This New Quest 2 VR Game is GORGEOUS

This is a sneak peek at Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom, a Peaky Blinders VR game by Maze Theory, and it’s an amazing looking Quest 2 game. It adapts the Netflix show about a gangster family in the gritty streets of Birmingham and London in the 1920s, and it keeps the show’s beautiful industrial atmosphere. I played an alpha build, a demo of what the game will be like, so it isn’t finished and there was no release date yet. These are my first impressions.

Surfshark VPN sponsored this video. That pays for our time, not for my opinion.

A Peaky Blinders VR game with its own story

The developers told me the game tells its own story, so it shouldn’t spoil the series much. It’s set between seasons 3 and 4, though, so I think you’ll enjoy it most if you’ve seen some of the show. I’m a huge fan myself. I only started watching about a month before this video and I was already nearly at season 5, so I really recommend it.

Maze Theory made the Doctor Who VR game before this, also very narrative driven with lots of interaction, so I was curious whether this would feel similar.

Back in Small Heath

You start in what looks like a van, and you can snap turn or teleport if you want (I didn’t). Within a minute someone is cursing about the Peaky Blinders and it feels just like the series. You get a journal on your left shoulder with objectives, a map, items and character bios, so the game looks like it can get pretty deep.

The first job comes from Rowena: grab some clean overalls from a locker and find a red box of government documents that would be a disaster in the wrong hands. There’s a lot to look at and collect, like tarot cards and a penny (“I’m rich”), and things you find get stored in your journal.

Then you step outside into Small Heath, Birmingham, and it’s gorgeous. The atmosphere is beautiful, the theme song kicks in, and I kept thinking I couldn’t believe this ran on a standalone headset.

Meeting Tommy Shelby

In the pub you meet Tommy Shelby, the boss of the Peaky Blinders, and I’m such a fan. Seeing him in VR was crazy: he really looked like him, and that was definitely his voice. Tommy explains that Churchill’s place was robbed and his red dispatch box was taken, the “king’s ransom”. Whoever has it could blow the lid off the Empire, and the Shelby company will be rewarded for getting it back. He needs a trustworthy soldier for the job, “a surgeon, not a butcher”, but he isn’t convinced you’re the one yet.

To earn his trust, he sends you after a man who betrayed him. You get a gun (you put the magazine into the handle and store it in an underarm holster) and you get to choose how to handle the man: scare him or kill him. It’s up to you.

Combat and Arthur

The second part of the demo starts with target practice: pull a lever to raise the targets and shoot them, with manual reloading. Then you head out with Arthur, Tommy’s brother and the aggressive one in the series. The route splits in two directions, so there are choices, and there’s a bit of shooting before you raise a bridge and climb aboard a boat. I said “by order of the Peaky Blinders”, which I always wanted to say.

Arthur moves like the real Arthur. The developers told me they did some motion capture magic here, and it turned out great.

First impressions: who it’s for

Since this is an alpha build, I didn’t review it yet. So far I like it. I haven’t seen much, but it’s very narrative driven and story based, with interaction and some combat, and I love that. The combat was a bit easy and it’s very linear, but I don’t think that matters for a game like this. It’s made for fans, and I think the focus on story suits it. As a fan of the show, I’m excited to see more when the full game comes out.