Ninja Warrior feels like a fun concept to jump into VR until you consider the practicalities of adapting this experience to the medium. There’s something appealing about converting large-scale obstacle courses into a kind of fitness game, and these courses featured in the original TV show involve Wipeout-esque acrobatics, strength, and conquering feats of nerve. Don’t worry about the space you need to run, jump, and dive.
Perhaps if you can cross without using your legs and still retain your kinesthetic sense, you might be able to do it.
Ninja Warrior VR takes heavy inspiration from titles like Fall Guys in its switch from reality TV to a virtual world, replacing super-powered rivals with stylized ninja-like characters. This jump also changes the aesthetics of the experience, allowing the experience to subvert initial expectations in one key aspect, turning this game into one of the most promising fitness-promoting party titles of 2025. Instead of moving with your feet, you move entirely with your hands.
It seems silly at first, but it certainly takes some time to get used to. At first you think you’ll be running on the spot or navigating each course using an analog stick, but everything is controlled using motion controls and your hands. To move forward, extend your arms in front of you and physically pull your arms back towards your chest, drawing your character to where you placed them. You can use either hand or both hands to move at high speeds, but no matter where you place that hand, it will remain firmly fixed in that position until you place your other hand.
This is the main way to pass almost all obstacles in the game. Want to jump? Push it out of the way with your hands. This can be done with one or two hands, but if you want to jump over a thin platform with rotating bollards rotating in turn, for example, you will need to increase your speed sharply for this task. This means you will be penalized if you stay hidden for too long. It’s all done against a surprisingly tight time limit, which is longer than the actual show, but it’s by no means kind.
The only use of the controller’s buttons is a grip button for grabbing obstacles such as dangling bars, such as the series’ famous obstacle that requires players to dangle and jump between two sliding metal bars. This requires all your skills to traverse and is very difficult to overcome. It’s only round one.
You could criticize the game for being too difficult under these parameters, but the movement behavior is similar to Gorilla Tag or Orion Drift, and while it’s not what you’d expect, it definitely lends itself to Ninja Warrior VR. Reality TV is a herculean endeavor that few people can pull off, and if it’s too simple you risk making it trivial to players when the full game is released.
You can hear the commentators’ voices in your ears, so you don’t have to worry about how interesting it looks from the outside, and you can have a lot of fun trying your luck. If you’re careful, that is, and in my experience, I accidentally hit the demo assistant multiple times in my efforts to get through this first obstacle course.
But for me, that’s not a negative, it’s a sign that everything is going well with Ninja Warrior VR. They need space to play and time to get used to moving with their hands. But after overcoming this hurdle, you not only immediately feel hooked on the thrill of the challenge, but also have determination and determination to clear these hurdles as far as possible. It’s tiring but exciting to slowly rise to the right spot for a new obstacle and overcome the challenge. If you have a large group of friends and onlookers, as I experienced here, the cheers as you overcome that obstacle can be encouraging and even grin-inducing. It’s a true joy, and it’s only made possible by the pretty bold direction the team has taken to bring this game to life.
Ninja Warrior VR is not a one-on-one physical recreation. Because that’s not possible. The cartoon look is unusual at first, but MyDearest has maintained the spirit of the show throughout this direction, creating something that gets along well and can provide hours of entertainment. This is just the first round of the four-round gauntlet that makes up a typical Ninja Warrior match, and the team promises to continue expanding the game with more levels over time in future updates. If the team can maintain that schedule and the level of fun this demo had with repeat matches and new stages, this could be the new party game of choice for having fun with friends in VR.
Ninja Warrior VR launches today on the Meta Quest platform.
