Oculus Rift VR Jam finalists announced, winners revealed next week

Those of you that were alive more than a couple of months ago will remember our first mention of the Oculus Rift VR Jam, which invites indie developers to create a game for their fancy whizz-goggles in just three weeks. Those three weeks have come and gone, and now the entries have been whittled down to 20 finalists, which you can find here . There's a lot of interesting-looking stuff in that list, most of which can be downloaded and played right now - though you will have to supply the Rifts yourself.

If I had an Oculus Rift, this is the point in this story where I'd sample these games and tell you all about them, but you'll have to settle for a few meaningless observations instead, derived from me peering at the thumbnails for a bit. I'm most interested by Private Eye, which looks like a virtual reality version of Jimmy Stewart peeping tom classic Rear Window; there's also an unidentifiable title boldly calling itself Epic Dragon - now that's a name that demands further inspection. Developer/writer Robert Yang, who penned today's piece on Gone Home, is a finalist too, with his "Porco Rosso inspired arcade flight sim / narrative-y roguelike" Nostrum .

Here's the full list (thanks to Polygon ). The winners will be revealed next Thursday, with each of the Grand Prize recipients (it's not clear how many there will be) going home with a ~~Countdown teapot~~ $10,000.

Alone - Bryan Cohen
Chick Walk - Kevin Tsang
Ciess - Edward McNeill
Don't Let Go - Yorick van Vliet
Dragon - Morgan Jaffit
Dreadhalls - Sergio Hidalgo
Dumpy - Brian Schrank
Elevator Music - Julian Kantor
Epic Dragon - Aurelien Kerbeci
Komorebi - Fernando Ramallo
Lost Route - Sergey Brezhnev
Nostrum - Robert Yang
Private Eye - Jake Slack
Roleplayer - Joerg Pressel
Shiny - Janina Woods
Sight Line - Tomas Mariancik
Specter Seekers - Ryan Anderson
Stargazer - David Kalina
TimeRifters - Doug Wolanick
Virtual Internet Hacker - Lau Korsgaard

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.