BigBox VR announced that its upcoming VR battle royale shooter Population: One is heading back into invite-only playtesting soon, this time focusing on Oculus Quest.

“We’re going to start with Quest playtests in the month of June and then we’ll add in PC crossplay shortly after,” an email invite reads. “We’ve never done Quest playtests before, so we want to focus on one platform before we add multiple headsets into the mix.”

Playtesting appears to be pretty limited; the invite specifies that closed matches may take place on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays, likely to make better use of a smaller group of testers.

Population: One may be a bit behind the wave of trendy battle royale games—even when it was initially unveiled at Gamescom 2018—but we were impressed with the scrappy little multiplayer shooter in our first hands-on for its distinctly VR-native approach to things.

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You can climb, fly, build structures, and (of course) shoot and scrounge for weapons & ammo—all under the threat of a constantly closing circle of death.

It was already a comfortable and ostensibly well-polished game from the starting gate, and although we’re hoping for more past our initial impressions from nearly two years ago, being able to have just that with SteamVR-Quest cross-play will be a treat any way you slice it.

That said, there’s no launch date in sight yet, however the game’s website says it’s coming in 2020.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • gothicvillas

    I wish there was a large map without any circles closing in, just jump in any time and explore like DayZ.

    • Anfronie

      Yeah DayZ in VR would be nuts!

  • Rob Farthing

    I gotta see how this actually looks on the Quest – is there any gameplay? No way it can look as good as the screens and pcvr gameplay on the quest!

  • Looks like fun, but really want to see what the Quest graphics will look like. Also neat idea on building.

  • Jim P

    Must buy for me.