Universe Sandbox ² (Steam VR)

VR Shop Score – Gold Award

System: Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift & Windows MR
Price at Time Of Review: £19.49
Comfort Rating: Green
Genre: Educational
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Standing or Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG

 

Description: Universe Sandbox ² is a physics-based space simulator that allows you to create, destroy, and interact on an unimaginable scale. It merges real-time gravity, climate, collision, and material interactions to reveal the beauty of our universe and the fragility of our planet. Universe Sandbox ² includes the desktop version and a VR mode with support for the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift+Touch, and Windows Mixed Reality.

Review: Universe Sandbox ² isn’t really a game, more an educational tool that helps you to understand how gravity, astronomical bodies and the universe works. It’s more a godlike universe simulator that lets you play around with things that probably shouldn’t be played around with (not in the real world anyway) By removing or just moving a planet you will suddenly get an understanding of why that planet is there and why it looks the way it does. Simply moving planets a small amount can have an apocalyptic series of events happen. I wouldn’t say I was turned into an Astronomy teacher overnight, but my knowledge of the universe and it’s inner works has significantly improved.

Using the Vive Wands to touch, interact and navigate through the options and sandbox world feels surprisingly natural and you can easily tell that this has been built for VR from the ground up. While not a game, the fun you can have with this is limitless, want to cause the end of the world go ahead! But why stop there when you could cause the whole universe to collapse in on itself.

Universe Sandbox ² is graphically beautiful, but it is the physics engine that really makes it shine. The educational uses of this app are pretty much endless, but for the rest of us non-educated gaming oafs, we can have more fun causing utter chaos (which is what I pretty much did for the whole time I played it). Truly a powerful tool and simulator that is sure to sell VR as a whole to a lot of new people.