Theia Games dropped a Demo Trailer for Bad Grip Club on Steam today, giving the clearest look yet at the physics-based co-op VR climbing game that has been collecting comparisons to PEAK since the studio wrapped its second closed playtest earlier this summer. The game lands on two platforms simultaneously — SteamVR and Meta Quest — and addresses one of the most stubborn friction points in VR multiplayer: the friend-group problem. A team doesn’t need to be uniformly equipped in headsets to climb together, because flatscreen PC players can join the same session. The Bad Grip Club Steam page and the Meta Quest listing are both live for wishlisting.
Why Your Friend Without a Headset Can Still Climb
VR co-op games have a structural disadvantage that most flatscreen multiplayer titles don’t face. The install base of VR headsets is small enough that finding four friends who all own one — and own the same platform — is harder than assembling an Among Us lobby or spinning up a round of Phasmophobia. The UploadVR guide to the friend-group barrier in VR documents this problem across dozens of titles: the friend pool that owns both a headset and the same game is thin by default. Bad Grip Club answers that problem directly with flatscreen crossplay: VR players use tracked hands and six-degrees-of-freedom controllers to physically grab ledges; their flatscreen friends play on a regular PC screen, presumably with controller or mouse-and-keyboard inputs, in the same session.
The Steam store confirms crossplay and asymmetric VR with the “Cross-Platform Multiplayer” and “Asymmetric VR” tags. The asymmetry matters: a VR player gripping a ledge is doing something physically different from what a flatscreen player does. In a physics-based game where grip quality determines whether you hold or fall, that input difference is a real design variable, not a cosmetic one. Whether the developers have tuned input parity between the two modes is something the forthcoming public demo will reveal.
Physics That Make Failure Funny
At the center of Bad Grip Club is a specific mechanical premise worth understanding: your hands are the physics system. VR climbing games typically work by detecting when a grip button is pressed while a hand collider overlaps with tagged climbable geometry — the game then connects the player’s rigidbody to a kinematic anchor at the hand’s world position, disabling gravity and allowing hand movement to move the player’s body. A VR grip physics tutorial for Unity and SteamVR demonstrates exactly this pattern using configurable joints. When you release, the joint disconnects, gravity returns, and you fall.
In co-op, this becomes cascade physics. If Player A is being held up by Player B — pulled by the wrist up a difficult ledge — and Player B loses their grip, the joint disconnect propagates: Player A’s weight, no longer supported, pulls them into a fall, which can swing into Player B, which can dislodge Player B’s own grip. The developers describe the result as an “immersive, and comical crash landing” in the official store description. That phrasing is doing real work: the fall animation is designed to be a shared joke, not a punishment screen. The same physics that make helping your teammates feel satisfying make accidentally killing them feel inevitable and hilarious.
The items scattered across the mountain run in the same register. Energy drinks provide a stamina boost. A pea shooter turns what could have been a serene rest point into a physics projectile problem. Roasting sausages at a campfire is an option, which implies the game expects you to fail enough times between checkpoints to need the break. The Meta Quest store description confirms loot drops are randomized, so no two climbs produce the same toolkit — the chaos is systematized.
What Joining the Club Actually Costs
The minimum spec on PC is modest: an Intel Core i3-6100 or AMD FX-6300 processor, 6 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GTX 950 or AMD Radeon R9 270 GPU are the floor Those are mid-range cards from 2015-2016 — hardware the game will not tax. For a physics-based climbing game with a cartoonish, stylized art style, computational demands are low by design. SteamVR adds a headset requirement on top; the Meta Quest version runs natively on standalone hardware
The full release date remains listed as “To be announced” on both platforms, and no price has been set. A public demo is expected to follow the Demo Trailer, continuing the development cycle that ran through two closed community playtests. Players can wishlist on Steam or add the game to their Meta Quest library to receive release notifications, and the Bad Grip Club Discord community is active for those who want to find climbing partners in advance.
Does Bad Grip Club Need VR to Work?
The question worth sitting with is whether the game’s core experience — the vertigo, the proprioceptive feedback of gripping a ledge with your actual hand, the moment where you feel your fingers slipping — requires the headset. PEAK, the non-VR co-op climbing game that Bad Grip Club is explicitly invoking in its marketing, delivers team-breaking chaos through camera control and a shared mountain without any VR element. A community video describing Bad Grip Club as “basically PEAK in VR” captures the comparison precisely.
What Bad Grip Club offers that PEAK cannot is physical presence on the mountainside. In VR, the ledge is below your hands. Looking down means looking at the drop. When a friend pulls you upward, the tracked motion of their controller hand corresponds to a real physical motion you can see in your peripheral vision. The flatscreen players share the goal; the VR players share the height. Whether that difference is worth a headset — or worth waiting for this game when PEAK already exists on Steam — is the demo’s real job to answer.
The mountain is waiting. The hands are sweating. A public demo is coming.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Bad Grip Club and how is it different from other co-op climbing games?
Bad Grip Club is a physics-based co-op VR climbing game from Theia Games, published by Polden Publishing, in which players grab ledges using tracked VR hand controllers to climb a cartoonish mountain together. Unlike non-VR co-op climbing games such as PEAK, it puts players physically inside the climb — the grip is tied to tracked hand position, and the physics cascade means one player’s fall can dislodge others. The key differentiator is its flatscreen crossplay, which lets PC players without a VR headset join the same session as VR players.
Do I need a VR headset to play Bad Grip Club?
No. Bad Grip Club supports flatscreen crossplay, which means players on a regular PC screen can join sessions alongside VR players. The experience is asymmetric — VR players grab ledges with tracked hand controllers while flatscreen players use a more traditional input — but the climb is shared. The game is available for wishlisting on both Steam (for SteamVR users) and the Meta Quest store (for standalone Quest players).
How does VR physics-based climbing actually work mechanically?
In VR climbing games, grip is typically implemented using rigidbody physics with configurable joints. When a player presses the grip button while their hand collider overlaps with climbable geometry, the game connects the player’s physics body to an anchor at the hand’s world position and disables gravity. The player is then moved by changing their hand position, which moves the anchor, which moves the body through the joint. Releasing the grip disconnects the joint and restores gravity. In co-op, this creates cascade physics: if the player supporting someone else loses their own grip, the force chain disconnects and both players can fall together.
When will Bad Grip Club release and how much will it cost?
A full release date has not been announced — both the Steam and Meta Quest listings show “To be announced.” No price has been set. A Demo Trailer launched on Steam today (August 17, 2026), and a public demo is expected following the conclusion of two closed community playtests. Players can add the game to their Steam wishlist page or Meta Quest library to receive launch notifications.
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