'Rick And Morty' VR Game Out Today, How To Experience Without Vive Or Oculus

Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is out on Thursday for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. You play as a clone of Morty, Rick’s hapless grandson and reluctant sidekick. Actually, you play as many Morty clones, since you’ve been created to help Rick with tasks hazardous to life. The actual gameplay sounds similar to developer Owlchemy Labs’ previous release, 2016’s Job Simulator, with puzzles that can be solved by manipulating various small objects around you. While Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality isn’t the only Rick and Morty game — the mobile game Pocket Mortys game out in Jan. of 2016 — it is probably the highest profile Rick and Morty release that the vast majority of Rick and Morty fans won’t experience.

While exact sales figures aren’t available, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney estimated the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift’s install base coming into 2017 as approximately half a million. The Playstation VR headset has sold nearly double that, with 915,000 units sold according to figures released by Sony this February. At this point there aren’t plans to release Virtual Rick-ality on PSVR. But even were it to come out for PSVR, the number of Rick and Morty VR players are a small fraction of the show’s viewership. 676,000 people caught the Rick and Morty Season 3 premiere, which was released by surprise on April 1. Reruns on Adult Swim regularly bring in 400,000 viewers.

If you’re into Rick and Morty but not into spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on first adopter tech, there are still ways to wring a little Rick and Morty out of Virtual Rick-ality. With new Season 3 episodes not premiering until this summer, this is the most new Rick you can get.

There is, of course, the official trailer from Adult Swim Games, which shows a surprising amount of gameplay:

If you want to see more from Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality keep a close eye on the Owlchemy Labs Twitter account, which has been promoting Let’s Play videos of Virtual Rick-ality gameplay.

One of the cleverest features seems to be how the game uses Mr. Meeseeks, the disposable helper creatures introduced in a Season 1 episode of Rick and Morty. In Virtual Rick-ality Meeseeks mirror your movements, so you can, for example, toss one across a room and manipulate a control panel over there. They’re almost like virtual reality headsets inside a virtual reality, forcing the players to think two player avatars beneath their primary biological experience.

While mere spectators won’t be able to replicate the more mind-bending aspects specific to the VR experience, Rick and Morty writer Mike McMahan has Virtual Rick-ality advice that might be able to get you a little closer: