Few genres are as well-suited to VR as horror. On conventional gaming systems, there's always a disconnect between the player and the scares. Your TV might be half a room away from you or you have multiple monitors open at once. Maybe you're looking at a walkthrough or something else on your phone to deflate the tension. With VR, the horror is inescapable. Literally clutched around your head and pressed into your face. No distractions, no trickery, no turning up the brightness. You just have to brave it as it comes.
Nope Challenge interested me because it purported to be something helpful. A horror game tackling different phobias in such a way that the scares gently increase over time. If done well, it could be an interesting experiment in exposure therapy. Making people confront their fears in a controlled, playful environment. Even if none of the phobias applied to me, I was at least curious.
The setup is such that you are partaking in a series of experiments. There are 3 categories to pick from with 3 challenges each. These being clowns (caulrophobia), spiders (arachnophobia), and heights (acrophobia). You're free to switch between categories as you please, but the challenges themselves must be tackled in linear order. These start out as mild exercises where you get acclimated to the subject of that particular phobia. Only to then steadily escalate into full-on horror setpieces.
To be upfront right away, I don't think the game fares well as a self-help tool. It dresses itself in the language of therapy, but its methods seem dubious to me at best and waver in quality between different categories. The spider challenges initially had me confident. These start out by having you look at depictions of spiders that get increasingly less abstract, before finally having you look and hold a "real" spider. Then the second chapter makes the presentation less safe, as the spider is set loose and you need to look for it yourself. But you're also asked to create a terrarium for that spider, which is therapeutic and creates something of a bond. It's good stuff.
Except the challenges then round off with exercises that actually reinforce the fear of spiders. You have to go into a spooky house with giant spiders who jump and bite at you. You have to grab them as they struggle and writhe about. These are also venomous, creating a fail state where the spiders straight up kill you. And that's the best example the game has. The clown stages don't waste any time at all when it comes to scares. Even the first challenge there comes with jump-scares and confrontational moments. You have to get close to these monster clowns and mess around with them while they jerk unexpectedly, say ominous things, and follow you with their creepy eyes.
I don't see anyone with a phobia for clowns walking away from that feeling good about what they just experienced. If they even manage to finish the whole deal to begin with.
Putting aside the game's effectiveness (or sincerity) in providing therapy; I do have to say that the challenges are fun. They're interesting little exercises that utilize the VR format well. Climbing skyscrapers, stealthing past killer clowns, or hunting for spiders in derelict buildings. I had a great time working through it all. There are a lot of fun moments throughout and, yeah, some solid scares. The finale of the clown chapter was so intense that I ended up draining my set's batteries because I was too hooked to take a break. Then I stayed up late so I could charge the headset enough to finish it anyway.
I was initially skeptical of the game's comedic leanings. The tutorial especially felt like the developers were aiming for something weird in the hopes of striking viral gold. I warmed up to it during the challenges themselves though. The dialogue from your guide is very entertaining and a lot of the silly things that can happen feel more organic.
Nope Challenge does struggle with some of the usual problems that plague VR titles. Its not the most visually impressive game first and foremost. The geometry, animation, and texture work lags far behind traditional consoles and PC games of late. The game's backgrounds are also notably flat and low-detail. To contrast, the game does shine in closed-off environments. The clown levels especially have plenty of love poured into the environmental details.
You'll also run into moments that feel sloppy. For example, you can softlock yourself or make dialogue repeat if you go the wrong direction at any point or act slightly off-script from what the game expects. The NOPE button on your wrist—a key feature in the game's advertisement—also feels lackluster. These take you out of your current challenge for a breather inside relaxing safe space. These are all very awkward though. The few interactive objects present in these breather spaces have poor physics and there isn't much to do there to begin with. Like you might try to toss a coconut into the water, only to find that the water has no physics. Then you try to throw it far away, only for the coconut to bounce off the invisible wall placed 10 centimeters off the coast.
At 20 bucks, Nope Challenge is a game with fun challenges, but which is too short and amateurish to be worth the price of admission for just a single person. So you have to ask yourself if this is the kind of game you want other people to try as well. I've been letting my family and friends try their hand at it, which has made me feel better about the investment. Even then, the game could have had that appeal and be more polished at the same time.
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