Really fun game with lots of potential. The only con is that the dev doesn't take community feedback at all. With some balancing fixes, this could be the best assymetrical VR game up to date.

I'll give some examples pointed by many people on the Mass Exodus forum:
- When the androids unfreeze, they go backwards. If the AI was more unpredictable (half go backwards / half keep going on the same direction), it would have been much difficult for the seeker to identify the human. Imagine this situation when there's only one power station left.
- Powerups are on open zones where almost no android goes. Because of that, it's easy to see when a human player picks a powerup so you can take them out.
- There's no option to replay a map with the same settings. You have to load all the options again and again. That can take you like 3 minutes before starting a new customized match.
- Scanner doesn't recharge (even if you set Recharge: ON) on custom settings. Never got fixed.


It's hard for me to believe this game got out of Early Access with just a new map.

UPDATE 2023-09-18: I alerted devs about the game being recently broken. They weren't aware because the game hasn't been updated in years. Steam jumbled up their code depots. They got it worked out. It just needs an uninstall then reinstall for any current user. You can read more detail about the issue in this thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/566530/discussions/0/5219148750782559884/?ctp=2#c5966762350815429296



Mass Exodus Redux (referred to as MER going forward) is a clever, asymmetric, local-multiplayer VR game for up to five players. It's a creative take on "hide and seek", to make for a unique party game experience. I've only run across one other game remotely similar to this, called Panoptic, and MER is the superior choice between the two. While the sessions for MER are typically short, it's often enough to scratch that itch for "something different". It's been one of my favorites to show people who are new to VR.



The gameplay is simple. The seeker (VR player) is a robot overlord trying to find and destroy the rogue robots (up to four other PC players) in a crowd of 100+ identical robots all going about their business. The rogue robots are trying to deactivate the various control panels around the facility to enable their escape, all without looking suspicious. Each side has three unique powers at their disposal that serve to confuse, hinder, or expose your adversary. These special abilities are reasonably balanced and none felt over-powered.

In a one vs one match, with both equally-skilled players, the game is lopsided in favor of the seeker. A more balanced match between equally skilled adversaries would be two or three rogue robots versus one seeker. However, even that depends on the map. Some maps favor the Seeker more and vice versa. A great feature about this game is that it's pretty easy to adjust the balance to keep things interesting and competitive. For example, a game of four novices versus one experienced seeker would be an even match. Going deeper, there's also various settings you can tweak to rebalance a level, such as number of AI robots, and special power duration.

There's not an enormous amount of depth to this game. This is more of a party game that is meant to be played casually. There's a little bit more of a ramp up than with typical party games, but you'll still know all you need to know within a couple short matches.


As mentioned before the seeker wears the VR headset, while one to four other people control the rogue robot copies. The rogue robots all share the PC monitor, so in a five-player session the monitor is divided into four windows. Sharing a screen with four other people naturally means you are sharing resolution with them as well, however it wasn't a significant hinderance. Since the person on VR can't see the PC screen and the other players can't see the VR headset screen, the rogue robots can sufficiently operate clandestinely while still being in the same room with the VR player.

It's important to note that MER is a multiplayer-only game. There is no single-player experience. Furthermore, it is a local multiplayer-only game. It is designed for all players to play on one PC, either in person or over Steam's Remote Play. There are no online lobbies to round up strangers to play a game.


You can have a rogue robot player using mouse and keyboard with three other players using gamepads, or you can have all four rogue robot players on gamepads. It has worked both ways for me. The controls for both the keyboard and gamepad options map to basic FPS style controls. Anyone familiar with those style of controls will pick it up instantly.

The seeker, in the VR headset, uses each VR wand for separate functions. The left hand is used for using special abilities, while the right hand is used for picking up suspicious robots and destroying them. Of all the controls, picking up robots is the only thing that is slightly touchy. Your hand is big, and the robots are tiny, so it must be in just the right spot to snag a specific bot. Luckily, there's a small orb hovering out from your palm to act as a guide for placing your hand in the right location. It takes a few tries, but in short order it will become second nature to you.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2914399542

Another nice controller function is the click and drag movement of the seeker. It's a way of moving around the area while standing still. It's really beneficial for those who have limited VR space in small rooms or need an extra height boost/decrease.


It's worth comparing MER to the game Panoptic, because these two titles are near clones of each other, while no other games are remotely similar to them. Overall, MER has several advantages over Panoptic:

• MER is capable of one vs four players while Panoptic is only one vs one max.
  
• MER has multiple powers to use on each side, whereas Panoptic is only at one power each.
  
• MER is more detailed visually, and Panoptic is mostly untextured polygons.
  
• MER is $15, and Panoptic is $17

The core gameplay is the same, but it feels slightly more satisfying to physically pick up robots, and throw them in the grinder/furnace/zapper in MER. In Panoptic you're just making a contactless laser blast from your eyes in all cases.

Neither game has been updated in the last two years, so they are the same in that regard. Even as a "dead" game I still recommend MER. It's great as is, and being a dead game is really inconsequential since it's a local multiplayer-only game anyway. The player base is always whoever is in your house or on your friends list.


There is no campaign or progress to pursue, other than the achievements. You can play any map at any time. Once one side or the other wins, that's it, and you will then return to the main menu to give it another go.

Each round can last anywhere from a few seconds in length (if you're playing against some rather brazen and non-stealthy rogues) or up to 15 minutes. It all depends on how skilled each side is and how many are playing. I typically play a few rounds for 30 minutes up to an hour or so before people want to move on to something different.


Since the game is local multiplayer-only the achievements are almost pointless, as they largely depend on how skilled your opponents are. With everything happening on one system, they are easily gamed by leaving one controller idle. To make matters worse, two achievements appear to be bugged and were unobtainable for me no matter how many different ways I tried to perform the required actions: "Cloak and Dagger", and "Baby Steps". I was able to obtain all other achievements. Browsing through the forums it appears others have the same issue, although it's strangely not universal.


I played this on both the HTC Vive and HTC Vive Pro 2 without issue.

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I didn't try with less players, but with 5 it breaks and becomes unplayable once the seeker kills a rogue. When that happens, one non-dead player becomes unable to see. Kill another, and the last rogue becomes unable to see. This is unacceptable, and it's been a problem for over a year based on one of the topics on the discussion forums. I'll be requesting a refund, and cannot recommend this game until the game breaking bugs are fixed.

Excellent concept, with gameplay that was incredibly fun to play with friends. However, after a few matches there are some obvious imbalance issues that ruin the game onward, in favor of the seeker. Our seekers quickly adapted to just picking up and dropping as many androids as possible near the control panels, making it nearly impossible to approach them. Could definitely use some balancing tweaks, but I'm really looking forward to playing more in the future.

My daughter's and I just had a blast playing this. It's like a really intense game of hide and seek. It's worth a few dollars. There is a bug right now though where the player on the monitor sometimes can't move because they are stuck in the floor. The Vive player can pick them up and set them down and all is good again.

I refunded this game. Also, in response to a forum post I made, one of the developers confirmed the game is abandoned, so nothing will ever be fixed.

The game has bugs that make it unplayable for the PC players. Sometimes they simply can't disable a terminal. Other bugs include NPC robots that get stuck in place, walk continuously into a wall, and make the falling animation as they walk around the room. The PC player characters' arms don't reset to normal if picked up and put down by the VR player. This means the VR player can pick up robots one after another and find the one that remains deformed after put back down.

Game settings reset after every level, meaning you will constantly go back into the settings menu to make them what you want.

As the VR player, I need ability to rotate the room without having to turn my head. Spinning in circles gets this headset cord all tangled. The game allows you to laterally move the map with the Grip buttons on the controller (this isn't in the tutorial, by the way), but there is no rotate feature.

Finally, ignoring all the above, you can experience everything this game has to offer in only 40 minutes of play time. When the VR player wins, a map can be finished in under a minute. For the PC players to win, it takes closer to 5-10 minutes. But with only 4 levels to play, they're played very quickly. The game not only needs more levels, but also some variety! Different scenes are great for the VR player, but the levels need to actually feel different for the PC players, not merely look different. Walking up and down staircases and across walkways doesn't have to be the only layout the PC players are stuck with.

The one positive I'll leave with is that the ability to play with up to 5 players is fantastic.

Game has ceased development and none of the current bugs are going to be fixed. If you have an Oculus Quest, don't bother purchasing as the game won't work properly and you'll just be frustrated and waste your time trying to get it to work. Look into other Asymmetric VR games and you'll be much happier. Game had so much promise, sad to see it died :(

I hate to have to give this one a non-recommendation as I was really looking forward to this asynchronous VR game, but after trying to play this across the internet with my brother in another state, it is clear this game really isn't worth the price they are asking.

My brother purchased the PC only version (He doesn't have a VR headset) and I purchased the VR + PC version.

Our initial attempt to start the game up and play was a failure. I tried setting up a server, and he couldn't find it in the server browser. He tried setting up the server, and I couldnt find his in the browser. We messed around with it for a little bit before giving up dissapointed.

I was determined to figure out what was going on, so I took to the discussion board here, and I tried a few things before I ran across a comment stating that we should hop into our system registry settings and make sure some obscure registry key was set to matching values on both of our computers. Sure enough, the registry key that dictates what region servers a player connects to was set to US on my brother's machine, and UK on my machine. We are both in the US. So, once I copied his values into the key on my computer, we tried again. This time, we were able to connect.

Once we were in, the game was very underwhelming. I figured for the price of 15 bucks (or 7 bucks for the PC only version) there'd be a little more meat to this one, but it is essentially identical to Panoptic (which is free) and doesn't really offer much more at all, outside of a few single shot powers that the VR player, and the PC player can use. I didn't find the powers to be all that useful for the VR player. The monitor player's powers are a bit more useful, as he can blind the VR player for a good 10 seconds or so, and he can become invisible for a short while. Those things did make keeping track of the rogue much more difficult.

The game boasts 3 different levels, or environments to play in. But in my opinion, they all felt pretty much the same. Yeah, one has a grinder you throw the rogue into, and one has a furnace you throw the rogue into , and one has an electrical beam to throw the rogue into... but they are all just a series of platforms and stairs, and some switch boxes positioned around the 4 sides of the level. Nothing about any of the levels really stood out to me and each one just felt like the last one with a different trap to throw the rogue into. after an hour of playing with my brother, I don't see either of us getting the urge to jump in here again.

The biggest shame is that the game is completely useless unless you have someone to play with. And the entire hour we were on the game last night, we never came across another soul playing this. So, unless you have a friend who will play this with you whenever you want to play it, you will be purchasing a useless piece of software. You can't even jump into a level just for funsies to see the robots walking around if you don't have a second person to hit the "Ready" button to start the map. So, it's basically a main menu simulator without friends to play with.

Another issue I noticed for anyone who is thinking of playing this online, it was fairly easy to notice lag coming from the rogue player, and the robot character that the rogue was controlling would lag out every now and then and the VR player can see this easily as a robot who appears to be warping several feet from time to time. This was mostly noticeable when the rogue was running, as he covered more ground more quickly, but even walking, the lag would cause the rogue player to pop around a bit. This didn't happen all the time, so I imagine it is very tied to connection quality, but there sure isn't any sort of smoothing algorithm in place to help prevent that popping from happening ,and it's a dead giveaway for which little robot is being controlled by the rogue.

All in all, I love the idea, but this just falls flat. If the developer has some plans to add more features, more levels of greater variety, and give players a little bit more to do, then maybe this will turn out to be something cool, but for now, for the price, I'd pass it up.

Abandonware.

Last update was over 3 years ago, and the update broke the game. You cannot play it unless you find a way to download an older version.

Despite the developer, Altaire, stating that they are "next-level. And we're proud of it" on their website, they have effectively abandoned this game. Altaire is no longer making video games and are focused on business clients. They are still happy to continue selling a broken game though.

Among the best games for VR at the moment. Lacks polish, and has several pretty serious bugs, but even despite that it's so much fun to play with friends that I'd still strongly recommend it. Playing as a robot is great, and the suspense it involves is way more than I thought it would be. Playing as the Overseer is also amazing, and the dollhouse effect is really cool. It looks like the dev is pretty active, so I have high hopes for this game - but even as it is now it's definitely worth it.