For the artists who make Walkabout Mini Golf, the path to virtual reality often begins with a pencil and paper to sketch out their ideas before jumping into Gravity Sketch for spatial building.

Now fans with Quest headsets can trace some of that path from home.

A collaboration between Walkabout Mini Golf and Pencil sees Quest-owning fans of the game dropping their putter onto the table to trace the drawings of Don Carson, the lead designer of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and an art director at Mighty Coconut. The step-by-step lessons available in the app for pencil and paper will teach players how to draw Walkabout's version of the characters Alice meets in Wonderland.

Effectively, Walkabout and Pencil are starting to recreate the Animation Academy attraction from California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort, where visitors learn how to draw Disney's most iconic characters from skilled artists. You just have to switch between two apps on Quest to go from the Alice in Wonderland's Walkabout theme park to Pencil, where you can learn to draw in Carson's style. The characters Alice encounters, from the Cheshire Cat to the Queen, have been re-imagined for VR by Carson and his teammates, pulling inspiration from the original illustrations of John Tenniel.

The tracing lessons are available as a free pack inside Pencil on Quest. The app is also adding a collection of authentic set pieces from Walkabout to play with for inspiration as you draw.

UploadVR is celebrating our Winter Showcase with a new Humble Bundle, featuring nine SteamVR games for $17.

Available for the next three weeks, the UploadVR Winter 2025 Showcase Bundle is now live following today's showcase. This time around, it's split between two separate tiers, with the games individually costing a combined total of $219.

The $10 tier comes with four games: After The Fall: Deluxe Edition, Guardians: Frontline, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, and A Fisherman's Tale 2 (previously known as Another Fisherman's Tale). Choosing the $17 tier then adds the remaining five: Z.O.N.A: Origin, Metal: Hellsinger VR, I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine, Ghosts of Tabor, and Hellsweeper VR.

Charity proceeds will support the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and you can adjust the revenue split between publishers, Humble and its chosen charities. While the above prices are the minimum you can spend on each tier, you can select how much you pay if you're looking to donate more.

The UploadVR Winter 2025 Showcase Bundle ends on December 26 at 6pm PT.

Guardians Planetfall looks like VR's answer to Helldivers 2, bringing a new squad-based shooter to Quest 3 and PC VR next year in early access.

Revealed during the UploadVR Winter Showcase, Guardians Planetfall is a follow-up to 2023's Guardians Frontline by VirtualAge. Set in an ongoing galaxy-wide war, this supports up to four players per squad as you defeat alien threats, soldiers, and war machines across different planets, battlefields, and more. You can see the reveal trailer below.

While Frontline actively mixes FPS and RTS mechanics, Guardians Planetfall takes a different approach while remaining in that same universe. The upcoming game involves team-based PvE and extraction missions as you fend off two different factions: the Void Empire, and an evolved Bugs race. You can customize your strike ship, suits and weapons, choosing where to deploy your squad for missions.

VirtualAge states mission locations will range across all extremes such as deserts, jungles, frozen outposts and “lava scarred” strongholds. Beacons can be deployed to call in orbital support for air strikes and various tools, while antigravity gloves let you climb most surfaces. Jetpacks can help reach higher ground, each mission has optional secondary objectives for earning greater rewards, while items placed into your backpack are only rescued if you successfully evacuate.

Completing these procedural missions then allows you to upgrade your ship, using blueprints and resources to upgrade its offensive, defensive, supply, and support systems. This unlocks new orbital abilities, and you'll travel between different star systems and planets across this campaign. Missions change who controls a specific planet and once you've cleared a campaign, the galaxy resets.

Much like Frontline, Guardians Planetfall also features an in-game map editor where you build missions in VR. This allows you to alter terrain, structures, enemy encounters, objectives and more, which can then be shared with the community and edited in co-op too.

We recommended Planetfall's predecessor in our 2023 review, calling Guardians Frontline an “ambitious attempt to combine the best elements of two disparate genres” and giving it our recommendation. Further post-launch updates later followed that included adding a large enemy known as 'The Queen', while 'Update 1.5' introduced a revised editor mode.

Guardians Planetfall will launch in early access on Quest 3/3S and Steam in 2026.

Mixed reality tactical roguelite Banners & Bastions is out now on Quest.

Created by Not Suspicious (Airspace Defender, Tablecraft), Banners & Bastions is a tabletop roguelite with hand-tracking controls that's been available in early access. The recent UploadVR Winter Showcase revealed that it's entering full release on December 15, with the 1.0 Update adding new hero units with unique special abilities, a new bestiary, an autumn battlefield biome, and more.

Version 1.0 follows a continuing series of updates across early access. Following October's addition of controller support, last month's content expansion added a new dragon boss battle and more foes. The latter update introduced a new playable Minefield card and two new enemy types - the Witch (ranged) and the Elite Swordsman (melee).

Battles occur across procedurally generated maps as you defend your kingdom, with tougher foes gradually emerging across fresh waves. You can continue investing in your local economy or fortifications, while your troops range from spearmen, knights, archers, and more.

Banners & Bastions is out now on the Meta Quest platform.

Upcoming VR horror game Dread Meridian is getting a multiplayer mode alongside its solo campaign with next month's launch.

Developed by KUKRGAME, Dread Meridian is an atmospheric VR survival horror game set across the island of Oglanbyen. Focused on a researcher called Daniella, we arrive at this remote arctic island searching for her lost twin sister, Isabella, solving puzzles and fending off strange creatures. As seen in today's UploadVR Winter Showcase, it's now confirmed multiplayer support, with a playtest coming before the end of the year.

While today's trailer didn't reveal much else about the upcoming multiplayer mode, the Dread Meridian development team revealed more to UploadVR in a written Q&A. The studio tells me it's considered multiplayer since the beginning, though focusing on Daniella's story was the priority before exploring how multiplayer could work across Oglanbyen.

“We wanted to make sure that we brought something new to the table with the elements that made Dread Meridian unique. Once we knew we were on the right path with our single player, then we started to experiment with how we could bring the exciting features of the world, the setting and especially the creepier elements to multiplayer.”

Dread Meridian has one multiplayer gameplay mode that supports four players per match, splitting your group into two teams. Cross-platform multiplayer support isn't available at launch, “but it's an important feature we plan to add in the future.”

You play as either the human survivors trying to escape Oglanbyen, or the monsters looking to hunt them down using special abilities. The developers confirmed that a full match takes place over multiple rounds, and you take turns playing between the humans and monsters.

“When playing as the humans, your goal is to destroy the monster's nests and escape through the extraction point. You must search for ammo and resources in order to survive the constant threat of the monster team. As a monster, you play as one of the unique twisted creatures with their own special abilities that are used to hunt, trap and defeat the human team.”

Asked about its long-term plans for supporting multiplayer, the studio states that it first plans to gauge the community's reaction and develop this mode further based on feedback. Calling this “such a different type of game mode from what's commonly seen in VR,” the studio says this means there aren't any best practices in place right now.

“We want our game to stand out, and not just build towards what is popular right now.”

Finally, I queried how the team plans to address feedback following mixed reception to Dread Meridian's previous playtests. Our own PC VR demo impressions praised the Lovecraftian adventure's body horror and unsettling mood, though we encountered numerous glitches that hampered our experience.

The developers highlighted positive responses to the game's immersion, art, and environments. However, they conceded that “we had several bugs that we had overlooked that caused negative experiences for our playtesters,” sometimes causing crashes. The studio advised it's since identified and resolved key issues behind these problems, stating it's now “dramatically improved” overall stability.

Dread Meridian will launch this January on PC VR and Quest, with pre-order skins available as a bonus.

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Dread Meridian released a demo for Steam Next Fest, but is it a worthy VR survival horror to look out for?

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