'Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul' Available Now On Steam VR

Empty your bladder, stock up on heart medication, and make sure someone is home to comfort you when you start to cry. The wait for Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul--formerly known as Paranormal Activity VR--is finally over. It took a while for VRWERX's tie-in to the Paranormal Activity horror franchise to make its debut but, much to the chagrin of our poor heart valves, the game has finally made its way to Steam with a brand new name.

We first caught wind of the VR horror experience in October 2015 when HTC and VRWERX partnered with AMC movie theaters to scare the crap out of movie-goers attending the premier weekend of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. Patrons with tickets to the film were treated with an early access demo of the game as a bonus scare before they watched the movie.

VRWERX also brought the Paranormal Activity VR demo to several trade show events, but we’ve yet to cross paths with the developer. We can’t say for ourselves how scary the game is, but the reaction videos on YouTube paint a vivid picture: This game is frightening!

Paranormal Activity VR was originally intended for a Spring 2016 release, but the development process took a full year longer than originally intended. The delay may have been a good thing, though. We expected Paranormal Activity VR to be a short demo like experience like the Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine experience from ILMxLAB. We were wrong.

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul is a full game that you can sink a few hours (roughly five, according to its Steam page) into. The developer calls the title an open-world game because you have the freedom to go wherever your want, whenever you want, but the entire experience takes place inside a single house, so open-world is somewhat of a misnomer. Non-linear is probably a better term for the game's do-what-you-want structure.

“Gameplay length will vary on gameplay style. There are no Quicktime events in this game, and it's up to the player to discover and unravel the story. It's pretty much an open world in the house, so explore where you can. Completionist can be in this game for many many hours, it's hard to assign an amount of hours, but we have had people play anywhere from 5 to over 10 hours.”

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul supports the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift with Touch controllers. The game doesn’t demand a large play area, but it does require 360-degree tracking, so Oculus players have to set up their Constellation cameras in the experimental 360-degree tracking configuration.

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul is available now on Steam for $34. VRWERX is selling the game with a 15% introductory discount; after March 21, the price goes up to $40.