• This story contains very minor spoilers for Stranger Things season four. 
• Stranger Things VR is an upcoming game where players explore the Upside Down as Vecna. 
• A release date of “late 2023” is provided. 

The latest Stranger Things game has been revealed and it is simply titled “Stranger Things VR”, an upcoming virtual reality game that we’ll be able to play next year with Vecna as the player character.

“Play as Vecna in this new Stranger Things adventure in VR. Become an explorer of unknown realities as you form the hive mind and tame the void. Invade minds and conjure nightmares in your quest to enact revenge on Eleven and Hawkins. Stranger Things VR is a psychological horror / action game developed by Tender Claws and coming to major VR platforms in Winter 2023,” the official announcement reads.

We can learn a tiny bit more about the games from the Tender Claws website, including a more universal release window for those of us not bound by the seasons in America. There the company lists the release date of simply “late 2023”.

Considering that much of Vecna’s backstory was told in season four we have to wonder about that late 2023 release date. Maybe more of Vecna will be shown off, which will bleed into season five, which is why the game is coming out so long after season four from earlier this year.

That’s just speculation from our point so we need to dig around for a bit more information, with the one titbit we managed to find coming from the aforementioned Tender Claws website.

Of note is our header image above, which has the file name of “castleByers_red”. The cobbled hideout of Will and Jonathan Byers, Castle Byers, featured in previous seasons so maybe Stranger Things VR will also retroactively explore some elements of that and not just season four and up. This would make sense considering what happened in season four and the story of Vecna, so it will be interesting to see just how much of the show’s history Tender Claws will visit and / or rewrite.

As for Tender Claws, Stranger Things VR is the latest in a long line of titles it has created for virtual reality. Virtual Virtual Reality, Virtual Virtual Reality 2, Tempest, and The Under Presents are some of the projects listed by the company as past endeavours. There’s also Tendar, an AR virtual pet experience, the art installation George in the Tub and even an in-person sport called Tumball.

We have to mention that George in the Tub has participants assuming the body of George W. Bush, in a bathtub, and Tumball requires the use of two real tumbleweeds and two actual leaf blowers to play. People talk about the high cost and availability of VR headsets to enjoy virtual reality experiences, but not once have we considered how difficult it would be to find a pair of tumbleweeds and leaf blowers.

Back to Stranger Things VR and all we can do is wait for more concrete details to be revealed over the next year or so. For now the short trailer below and the aforementioned statement above is all we have.