A childish puzzle adventure game that fails to engage.

Go on a search for the planet’s first civilization.

Launching today (Jan. 9) for the Meta Quest headsets, step into the shoes of archaeologist Scott Hudson and finish your father’s journey in EPYKA. This is the first virtual reality (VR) game by developer Singular Perception.

Billed as an adventure game with brain-teasing puzzles, EPYKA ends up failing on both accounts. Instead of living up to its own hype, the game offers a short and boring experience that feels like a tech demo even your dog companion cannot save.

If there was ever a game that you could point to as being completely made for kids – aside from those shitty gorilla games where piss poor parents allow their infantile brats to scream racism at strangers – EPYKA would be it. The lack of any difficulty across the board, combined with the sheer amount of hand holding, makes this game one of the most boring and pitiful puzzlers out there.

Considering Escape Simulator is a game that exists on Quest headsets, that’s saying something.

Your game starts on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Your supplies are gone and all hope seems to be lost, on what looks to be a fruitless quest to follow in your fathers footsteps. After you open the can of dog treats and Jack the dog’s disappointment foreshadows your own feelings about the game, a mysterious crystal among your things comes alive. From there, you make it to the island where your mediocre adventure can begin.

There’s really not a lot to do across the eight levels that can be completed in well under two hours. On this journey you’ll face a few puzzles – all of which are so easy you’d have to be the dumbest person on the planet to not solve them – and even fewer chances for action. All this is tied together by a very basic story of how the civilization rose and fell, as told to you by the last remaining shaman of Epyka – who is still alive after thousands of years and waiting for you to help fight a demon.

The story is probably the only part of this game that isn’t just the worst thing ever, and even then it’s still not great.

Essentially a magic crystal fell from the sky and through it, the people of Epyka gained the knowledge they needed. After a while, the people set out to share what they knew with the world. Instead of being met with kindness and compassion, the people of the world decided to kill, with few making it back to warn of the coming danger. Eventually, the crystal was consumed by darkness and a fire demon was born – or the demon was already there and consumed the crystal because it had darkness. Again, it was not that great of a story and it was kinda annoying to deal with the cutscenes.

Either way, there’s some fire lava demon thing and you “fight” it at the very end in a very stupid and not so engaging battle, using the magic you acquire.

As mentioned earlier, there are some moments for action here in the game. They come towards the very end though and are really not that exciting. You get two magic “spells,” one allows you to levitate rocks and the other is a shield that can reflect laser beams. Both of these spells can be used by holding the crystal and activating them with the controller trigger.

Aside from there being no instance where using these spells is fun – you use the levitation one to throw rocks at a barrier and the demon, the shield just blocks lasers shot at you by random blobby monsters – the spells occur at predetermined points of the story. This means you never even have to swap between them in the “heat of battle,” as the shield and levitation swap automatically when needed.

Let’s now talk about the puzzles. From the moment you drop onto the island, you’re meant to solve puzzles as you make your way further inland – and towards the shaman. These are all extremely easy with only one that can really pose any sense of annoyance – and even then it’s annoying because of how stupid it is, not because it’s hard. You’ll find yourself searching for hieroglyph style codes to open chests, guiding the dog through a maze, and even something as challenging as putting a cube back together.

In case you don’t know, that last part was sarcasm, this cube thing was a pretty pathetic excuse for a puzzle.

Finally let’s quickly talk about graphics. They’re not great.

Now, we could have left it there, but why leave that on the table. Things are cartoonish here, but considering the game is obviously marketed towards kids, this makes sense. However, even the cartoon stylings across the game cannot prevent the majority of things from looking rather basic. The world around you is pretty ugly, as the game suffers from flat textures and a low framerate – which stutters to the point of nearly freezing the game. The only things in the game which are not completely devoid of life are the dog and the shaman whom you meet right before you face off against a “boss” that looks like a literal pile of shit.

Regardless, there’s nothing special in EPYKA that will make you take a moment to stare in awe, at the VR world around you.

Overall, EPYKA is a VR offering that can be considered largely forgettable.

There is so little to do and absolutely nothing stands out here, it’s actually quite sad when you realize there are demos out there that have more substance than this game.

If you’re looking for something new as 2025 kicks off, this may not be one to target. The game lacks any memorable moments and characters are so forgettable that the names of the shaman and demon don’t even come to mind; never mind having a dog companion present who is useful maybe twice the entire game.

The media release notes “EPYKA’s bright world and heartfelt narrative ensure that its challenges and triumphs resonate long after you remove the headset,” however, the only thing which may resonate with you is how you wasted $13.99 on this game. On the bright side, you can probably complete the game in less than two hours and request a refund from the Quest store to get your money back, if you do decide to give EPYKA a chance.

EPYKA, was reviewed on the Quest 3 after receiving a pre-release key.