Organ Quarter

About Organ Quarter

Organ Quarter is a survival horror game for VR headsets by Outer Brain Studios. It came out on Steam for PC VR in October 2017 after a Kickstarter, and later on Viveport. In 2023 the publisher AMATA K.K. brought an updated version to PlayStation VR2 (May 2023) and Meta Quest. There is no flat-screen mode: Steam marks it VR Only, and the PS5 version needs PS VR2 and its Sense controllers. It is voiced in English, with text in nine more languages.

You have spent months shut in your apartment. When you step out, something has happened: a disease, one that may or may not have a motive, has infected the city's places and people. Flesh oozes from the walls and spills across the streets, and the neighbours you never knew well are now hostile. The story comes through documents you find, clues in the rooms and the few residents still willing to talk.

The makers call it a long-form horror adventure rather than a wave shooter or a walking simulator, and it plays the way the early Resident Evil and Silent Hill games did. You move with the stick and use each hand for a weapon, an item or your inventory. The inventory is small, safe rooms have item boxes for the rest, and ammunition runs out if you shoot everything you meet. Most puzzles are switch, item or key puzzles, so you carry things back and forth through connected levels. The map starts nearly blank and you mark it yourself: puzzles left to solve, areas cleared, places to come back to. You save by putting your head into a fleshy television, and bigger boss creatures wait further in.

The fear is atmospheric more than sudden. The levels push you into tight, claustrophobic spaces and up close to monsters, some of which may not be hostile, while an industrial soundtrack grinds under it all. Reviewers found the controls fiddly: items have small hit boxes, and there is no crouch button, so you have to play standing.

It suits players who liked the slow exploration, item management and backtracking of 1990s survival horror and want that inside a headset, and who do not mind a lot of flesh.

How to play Organ Quarter

1. Buy it on Steam or Viveport for a PC VR headset, on the Meta Quest store, or on the PlayStation Store for PS VR2.
2. Play standing, with tracked motion controllers; there is no flat-screen mode and no crouch button.
3. Find your first weapon in the opening section, then leave the apartment building for the city.
4. Use each hand for a weapon, an item or the inventory, and leave what you do not need in the item box of a safe room.
5. Mark your map as you go, solve switch, item and key puzzles, and save at the fleshy televisions.

Tips

• Treat ammunition as scarce: if you kill everything you see you will run out, so walk past fights you do not need.
• Mark the blank map with puzzles you have not solved and areas you have cleared; it saves a lot of backtracking.
• Almost every puzzle needs an item, so think about what to carry before you leave a safe room.
• Play standing up: your real height sets the character's, so sitting down leaves you crouched.
• If the fights are too hard, there is a Casual setting, though reviewers found it challenging even there.
• Not every creature attacks, so watch before you shoot.

Questions