I got into a Risk of Rain 2 run last weekend with the headset on, and the moment that sold me was dumb and specific: a glowing mortar tube spawned mid-air, I reached out and pointed at a cliff, and the thing fired where my hand aimed. Not a crosshair I nudged with a stick — my hand. That single gesture is the entire argument for DrBibop’s VR mod.
Risk of Rain 2 has no official VR mode. Hopoo Games and Gearbox never built one. What exists instead is a small set of community and third-party ways to get the game into a headset, and they are not the same experience.
The one worth your time is DrBibop’s RoR2VRMod, a BepInEx-based community mod with real motion controls. It maps aiming to where you point a controller, maps attacks to a swing, and — rare for a VR shooter — lets you pick first person or third person. Third person keeps your survivor visible in front of you while you orbit the world with your head, and in a game this busy, seeing your own character helps you read what’s about to kill you. The mod also supports bhaptics and Shockwave haptic suits, a deeper cut than most mods attempt. On a compatible build, this is a complete, playable VR roguelite, not a tech demo.
The path to “running” is the catch. The install is a stack: BepInEx, HookGenPatcher, the mod itself, and — on current game versions — a downpatch. A September 2024 Risk of Rain 2 update broke the mod on fresh builds, so today you have to pin the game to a pre-update version through Steam’s console to launch it at all. Tools like r2modman smooth some of this over, but this is not a toggle you flip. If you’ve never touched a Thunderstore mod, budget an evening. Third-person view helps comfort, though the game’s fast repositioning will test sensitive players.
Two other options exist, and you should know them before mistaking one for the real thing. VorpX ships a cloud profile for the game, but it’s a G3D cinema-mode injection: Risk of Rain 2 renders on a virtual screen in front of you with stereoscopic depth. You’re watching it in a VR theater with a gamepad, not standing in it — no motion controls, no hand presence. Fine if you already own VorpX and want the game “in VR” cheaply, but it delivers none of the mod’s presence. UEVR, the Unreal framework, is technically compatible since the game runs on UE4, but no community profile exists and I found no verified reports of it working. Treat that as an open experiment, not a plan.
When the mod is actually running, the control scheme is the headline. Pointer aiming in a twin-stick-style shooter sounds like a gimmick until you’re tracking a flying enemy by moving your wrist instead of fighting a reticle. The swing-to-attack mapping lands hardest with melee survivors, where a downward chop becomes a real way to clear a pack. Co-op is where it clicks: dropping into a friend’s run, both of you physically ducking and reaching while the screen fills with loot and lasers, is the kind of chaotic presence flat Risk of Rain 2 can’t match. The item hurricanes, the boss introductions, the screen-filling final stands — all of it reads better in stereo with your head in the world. Performance holds on a mid-range PC through early stages, but the late-game enemy counts will push reprojection on a modest rig.
The weaknesses are just as specific. Third-person, even with the first-person toggle, means you’re never fully behind the eyes the way a native VR shooter puts you — and the first-person mode inherits the game’s floaty, aim-assisted feel, which can make shooting feel like the game is doing more of the work than you are. The mod’s depth is real, but it’s still a mod: UI like the item log and boss bars sit flat in space rather than adapted for headset legibility, so memorize what matters before you put the headset on. And there’s the maintenance tax — a game that still gets updated on Steam will keep breaking a deprecated mod until, or unless, the author ships a fix. RoR2VRMod is listed as deprecated on Thunderstore and the author has been publicly quiet, so the downpatch requirement isn’t a wrinkle you can ignore.
None of that changes the core truth: when it runs, this is one of the more genuinely fun VR takes on a modern PC game you can build without a dev kit. Risk of Rain 2 is already one of the best roguelites on PC — the item synergies, the escalation, the runs that go sideways in the best way. The mod doesn’t reinvent that game; it puts your body in it. For a Risk of Rain 2 fan who doesn’t mind getting dirty with mod managers and older builds, the trade is worth making.
If you’ve never played Risk of Rain 2, learn it flat first — the VR layer rewards people who already know which items compound. And if you want a polished, zero-friction VR shooter, this isn’t that; go play something built for the headset. But for the right player, with the right build pinned, DrBibop’s mod is a B-tier experience that punches above its broken, deprecated, wonderfully hacky status: a great game made playable in VR by someone who clearly loved it.