5 Free Oculus Quest Games You Can Play With Your Bare Hands

Ditch your controllers and go “hands-on” with these free sideloadable games. 

This past December, Oculus introduced native hand-tracking functionality for the Oculus Quest, offering users the chance to navigate the Oculus Home interface with their bare hands as opposed to the Touch controllers. It’s a neat addition to the existing Quest experience, albeit an extremely limited one. At the time of writing, official hand tracking support extends solely to the Oculus Home interface. VR developer Aldin Dynamics recently teased hand-tracking support for its 2016 game Waltz of the Wizard, but has yet to confirm when these features will be made available. 

While it may be some time before we see hand-tracking support for games on the Oculus Store, independent developers are already hard at work building a catalog of VR hand-tracking experiences on SideQuest. The following experiences may be rough — extremely rough in some cases — but each does a commendable job at showcasing a potential use-case for hand-tracking on Oculus Quest.

Here are five free Oculus Quest games you can play right now using hand-tracking:

TEA FOR GOD

As if this reality-bending sci-fi shoot-em-up wasn’t impressive enough already, the addition of hand-tracking adds a whole new level of immersion to this must-play game. Using a combination of procedural generation and non-euclidean geometry, Tea for God creates impossibly large virtual environments you can traverse by physically walking around your real-world play space. Scattered throughout this endless series of hallways and corridors is an army of robotic enemies programmed to shoot on sight.

This is where hand-tracking comes in. Instead of using the grip input on your Touch controller to select your weapon, you can now make a “finger gun” gesture with your hand to equip your pistol and pull back on your index finger to fire. It’s a silly addition, but one that effectively shows how hand-tracking could be used in a combat scenario. 

Tea for God is available for sideloading here.

INTERDIMENSIONAL MATTER

One of the stranger games on the list, Interdimensional Matter tasks you with repairing endless waves of oddly-shaped client matter using your telekinetic abilities. The process is simple: take the floating mass of matter apart, insert some properly functioning cores, reassemble the body, and hit the button to continue. 

Of course, this is easier said than done as the gelatinous objects you’ll be handling aren’t exactly cooperative. Thankfully, the game comes with a helpful tutorial mode designed to assist you in getting started with your career as an interdimensional assembly line worker. 

Interdimensional Matter is available for sideloading here.

VIRTUALPIANO

The title says it all here. A simple yet surprisingly well-made app, VirtualPiano sits you in front of a full 88-key grand piano and, well, that’s it. Hand-tracking allows you to interact with each individual key like you would on a real piano, though there are no doubt much better ways to tickle the ivories.

VirtualPiano is available for sideloading here.

MIGHT OF THE GODS: SUN SHARD

Sun Shard originally launched on SideQuest this past August, offering Quest users a fun physics-based sword-slasher similar to that of Blade and Sorcery. As the name suggests, Might of the Gods adds allows you to step into the role of a towering God and rain down vengeance against hordes of enemy creatures using your bare hands.

Shoot projectiles from your fingertips, slice through waves of enemies with your ethereal blades, or go old-school and physically flick incoming baddies across the map. 

Might of the Gods: Sun Shard is available for sideloading here.

SCRIBBLE

Put simply, Scribble is more-or-less a watered-down version of Tilt Brush that’s controlled via your fingers as opposed to motion controllers. By pinching your index finger together with your thumb, you activate a digital paintbrush which you can then use to fingerpaint 3D objects across a nearly-infinite canvas.

You can choose from a variety of colors to customize your VR masterpiece and even manipulate the size of your art to create everything from massive sculptures to tiny miniatures.

Scribble is available for sideloading here.

Feature Image Credit: Felix Hurbst, void room, SalsaKongen

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