I’ve been an avid fan of VR gaming since I first tried my cousin’s HTC Vive all the way back in 2016, so naturally, I’ve played my fair share of Owlchemy Labs games over the years. Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality have all been staples of my ever-growing multi-platform VR library over the years, and Owlchemy Labs’ latest project, Dimensional Double Shift, has just earned itself a place there as well.
Released into early access last year, Dimensional Double Shift is a free-to-play 2-4-player co-op VR game that puts Owlchemy Labs’ unique brand of satirical humor at the forefront. Following a recent hands-on preview session where I was joined by CEOwl Andrew Eiche, Dimensional Double Shift‘s New Joysey expansion has certainly caught my eye.
An Intro to Dimensional Double Shift
I think it’s important to paint a clear picture of exactly what Dimensional Double Shift is all about before getting into the weeds of what’s coming in the New Joysey paid expansion. In Dimensional Double Shift, up to four players strap on their VR headsets and join Conglomni Corps’ workforce.
Players begin in the Treeattle dimension and have two mission types to choose from: working in the garage or working in a fast food restaurant. A shift in the fast food joint will see each player man a distinct station, complete with unique ingredients and appliances, and will see them completing as many orders as they can as fast as possible. A shift in the garage follows a very similar setup, but rather than preparing food orders, players are tasked with using their station’s unique tools to solve some light puzzle-like minigames.
Much like Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator before it, Dimensional Double Shift embraces a satirical, tongue-in-cheek tone, with every moment of gameplay and every piece of in-game set dressing poking fun at lifeless, faceless corporations and their attitude toward their employees.
Captivating Hand-Tracked Chaos
The biggest draw of Dimensional Double Shift, at least for me, is that the entire game is controller-free. Every in-game action is performed via hand-tracking from grabbing an order sheet to putting mustard on a hot dog to filling a flying car with gas.
My time with Dimensional Double Shift was experienced via Meta Quest 3, where the hand-tracking was exactly what it needed to be. For the most part, Dimensional Double Shift‘s hand-tracking works fairly well. Picking up objects felt natural, the freedom of movement was novel, and the ability to apply physical pressure to certain objects, like a sponge or bouncy ball, was surprisingly impressive.
Of course, Dimensional Double Shift‘s hand-tracking isn’t perfect. There were plenty of instances where it took a few attempts to grab a handle, and there were quite a few times items would fling out of my hands at random. But those moments were far from frustrating. Instead, the frantic pace of Dimensional Double Shift‘s gameplay and its all-around chaotic atmosphere–with four players all desperately slamming ingredients into counters and throwing ingredients at one another–made these brief hand-tracking hiccups feel like a natural part of the mayhem. It is all of this mayhem that New Joysey doubles down on.
Dimensional Double Shift’s New Joysey Doubles Down on The Co-Op Chaos
My hands-on preview with Dimensional Double Shift lasted around half an hour or so. In that time, I played one round of the base dimension’s (Treeattle) garage mission type and two rounds of the upcoming New Joysey expansion’s diner mission type. Just like the Hexas Dimension Pack that preceded it, Dimensional Double Shift‘s New Joysey paid expansion takes a real-world location and gives it an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek makeover. As its name implies, it’s New Jersey’s boardwalk that gets the humorous overhaul this time around.
Jumping into New Joysey’s diner mission type for the first time saw me manning the donut station. Things were pretty normal to begin with. I grabbed an order sheet with ease and set about making the donut with sprinkles shown on the paper. I grabbed some dough from a container to the right of me, placed it in the deep fryer to my left, waited a second or two, took the donut out, shook a few sprinkles on it, and tapped the bell to send the order off.
That first order went surprisingly smoothly, with the game’s hand-tracking working like a charm and every action feeling incredibly intuitive, but it didn’t take long for the kitchen to be consumed by chaos. My next order was another donut, this time with a whole block of cheese taking the place of sprinkles. I used Dimensional Double Shift‘s built-in game chat to ask Eiche, who was manning the pizza station across from me, for some cheese. He threw the block of cheese over. It fell in the deep fryer, the deep fryer caught on fire, and I had to use the fire extinguisher to stop the flames from spreading.
The interaction lasted just a second or two, but the joyful panic I felt in those fleeting moments was undeniable. And that was just a taste of things to come. My second go-round of New Joysey’s diner mode had me taking over the pizza station, and now I was the one gleefully throwing blocks of cheese to my co-op partners in between crafting my own truly cursed calzones that were filled with tomato, cheese, peppers, and ice cream.
Dimensional Double Shift‘s New Joysey expansion is set to release on October 16 for $4.99. If just one person in a group of four owns the new dimension, the entire party can play it.
Dimensional Double Shift‘s missions offer 15-minute bursts of pure, unadulterated fun that only the medium of VR can really capture. The game’s breakneck descents into madness had me both laughing and cursing out loud on multiple occasions during my 30-minute preview session, and the absurdity of New Joysey’s new recipes, its lively NPC dialogue, and the bright pastel colors of the new diner setting make the upcoming expansion a must-play for fans of Dimensional Double Shift‘s riveting chaos.
