The team at 3R Games has designed the game to focus on physical movement, which truly enhances your sense of immersion as you explore the caves. Most of the time, you’ll find yourself reaching out to grab the walls, floor, and ceilings to pull yourself through the cave and its constricting paths. However, the real test arises when you encounter those extremely narrow sections you must navigate. In these moments, you’ll need to inhale deeply and hold your breath using the triggers on your controllers, pulling yourself through to the other side. If you don’t act quickly enough or accidentally exhale, it’s game over for Jake. Fortunately, the game includes generous checkpoints, ensuring you won’t be set back too far.

Alongside this method of movement, you’ll also gain access to a variety of tools that will assist you on your spelunking journey. First and foremost, the essential tool for navigating dark areas is a head-mounted flashlight, which you can adjust by reaching above your head. In this review build, the grabbing area seemed slightly misplaced, but the team plans to modify its position in an upcoming patch. Next, you will receive climbing picks that you must physically drive into the walls; however, this can be tricky—if you hold on for too long or neglect to clean your gloves, you might slip, or if they aren’t secured properly, they could rotate or fall out while you climb. To help keep your gloves clean, a cleaning tool is provided to scrape off the mud and dirt from the palms. While this worked effectively, if, like me, you have your Quest settings set to tap the controllers together to activate hand-tracking, it’s quite easy to trigger that by mistake.