Everyone knows you pull the trigger to fire, but there’s also a whole universe to experience in the interactions before, during and after that moment which do not exist in any software except Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. RUST LTD.’s 10-year journey building H3VR relentlessly explored that space week by week to develop those complex physical interactions.

The journey begins around here in 2016 in Anton Hand’s developer log:

And it wraps up around here in 2026:

When you include H3VR’s community as part of what this project is, it becomes clear this simulation is not just software — it’s a staggering work of performance art that represents the maturation of an artist and his collaborators in the age of the Internet. H3VR reaches with two hands into VR and grasps what traditional games overlooked as too mundane to be interesting for the press of a button. In these moments and their interactions H3VR proves VR’s worth not as a videogame platform but as a place worth visiting for long stretches of time.

Here at Good Virtual Reality you can peek inside the mind of developer Anton Hand across two podcasts, one each covering H3VR1 and H3VR2. I’ll add the link to the H3VR1 podcast on this post when the game officially exits early access.

For the addition of H3VR to the Certified Good Virtual Reality Collection I reached out to the people who spent hundreds to thousands of hours inside this masterpiece and asked them to tell me what it means to them. Below are some selected comments I received over email with bolding added for emphasis and a few corrected typos:

• Admiral Snackbar: Originally I had written off H3VR as just a gun sandbox / shooting range that I wasn’t really interested in, although I was aware of it. Sometime in December 2019 I was playing Windlands 2 co-op with a random online person and as we were chatting, he kept raving about H3VR and especially the rogue-lite mode of take and hold. He told me about how there were over 300 guns (at the time - now we’re around 500+) and how it was way more than a shooting range. I said I’d get it on sale and he told me - it doesn’t, so I bought it that day. Over 400 hours of game time later, having participated in multiple take and hold tournaments, there is no better game in my eyes for VR. There are other great VR games for sure and I have a list of favorites, but none of them approach the depth of interaction and true skill development that is present in H3VR. I think that comes from the raw time and energy spent in developing it for a decade. Armswinging Movement has been refined to a degree not seen anywhere else. It’s the only VR game that has had this kind of longevity for me and had me coming back for years. For me personally, H3VR has become my comfort game and place to blow off steam. Especially during the pandemic when it felt like everything was crashing down, I could escape to a place where I could take out my frustrations, running through concrete hallways, listen to some music or a podcast, and blast hot dog soldiers as they utter comical one liners.

• Hoyt: For me I think H3VR is about community. Its kind of weird to say that about a single player VR game, even putting on VR goggles is an isolating act. And for the first couple hundred hours of my playtime that’s what it was, me vs the hotdogs. But then I found the tournament scene. Once a year tons of people in the community get together to have a live-broadcasted and live-commented community run tournament and it is an amazing experience. The creativity, kindness and enthusiasm of the H3 community is second to none, and for a few months every year I get to hang out with some truly great people from all over the world and celebrate this game we all have hundreds or thousands of hours in together…When people finish a tournament run, we let the audience ask questions and its a running joke to ask them one of the sosig lines: “Why hotdogs?” and my answer is that I wouldn’t have it any other way.

• Mr. King: H3VR has been in my life since i was 17 I learned about H3 from NerdCubed when they did a video covering the game around Update... 40ish and that was the moment i knew i need to get into the VR ecosystem….For me H3VR is the VR game that should be looked at and studied. Its mechanics its style the way it tackles locomotion, it pushed VR to its limits.

• KTU (writing through Japanese to English translation): After saving enough money, I bought a gaming PC, an Oculus Rift S, and H3VR. I still vividly remember the first time I handled a firearm in VR. It was an unforgettable experience. Since then, I’ve watched every weekly Devlog that Anton has uploaded. Every update brought something new to explore, and I would spend countless hours enjoying all the new content. Take and Hold quickly became my favorite game mode, and I’ve spent the vast majority of my 1,300+ hours playing it.

• Waddicker: H3VR is the entire reason I even considered buying VR in the first place, despite how primitive it was by comparison at the time. I bought H3VR on July 8th 2016, nearly 10 years ago and the very same day I received my first VR headset. Ever since that day I had played, watched, and kept up with H3VR’s development keenly, pouring hundreds of hours into the game. I was vocal on all the spaces that existed for the game at the time, the steam forums, the reddit, etc. It wasn’t until December 2016 that H3VR began to truly change my life and become more than just a game I was following, where I contributed an illustration I made to the game’s first Meatmas Contest. I ended up winning one of the awards and had my art presented inside the game’s old Meatmas Snowglobe scene, alongside a physical package sent by Anton himself of which I still have all the contents of today...His community understands him and he understands his community, both able to talk with and understand each other on such a level field that it’s unlike any other game I’ve seen in recent years.

• Tim: I’m a Mechanical Engineering PhD Candidate in Canada. H3VR to me will always be a game I look fondly on, even years from now. I bought my first VR headset, an Oculus Rift S, the week before the Covid-19 lockdowns landed. Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades was one of the first titles I bought after perusing some lists of best VR titles. Once I got over the initial learning curve of VR gaming, I was hooked. Like many, the lockdown was a tough time. H3VR provided a good outlet for gaming, especially as I started to get good at the Take and Hold game mode. Through chasing the leaderboard I got involved in the First to Wurst community, competing in a few of their tournaments. As a fun fact, I am actually the one who designed and 3D printed the very first First to Wurst physical trophy (though I only made it to the quarter finals). Finding such a fun, vibrant community was a great balm for the trials of the Covid lockdowns…I often joke that it ruined VR shooters for me because of how good it is. While I do not have the time to play it as much as I did, I am forever grateful for the experiences I had and the chance to connect with people in another fun community in a dark time.

• Hydro: I have about 250 hours at the time of writing. I got the game in 2024, around the time I got my Quest 2, but I haven't played it too much until 2025. I've been following Anton's work since 2018 or 2019, when I saw Jedit's silly reload videos, and Take N Hold runs. These videos alone made me in awe over how interesting the game looked, how the guns functioned, the whole ordeal making my interest in firearms spring back into my life…H3VR Has changed my love for VR From "It's a little niche thing that I like to use for socializing" to "A dream come true in physically draining myself while having a lot of fun" and a safe haven for my interests in firearms, while living in a country that has strict firearm laws. From deep of my heart, thank you Anton for making this game, it's been a life changer for me.

• Team Skyborne: I picked up the game in May of 2017, and have just shy of 530 hours since then…I got an original Vive back in 2016 after trying in-store demos over and over, and H3VR popped up on my radar in its early forms while I was still playing basic things like Job Simulator, The Lab, and Space Pirate Trainer. They were good, but what became H3VR caught my interest because of the depth of simulation and the iteration that the project was going through. H3's development made me excited for VR because it was a look into someone doing serious independent research into what kind of interactions were actually possible, and the frequent devlogs made me interested in seeing what kind of ways the tech could be built upon. All these years later, it's still my go-to any time I want some shooty action, especially with Take and Hold in its modern form and the large community of modders who've added their own contributions to what the game has to offer.

• Nick: I first got into VR in 2019, just a few months before COVID hit and everything shut down. I was a sophomore in high school at the time, so when I wasn’t working on academics, I was typically playing video games. I also purchased H3VR during the pandemic. H3VR has been a part of my life for over 6 years now, and it has been with me through high school, college, job changes, and many other things that life has thrown at me. There are very few games that have stuck with me for this long. I was actually playing H3VR last night, and as I was slaughtering some Rotwieners, I was reflecting on how much this game means to me, and how I have always returned to it despite numerous big changes in my life.

And some selected comments from Reddit:

• “I love that the game really started as a way for Anton to dick around with vr and it's resulted in one of the best dicking around games ever made”

• “I’m from a country that guns are totally illegal, and going to a shooting range is extremely difficult, unless you’re friend of someone who is in the armed forces. So, unlikely, this is the only opportunity that i have to be as close to shoot a gun in my entire life…”

• It gives me nearly everything I want from guns and in some aspects far more than I could get regular. And all that in my living room, for the cost of one decent gun without any legal hassle.

• H3VR meatmas was always there for me when my family couldn’t be.

• H3VR has been with me for a large chunk of my life. Its outlasted relationships, friendships, and transition. The weekly devlogs were something consistent i could look forward to when I didnt have much else to and, though maybe this is a bit cringy to say, honestly the desire to see what comes next week after week kept me going a lot longer than i would've

• To me, H3 is the pinnacle of VR gaming, along side VTOL VR. These are the two games I always recommend to people when they're getting into VR. I always see threads here on reddit talking about Boneworks this, HL:A that, and I always try to advocate for our silly little hotdog shooter. No one does guns better, be it vr or flatscreen, in my opinion.

• H3VR was one of the main reasons I bought a PC. I spent years watching YouTube videos before finally being able to play it myself. I love the attention to detail and how in depth the guns are. I’ve probably spent close to 300 hours just in take and hold beating off wieners.

• I had been following the development since I was still in elementary school in late 2016 Ive watched every single devlog that was ever posted hoping that when I got a decent gaming PC and an VR headset that I would play the shit out of H3. It’s currently my longest played VR game double the hours of the two runner ups Pavlov and ITR1.

• First got this game in spring of 2016 when i was in like 8th grade and was one of the only people in my friend group that had VR and thus got a lot of people into vr letting them come and play it. Im now turning 24 with a masters degree and still fire the game up when i feel like shooting but the weather isn’t good enough to hit the real range

• When I had space for my VR rig to be set up, H3VR was a fantastic physics playground that just happens to have guns.

• H3VR has been like crack for me; it scratches an itch I didn’t know I had, in ways I didn’t know were possible. I’ve had the game since Feb 15th of 2021 and have almost clocked 1,000 hours, which would make it the 3rd game in library to do so. If I were to take a guess as to why I love this game so much, I’d say it’s because I love guns but don’t own any myself. The interactions with the firearms are some of the best in VR…

Lastly, I also reached out to one of RUST LTD.’s co-founders Luke Noonan for his thoughts about H3VR. Here’s why he thinks H3VR is successful:

First, many VR titles optimize, first and foremost, for the initial 5-20 minute experience. There are plenty of reasons to do that, from marketing to battery life. But that is not what we did in H3VR. The first hour of H3 can, honestly, be pretty rough for a new player. But for the players that make it through that, the simulation depth, humor, and subtle world building, make H3VR one of the few places in VR that really rewards extended engagement. H3VR is optimized for hours 2 through 200.

The second thing was Anton’s environmental design. He built the environments knowing that he would have to spend hundreds of hours in them and as a result they were very nice spaces to spend time in. All video games are virtual worlds, if you want people to spend hundreds or even thousands of hours in your virtual world, you have to make it a compelling place to spend time. Based on the number of users who have told stories about how they hop into the game to relax after work, I think that Anton’s calm, restrained approach to environmental design really resonated with players.

The third thing that has really made this game such an enduring success is something we can only take a little credit for: the community. There are all the content creators making videos, the tens of thousands of people who hang out in our discord server/subreddit/steam forums/etc. and the handful of people that built the truly epic IMFDB page. But a ton of credit has to go to our modding community. Even with a decade of early access development time, there are limits to what we have been able to build. So many people in the community found one of those limits and said “no problem, I’ll build that myself”. The sheer amount of time the community has spent watching, reading, and playing community made stuff is awesome.

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Bullets are more threatening than Beat Saber’s boxes — you dodge or you die. Controllers in hand and vibrating when you fire back constantly reminds that any threat can be neutralized. So when thumping music teaches you to move around its dreamy landscapes like Neo in The Matrix, Pistol Whip’s sustained state of pure physical embodiment grabs you and never lets go.

Cloudhead doesn’t gate content behind paid add-ons, so buying Pistol Whip provides access to multiple campaigns as well as mods, like “Deadeye” that removes the game’s centerpiece aiming assistance and replaces it with incredibly intense challenges. The studio’s thoughtful approach to development also armed it with a way to effortlessly enjoy community content, even in standalone mode.

You may enjoy other rhythm games more for any number of reasons, but Pistol Whip’s unique approach to balancing flight and fight makes it the perfect rhythm game and a perennial reason to own a headset and return to VR for one more shootout.

Find it on Steam, the Quest Store, and PlayStation VR2.

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Resolution Games immediately embodies players in VR as a mighty tree that transports a player straight from their living room to protect shiny acorns from thieving squirrels in VR. Your fingers turn into the wooden branches of the tree and VR’s ability to scale the environment makes you tower over a field invaded by scheming squirrels. Tree vs. squirrel matches are just a few minutes each and random codes make it easy for squirrels on phones to find their tree in VR.

The speed by which a match starts and ends, with the joy and surprise associated with the tree tossing squirrels into the far reaches of simulated space, is exactly the reason why Acron can entertain for an hour or more as players take their turn in VR with just a single headset.

Acron was released in 2019 and received its latest update in 2026. The game is available on the Quest store with free companion apps on Android and iOS to log in as the squirrels.

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The innate sense of scale and distance designers experience architecting a course from simple shapes they make in headsets translates to awe and charm for visitors on opening day more than a year later. Over that time, skilled artists are given dominion over the emerging space in rotation so they can add their own layer of surprise to each design.

The focused effort to create “the context for humans to interact with one another”, as art director Don Carson has said, means fans trust Walkabout when the studio releases a new add-on course for $5.

This virtuous production and release cycle is a critical barometer of the VR market, showing players returning regularly with cash in hand to explore eclectic destinations spanning the familiar, like Hollywood and Venice, to mind-melting excursions in Upside Town and Meow Wolf. Walkabout is accessible with a single controller becoming a putter resizing itself to the greens and it is impossible to get lost in VR with just a trigger pull back to your ball.

Pick a room name as a private address in virtual reality and then spend an hour with family and friends in a realm far away from the physical world. The real skill to practice is not putting but conversation, because in Walkabout you interact as much with the environment as you do the people you are with in VR.

Peruse the Certified Good VR Collection now with Walkabout Mini Golf.

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Dozens of artists who persist today in their ongoing discovery of Good VR credit their early experience in Titans of Space with inspiring them to pursue all manner of spatial design. The Iranian developer Sahand Malaei, one of the creators of Banners & Bastions, recently described the work during a Good VR podcast episode.

“I remember there was this moment where I was flying close to the sun and I remember like just seeing how massive it was and how small I was and just knowing that this was an experience that could only happen in VR,” Malaei said. “I actually cried.”

So say we all. The work is proof not just that the space for discovery in VR is much larger than the focus of gaming by Oculus, but that our understanding of reality itself is constrained by the mediums of the past.

Every classroom in the world would be better with a VR headset in the room locked to the opening scene of Titans of Space and its representation of the Earth, moon and sun at one-millionth their actual scale. You can spend 20 seconds grounded in a virtual spaceship and understand not just how small the moon is in comparison to the Earth, but simply turn your head to look at the sun in three dimensions and you’ll immediately understand how incredibly large the sun is burning in our sky.

The world should be filled with more scientists, astronomers, and explorers unconstrained by the inanity of modern life fed to them by screens, books, and social feeds, and all they need to see the enormous potential floating just out of sight above their heads is to experience DrashVR’s use of scale conveyed by three dimensions.

Titans of Space remains a timeless example of the enduring power of VR to expand the human mind. Though Valve, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Pico, and Google rushed across different periods to apply their business development to wide field of view optics in VR, most of them racing to the bottom in their own way in an attempt to establish themselves as the ground floor of everything you see and hear, Titans of Space exists as proof that you will never need a platform to stand on to have a good VR experience except one made by a single person inspired by an idea they’ve learned to express with a head-tracked 3D display.

Titans of Space remains one of the best VR experiences ever made and is one of the first to be formally certified with a Good Virtual Reality badge.

Developers studied Bad North and Thronefall as well as the dome used in Airspace Defender and then made an experience that respects players in ways few games do in VR headsets.

“We had this idea of building this prototype and worked on it for three months and it turned out to be a lot of fun,” Sahand Malaei said on the Good VR podcast. “It was an experience that worked best in XR as opposed to its flat screen inspiration.”

Banners raise high above the battlefield so grabbing one to reposition troops still gives line of sight to the action below. As the battle progresses, with forces invading from different directions, getting a better angle on the action is a light gesture from the sides of the volume to rotate the board or simply lean in to see if the archers raising their bows to the sky have enough clearance to hit their targets reliably.

Banners & Bastions can and should share space with your physical reality as well as other minimalist works of mixed reality, like Thomas Van Bouwel’s Cubism, and the brilliance of its design challenges hardware manufacturers and operating system designers to rise to the occasion and make space for work like this to flourish as it should.

Good virtual reality is discovered constantly and most people just need directions so they can get there. This new section of Good Virtual Reality collects projects that push the medium forward. Like pins in a map, the collection aims to help those exploring VR in headsets navigate the impossibly large stretches between points of interest.

Developers receive a badge to certify their work and if you have recommendations for the collection you can email editor at goodvirtualreality dot com.

For those learning about Good Virtual Reality here, we are an independent journalism effort that is totally community supported and independently owned. As editor, publisher and owner of the content I produce, after a decade leading editorial operations at UploadVR.com, here I have the control necessary to focus on what resonates with the humans experiencing this medium. In just over three months of Good VR, around 100 pieces have published with podcast guests including some of the most experienced and inspired practitioners of immersive design. When Anton Hand dropped the biggest VR game announcement of the year with H3VR2, for example, subscribers had the news in their inbox with details shared across an hour-long podcast and you can learn about his life-long journey as an artist exclusively on Good VR’s YouTube channel.

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