Devolver Digital announced that Gorn 2 is coming to SteamVR, Meta Quest, and PlayStation VR2 later this year. Digital Trends went hands on with three of its levels on Meta Quest 3S ahead of its reveal, which showed off its new weapons and familiar gore.
The original Gorn, a hack and slash action game developed by Anger Foot studio Free Lives, launched for VR headsets in 2019. It was a success on Meta Quest, selling over one million units as of 2021. Its sequel looks to recapture that success with a new studio at the helm. Wands developer Cortopia Studios is leading the project in collaboration with Free Lives.
Gorn 2 doesn’t switch up the original game’s formula too much, tossing players into a series of wave-based gladiator battles. The goal is to survive by slicing enemies up with oversized weapons and utilizing arena traps. The sequel will up the ante by giving players 35 weapons to toy with, from bows to floppy nuncucks to steak axes. It will feature five arenas, and endless mode, and custom game options.
The slice I played dropped me into its second arena, where I cut my way through three levels. I got the hang of it quickly, as I picked up a sword and started hacking away at incoming meatheads. The morbid fun of Gorn 2 comes from the fact that enemies can be hacked apart. I quite literally disarmed an enemy by lopping his entire arm off. I killed another instantly by bashing in his skull with a giant mace. Others got shredded into sheets that laid around the arena. Yes, it’s Gorn alright.
Traps are a big part of the sequel, and I got a taste of three different environmental hazards during my demo. The first were spinning blades that rotated around the arena. I could knock enemies into them to slice them up (or just let them wander into them on their own). Another level was surrounded by giant spatulas that would occasionally slap down on and crush anything under them. The final level threw a fire pit in the middle of the arena, which I could bop enemies into and send them flying into the air.
All of that works in concert with Gorn 2‘s physics, which can create unpredictable moments of emergent comedy. In one arena, an enemy swung a giant axe at me, but accidentally hit another enemy with it, who got stuck to the blade. When the first enemy swung his steel again, the corpse attached to it hit a lava pool and flew into the air. That yanked the enemy attached to him backwards onto a spatula that had just hit the ground. It swung back up as soon as he stepped on it, sending both of them flying. It was comedy gold.
There’s plenty of more deliberate laughs packed into the three levels I played. I faced off against chickens who pooped eggs out at me as an attack. The second arena’s finale ended with me eating a soy steak, which shrunk me to the size of an insect. I had to kill full-sized enemies by swiping at their legs and then drag them over to a grill in the middle of the arena, turning them into real steaks that turned me into a giant.
If you enjoyed Gorn, there’s plenty of reasons to look forward to Gorn 2, even with a new developer behind the helm. It looks to deliver more laughs and ultraviolence than its predecessor that’ll make you feel like a sadistic psychopath. That’s the Gorn way.
Gorn 2 launches later this year on Steam VR, Meta Quest, and PlayStation VR2.
