Transport Yourself to Oktoberfest With Meta Quest

Throw on some Lederhosen, dust off your Dirndl, grab your Meta Quest and get ready to party. Fall is nearly here, and that means it’s time for Oktoberfest. If you can’t make it to the main event in Munich, you can still join in on the fun with a new app on Meta Quest. You can download Oktoberfest on Meta Quest right now.

Oktoberfest is a massive festival, with rides, games, sausages, and snacks. That’s the part of Oktoberfest that inspired Munich-based K5 Factory to bring that carnival experience home to VR.

Oktoberfestis a giant party simulator, where you can get dressed up and explore the celebration with friends, strangers, and NPCs. There’s a rollercoaster, there’s a ferris wheel, and there are classic fair games like where you can test out your arm knocking over cans or flipping frogs onto lily pads. And this is Oktoberfest, after all, so you can also take a turn in Brass Band Hero or a shift serving up food in the tent.

And don’t worry, you don’t have to wear Lederhosen all the time: There’s also a full set of clothes and other customization, so you can express yourself on the drop tower.

K5 Factory is still expanding the app, and the full release also comes with the brand-new “Barrel Hunt” mode, a fast-paced game of tag in an underground brewery using Gorilla Tag-inspired arm-swinging locomotion. There’s also “Barrel Hunt,” where players have to collect mugs of brew and stash them in their barrels.

You can download Oktoberfest here. We caught up with K5’s Creative Director Jan Lachauer to talk a bit more about translating Oktoberfest to virtual reality.

Jan Lachauer: For me, Oktoberfest has always been about creating a curated space that fosters social interaction and brings people from all over the world together to share a great time.

Growing up in Munich, the festival has been a huge influence on this project. My earliest memories aren’t of the beer tents, but of the gigantic fairground surrounding them — the rides, attractions, and booths that bring people together in play and excitement. That’s the spirit we wanted to recreate: using games as a social catalyst, giving players a way to connect, collaborate, and celebrate together in a vibrant, playful environment.

JL: Of course, our game is less crowded than the real thing, since we need to limit the number of players per instance for performance reasons. Still, we’ve put a lot of effort into filling that space with NPCs and an authentic soundscape to capture the atmosphere of the buzzing fairgrounds. Spatial audio plays a big role here, creating the impression of being surrounded by people. To make it as authentic as possible, we even recorded sounds directly at the real Oktoberfest.

VR is the perfect medium to recreate this atmosphere: It gives players the sensation of speed and height on the rides, the physicality of the booth games, and — most importantly — the presence of actual people around them through voice chat and avatars.

JL: They definitely surprised us. Originally, our plan was to focus mainly on the fairground games, and we only added a few motion rides because we felt the experience wouldn’t be complete without them. We didn’t expect players to enjoy the rides much, given the intense motion. But to our surprise, they quickly became the most popular activity in the game. Players love getting on them — and they keep asking for more. I’m really glad we decided to launch in Early Access first, as it allowed us to discover and respond to exactly these unexpected aspects of our game.

JL: As I’ve been involved with all of them, it’s hard to pick a favorite, but I’m definitely drawn to the ones that involve physical movement and physics simulation. It’s just so much fun to hit the catapults in Flying Frogs or throw the balls in Can Toss. I also really enjoy the games in the tent, like Order Rush, where you have to serve food to NPC guests. Sound plays a big part here, too — I love the comments the NPCs make when you deliver their orders while others rush to complete theirs and suddenly someone climbs the stage to play Bella Ciao in our Brass Band game.

JL: We definitely want to keep Oktoberfest growing, and we’re already working on the next update, which will launch around Halloween. This one will feature a long-requested attraction that many of our users have been asking for. With expectations so high, we’ve really taken the time to make it the best it can be. I’m genuinely excited to see how players respond. Besides that, I’m curious to see what other ideas our community will come up with. That’s the great part of working on a live game — it constantly evolves and adapts to the needs and requests of our players.

JL: Oh, there are so many other fair grounds and theme parks we would love to adapt in VR. Apart from the great studio theme parks, I would really like to do a 1940s version of Coney Island, the Santa Monica Pier, or Winter Wonderland in London. Let’s see... maybe one day.