Whatever you think of VR games, there’s at least one genre they do better than any traditional flat screen could — super trippy games all about overwhelming your brain with surreal visuals and music. It’s why Tetris Effect hits so much harder in VR, and what makes Beat Saber a mainstay even years after its release. But one of the trippiest music games of all is about to see whether it can retain its brain-melting magic when it makes the leap to Steam (and Steam Deck) without VR.
Developer Puddle’s Thrasher seems like an especially difficult game to bring down from three dimensions into two. Created by a team including the creators of the VR cult classic Thumper and Rock Band VR, Thrasher takes full advantage of the uniquely transportive powers of virtual reality. Thrasher puts players in the wriggly role of a shimmering amorphous serpent that grows from something resembling a metallic worm to “a magnificent space eel,” as Puddle puts it, by completing levels. It resembles Thrasher or even Rez, where players navigate surreal spaces in tune with thumping music, but it’s a much different experience in practice.
