HeadRock VR is a virtual reality theme park located at Southside on Sentosa, which is quite a distance away on the opposite end from The Barracks Hotel where my husband and I were staying at. After checking out from the hotel, we got a buggy ride down to the Siloso Point cable car station just opposite HeadRock VR. This was one of the many attractions on the island that we could utilize our Sentosa Fun Pass tokens at. We decided to check it out since it looked fairly interesting and we needed to burn some of the 285 tokens that we bought for a discounted rate of $51 from Traveloka.
- Inclusions:
- Play 5 Package tickets
- Spent: SGD$17.90 (for 2 tickets at 50 tokens each)
The entire theme park is housed within a huge container and although you could chance a walk-in, they highly encourage pre-purchasing of tickets and making a prior timeslot reservation before heading down. Given that we were visiting during the covid period, there were actual capacity restriction measures so I played it safe by making an advance reservation. You can choose from a few ticket options depending on how many VR games you want to go for, though the term “games” is kind of a misnomer as some of them are more like passive, non-interactive “rides”. We went for the package that allowed us to select 5 games (out of a total of 8 possible games).
Upon arriving at the counter, we were each offered a hygiene face mask (with panda or spider-man designs) and 5 paper tickets stapled together in a rather makeshift, flimsy fashion. A staff then gave us paper wristbands as our entry passes.
Entering the VR game space, there weren’t as many people as I thought there’d be so it was great that we didn’t have to contend with queues. Before each game, you’ll be required to put your belongings in a designated area and put on your VR headsets. For those wearing glasses, you won’t need to remove them as these headsets generally fit over them comfortably.
The first game we tried was the Extreme Train, which simulates a forest roller-coaster ride that pretty much defies the laws of physics virtually. Do expect some mild side-to-side and tilting movements on this ride. Although it was fairly realistic, we didn’t find it scary at all but we did hear one lady screaming when she was on it so I guess it really depends on your threshold.
I tried the second game, Jump Jump, as it looked relatively more thrilling than the others. Unfortunately, one side was spoiled so we had to take turns. However, after watching me have a go at it, my husband decided not to as it seemed quite motion sickness-inducing. This ride is basically a simulation of moving through the jungle, including being lifted high up in the air with jerks up and down to create the sensation of jumping and swinging. Out of everything we tried, this would be my favourite as it was the most exciting one.
My husband attempted the Skyscraper game, where he used controllers as guns to shoot enemy drones and walked along a narrow plank-like structure to defuse a bomb towards the end. We were told that the success or failure of this mission game is totally random though, so don’t feel too bad if you didn’t manage to defuse the bomb.
Next up was the Zombie Busters game that we both went for, which involved us standing in one spot to shoot incoming zombies. I didn’t realize that head shots were much more effective until too late in the game, we didn’t even get past stage 1! The staff shared that the game developer had to adjust the difficulty level to make it harder as people were playing for too long, meaning the queues were long too. I can imagine disgruntled players either way, to be honest. If it were too easy, the wait to play would be longer. If it were too difficult as in our situation, it’d be as if we wasted the price of one game for such a short, unsatisfying duration of play (it wasn’t as if we could queue up again for unlimited tries).
Storm Blizzard is a ride that simulates travelling across snowy terrain on a sled pulled by sled dogs. This is similar to the Extreme Train experience in terms of the movement and intensity. Remember to look up towards the end to see the beautiful northen lights!
For my last game, I opted to play Fruit Ninja at the Action VR station as there was not much else I was keen on. It is fundamentally the same fruit-slashing game as the free-to-play ones you find on most online platforms, except you’re using VR controllers as the swords. Based on the website’s description, there are supposedly 3 action games to choose from but in reality, there were only 2 offered during our visit.
My husband picked Beat Saber as his final game, where VR controllers are used as light sabers to hit the incoming boxes according to the beat of the music. There’s some intentional directionality needed when hitting these boxes so be sure to look out for the arrows.
One of the rides, Jungle Rafting, was closed for maintenance during our visit, bringing the total number of games we could potentially choose from down to 7. Given that there are already so few games on the menu, having one down is rather significant, especially if it’s something that you can’t experience at an arcade or on your tablet (like Fruit Ninja).
If you are bringing along kids between 3 to 9 years old, you can consider purchasing tickets for access to a kid-friendly interactive media zone with 4 different playspaces. At the point of our visit, the theme here was “Hello My Dino!” with various activities like colouring and creating your own virtual dinosaur, bouncy castle and other interactive games.
My overall rating of the experience: 2 out of 5 stars. Frankly speaking, we didn’t come with very high expectations to begin with, but somehow we still felt pretty disappointed with the offerings. Everything felt makeshift and “budget”, which impacted the quality of the overall experience. In terms of hardware, they seemed fairly legit. Ride vehicles were designed with detail, VR images were sufficiently sharp, headsets were synced most of the time. However, the flimsy paper tickets, provisional drywall partitions and a largely plain interior gave off a very “bare minimum” vibe. That’s not to say that the games and rides are bad in and of themselves, but at the full price of $45 per pax for a mere 5 plays that don’t last more than 3 minutes each, it is completely not value for money in my books. Having said that, I can see how it would be a useful option to occupy the younger ones in a contained environment for a few hours (it took us about an hour to try out most of the games and rides even though there weren’t that many people, so the time spent here might be longer if it’s crowded).
Dania Experiences 