR games to date, and another called its long-form narrative a proof of concept for VR adventures. The main criticisms were limited interactivity and freedom, motion controls that occasionally failed to register, puzzles built on mundane or arbitrarily placed interactions, lackluster monster fights and frustrating boss battles, play-area boundaries that broke immersion when the player moved out of position, and small text that was hard to read in the headset.
| Year | Award | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Gamescom Award | Best Virtual Reality Game | Won |
| 2016 | Game Critics Awards | Best VR Game | Nominated |
| 2018 | 21st D.I.C.E. Awards | Immersive Reality Game of the Year | Nominated |
| 2018 | 21st D.I.C.E. Awards | Immersive Reality Technical Achievement | Nominated |