Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality

Rick and Morty is a show obsessed with mad science and flagrant, self-assured misconduct. Virtual reality is an unstable medium enabled by starry-eyed engineers and consumed by its search for validity. The bridge between these two is occupied by Owlchemy Labs, the studio best known for VR’s absurdist wunderkind, Job Simulator. Virtual Rick-ality seeks to combine the menacing hijinks of Rick and Morty with Owlchemy Labs’ talent for creating productive virtual space.

You’re supposed to help Rick do his laundry. As a Morty clone, consisting of only hands and a head, you’re told to toss some filthy clothing in the washing machine, and then the dryer, and then Rick shoots you in the head. You’re dismissed to a favorable version of hell which contains a button that either sends you back to the Smith’s garage or prompts Rick to conjure another clone of Morty. Perhaps your existence is something more than a test to see if a clone can do laundry.

As a virtual operation, Virtual Rick-ality obliges the model established by Job Simulator. Three stations are positioned inside of the Smith’s garage; the washer and dryer, Rick’s work bench, and a shelf loaded with absurd objects and toys. The player, thanks to a teleportation device Rick installed, can move between the three stations with ease. While there, virtual hands can grip and operate any number of devices, objects, and machines, and then employ them to satisfy Rick’s demands.

Owlchemy Labs understands the strengths and limitations of virtual reality. Especially in the case of PlayStation VR’s lower-tech headset (Virtual Rick-ality was released on Oculus and Vive over a year ago). Objects like monster heads and bottles of booze are big enough to find and grip. Tinier items are easy to grab because whatever you want to pick-up is highlighted. When an object falls to the ground, it will hover up a few feet when your hand gets close to it, forgiving the limited space demanded by PlayStation VR. Virtual Rick-ality is also wise not to demand leg motion on the part of the player, and every activity in the game can be completed by looking to the side or shifting your body.

Virtual Rick-ality’s ease of operation is worth mentioning precisely because of the number of games, nearly two years into the hardware, that still don’t get it. PlayStation VR isn’t suited for movement or any kind of room-scale operation, a harsh reality amplified by lackluster Vive and Oculus ports. Virtual Rick-ality would still prefer to be played standing up without any tripping hazards nearby, but its less demanding nature thrives inside of this limitation.

Wild devilry and logical objectives compose the bulk of Virtual Rick-ality. After the laundry incident, Rick and Morty take off and leave clone Morty with a communication wristwatch. Looking at it provides the next objective directly from Rick. This is both tutorial and hint line, carefully coercing the player into complying with Rick’s increasingly bizarre demands. Activities over the next two hours can include murdering countless citizens of an alien planet, rebuilding Rick’s engine, and doing a lot of stuff with poop.

The garage is the scene of 90% of Virtual Rick-ality and it’s full of wild stuff. There’s a device to molecularly combine two objects into one object, some growth hormone tablets, a bunch of different cassettes Rick recorded and left behind, and a monster inside the floor. Some of it has a purpose and some of it’s there just so you can screw around with it. On occasion, Virtual Rick-ality isn’t especially transparent as to which category the objective belongs, but it trusts the player to figure it out. Eventually.

Playing straight through Virtual Rick-ality grants an unexpected reward; the mess you leave behind. Rick isn’t exactly known for being tidy and organized, and Virtual Rick-ality reflects his personality by never moving any of the shit the player drops on the ground. If too many objects are cloned then duplicate items begin to evaporate, but the flask I threw at the ceiling and all of the tools I absently dropped on the garage floor stayed there for the entire game. By the time I was finished the garage was a pigsty, and it was beautiful.

Nestled in the chaos of the garage are items and objects scraped from the first two seasons Rick and Morty. Some of them, like a random plumbus, have no observable purpose and exist to satisfy Rick and Morty’s fans. Others, like the Mr. Meeseeks box, have a direct effect on Virtual Rick-ality. Modified to be “Mr. Youseeks,” these blue suicidal interdimensional helpers can be summoned to mimic the player’s movements, essentially allowing control of two (or more) garage stations at the same time. Virtual Rick-ality makes room for a few delightful (and objective-driven) gags with Youseeks.

A few standard VR gimmicks find their way into Virtual Rick-ality. Charging an escalating series of batteries challenges the player with adjusting a bunch of dials and knobs on a control board, testing their multitasking ability. There’s also a shooting gallery sequence where clone Morty is given robot arms and blasts aliens. Neither of these are too demanding for simple progression, but trophies can be earned if you’re searching for perfection.

The volume of content stuffed into Virtual Rick-ality’s is its most present and most memorable asset. Dialogue between Rick and Morty (and sometimes Summer) is in great supply and, of course, an outlet for Justin Roiland’s rambling improvisation.  Tucked in the back of the garage is a crudely animated Choose Your Own Adventure minigame, Troy: A Life Lived, complete with selling heroin to addicts and/or becoming a respected doctor. The amount of items that can be combined in Rick’s lab, specifically involving Mr. Youseeks, is also impressive. Virtual Rick-ality is short, but wonderfully dense with Rick and Morty ephemera.

Virtual Rick-ality is careful not to overdo it. It could have been an endless series of references and callbacks haphazardly assembled around Rick’s lab. Instead, it’s a finite and coherent miniature episode of Rick and Morty that makes clever use of a few references. The brain of Roiland and the awareness and confidence of Owlchemy Labs makes Virtual Rick-ality a ludicrous romp across Rick and Morty lore and VR silliness. The opportunity to indulge in virtual absurdity, essentially, is the reason why the medium exists in the first place.

Virtual Rick-ality celebrates the existential comedy and breathless sociopathy of Rick and Morty. Like Job Simulator, it excels at creating natural space and filling it eccentric objectives and impulsive mischief. As a Rick and Morty product and a true second-generation VR title, Virtual Rick-ality is a comfortable calamity.