Best Multiplayer Games for the Oculus Quest in 2021

Racket: Nx inserts you into a 360-degree, Tron-esque arena and gives you an amazingly fun, sweaty workout. The concept is simple — slam a ball against the circular arena wall, hitting point-granting targets and steering clear of penalty spots — but gameplay twists like time attack and power-ups add more of a challenge. Multiplayer matchmaking lets you practice while you wait, then pits you against other Quest or Rift users competing to rack up the most points. Excellent tracking of your hand's position and the speed of your swing, along with strong graphics, makes the gameplay one of the best overall on the Quest.

Keep Talking, which is strictly couch co-op, blows away most party games (pun intended) with short, frantic rounds of bomb defusal. The Quest wearer must disarm traps while non-VR onlookers read through a manual and guide the wearer while unable to see the bomb themselves. Each bomb gets progressively more challenging as players switch roles and learn to communicate under pressure. It's an excellent way to get friends hooked on VR so they'll buy their own headsets and join you for other online multiplayer games.

Beyond the 5-hour campaign, which introduces impressive first-person shooting mechanics and action-heavy story, you'll get the most replay value from the two-person co-op levels and four-person multiplayer horde mode. The high price tag and lack of cross-play means you'll either need friends with Quests or have fun competing for the most kills with strangers. The Arizona Sunshine devs have added new horde maps and DLC monthly since release, which should keep a strong multiplayer community in-game.

This crossplay-enabled MMO features an incredible diversity and depth of gameplay. There are eight different classes with unique fighting mechanics — sword/shield, archery, guns, spells, even musical attacks— potion-making, dungeon raids, and more. OrbusVR: Reborn is combat heavy with tricky controls, so it has a steep learning curve. That aside, you'll find considerably more unique content than almost any VR title, and proximity chat will help you make quick friends if you can't bring them with you.

The core of Dance Central VR is a single-player mode that lets you gyrate to the melody of 32 famous songs and try to match the choreography while the Quest tracks your movements. Beyond that, you can create a custom avatar with a selfie and then hang out in a multiplayer lounge with fellow Quest and Rift S owners. You can chat with friends and dance freestyle, then schedule songs and either perform team dances or challenge each other to dance-offs and compare the scores. It's silly, sweaty fun that encourages you to keep coming back and improving your technique.

We wouldn't really call VRChat a "game" as much as a strange social experience. You meet up with people around the world, dressed in (usually) anime- or game-inspired avatars spouting silly memes and just hanging out. Games and user-created environments exist, but most use it as a place to make friends and feel less alone. Some disclaimers: this isn't a kid-safe zone, and you may need to block rude people. Also, the Quest version limits the content you can see, leading to many avatars appearing as default robots. Many Quest users work around this with Oculus Link to try the full PCVR version.

Acron is another asymmetric couch VR game that turns the Quest wearer into an angry tree desperate to defend its acorns, while up to seven others use an iOS or Android app to play as squirrels rushing to steal them. This is an excellent party game that encourages role swapping, especially with squirrels, which all have different abilities and must coordinate strategies to capture the prize. One weakness lies in the lack of additional game modes, but the devs reportedly plan to remedy that in future.

This Quest launch title does a great job of training new VR users on how to use motion controls. Each of the three minigames — bowling, tennis and baseball — switches up its core mechanics by changing the ball, club, or environment for different challenges, challenging you to improve your skills as you go. It's one of the more popular multiplayer titles so you're likely to find matches quickly, and the silly no-rules gameplay keeps things fresh despite having only three sports modes. It's another title that effortlessly encourages fitness.

Become a powerful wizard and put your skills to the test against your magical opponents, real or AI. You must strategize to defeat your opponent, using offensive spells, traps, teleportation, summoned illusions, reflected attacks, and knowledge of the various maps to win. The game supports cross-play across most VR platforms, so you can easily duel friends and build up your spell list before taking on more challenging online opponents.

Team up with a fellow cyber ninja as you quadruple jump, run alongside walls, and slow down time as you kill waves of enemies. Six game modes boil down to killing enemies quickly or surviving as long as possible, and you earn XP to upgrade skills and weapons to become an unstoppable killing machine. The graphics aren't pretty and you'll need the comfort settings to reduce motion sickness as you soar around maps, but if you get past that, the frenetic gameplay will keep you and your friends hooked. Moreover, the ability to slow down time without slowing down time for your partner is an excellent mechanic.

Echo VR, arguably one of the most anticipated Quest titles in 2020, is currently in the midst of closed alpha testing as of April but should ideally release soon. Originally a Rift title, Echo Arena channels Ender's Game with its zero-G ultimate frisbee gameplay. Here you play a robot who can jetpack themselves around an arena, navigating through obstacles and opponents to score. Frantic, jubilant gameplay and crossplay with Rift users will make Quest's Echo VR an instant hit. It's worth noting though that there doesn't appear to be plans to port Echo Combat due to hardware limitations.