Mosh Pit Simulator looks like a brilliant, confusing VR nightmare

Mosh Pit Simulator is a wonky VR physics sandbox full of brainless, boneless creatures that vaguely resemble people. And you can stick rockets on a whale. The story trailer, above, doesn’t clear anything up. Is there a mosh pit? Does it matter? It’s out now in Early Access.

Like Garry’s Mod or Goat Simulator, it’s more interested in letting you sow chaos throughout the 1 square km of city that you’re given to play around in and, probably, demolish. You can build, destroy, grab people and objects and fling them around, stick engines and rockets on stuff and, seen in the trailer, explore the story mode.

Here’s developer Sos Sosowski offering a bit of context.

The idea behind Mosh Pit Simulator is, that you are inside a video game, with those weird humans, all governed by video game rules, but since you wear VR goggles, not all of the rules apply to you. In VR, nothing really exists, so you can lift everything up easily, punch with near-infinite strength and wreck [sic] total havoc to the extent where physics engine can't cope up anymore.

Expect things to break, then, though I honestly don’t know how you’d be able to tell the difference between working as intended and completely broken. You can watch its progress from prototype to Early Access in the video below.

So what’s the deal with all the naked people? Sosowski explains that not only do they not have brains or bones, they are also absent souls and nipples. OK, then. They should be regarded as “weird non-gross zombie creatures” rather than humans, he adds. They also don’t have blood! What a world.

A six month Early Access is the plan, but that could change. Ideas for new modes that could be introduced during Early Access include a driving mode, a spider mode (complete with web-slinging) and an animatronics mode, which could allow players to create, record and playback animations.

The latter will no doubt pair well with the ability to save replays to gifs, so you can create your own weird scenes and quickly get them out onto Twitter for people to watch and probably feel a bit uncomfortable about. The whole game started with a gif, really. Sosowski was experimenting with human models without AI and created some extremely strong, chest bumping monstrosities, which he turned into a gif that went viral. And from there, the nightmare was born.

Mosh Pit Simulator is out now on Steam for £15.49/$20 and supports some of the best VR headsets, the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.