Roll Out: ‘Quantum Threshold’ Uses Wheelchair Gameplay for an Intense Seated Shooter

For developer Vaki Games, one of the main ideas fueling first-person shooter Quantum Threshold was to create a seated VR experience that could be just as exciting as anything you might play standing up.

Lots of VR games focus on immersing you in their worlds by making the room around you into your virtual playground. For some, though, playing room-scale VR games by standing up can be a tough order to fulfill. They might not have a big-enough play space, they might have trouble standing for long periods or at all, or they might simply get uncomfortable. Quantum Threshold looks to accommodate those kinds of players, along with anyone else, by making the seated experience as fast and involved as a standing one might be.

To achieve that, the game puts players in the seat of a character who uses a wheelchair—but not just any wheelchair. In the dystopian, cyberpunk world of Quantum Threshold, your chair is a fully customizable combat platform. Think slow motion, robotic arms, modular upgrades, and an arsenal of high-tech weaponry at your fingertips. In addition to your handheld guns, your rig becomes an extension of your combat style: adaptable, deadly, and built for tactical dominance.

Quantum Threshold is a roguelike shooter in which you fight AI “techno wraiths” that have overtaken its futuristic city setting. That means you’ll constantly encounter shifting arenas filled with enemies, where you’ll never have the same fight twice. Your goal is to escape the city as you fight through ever-evolving levels, but you probably won’t make it on your first try—which is why you’ll also be searching for permanent upgrades you can take into your next battle.

Like other roguelike games, though, the loot you’ll find on each run is randomized, so you’ll need to customize your wheelchair with a new set of weapons each time. You’ll fight through the chaos within each run, but the right combination of modules, weapons, and upgrades can turn players into a rolling death machine blasting through action-packed battles.

For the launch of Quantum Threshold, we sat down with Vaki Games CEO and Creative Director Teemu Jyrkinen and Software Engineer Niko Parviainen to talk about the game’s approach to shooter action, its rogue-like elements, and its seated-first approach to gameplay.

At its core, Quantum Threshold is a tactical, first-person roguelike shooter—but what sets it apart is its commitment to delivering that intensity through a fully seated experience. Instead of asking players to physically stand, dodge, and move in room-scale VR, we put them in the seat of a protagonist who uses a wheelchair—and we turn that chair into a high-tech combat platform.

This changes the formula in a big way. Rather than adapting traditional FPS mechanics to seated play as an afterthought, we designed the entire game around seated-first gameplay. The result is an experience that’s just as aggressive, kinetic, and strategic as a standing shooter—but it’s accessible, comfortable, and designed to empower a broader range of players.

Your wheelchair in Quantum Threshold isn’t passive: It’s your arsenal. You can equip it with modular weapons, abilities, and upgrade it into a rolling war machine. Movement becomes tactical, not physical—driven by your loadout, your choices, and your reflexes. So while the roguelike loop is still there—randomized loot, evolving enemy encounters—it’s all grounded in a unique perspective.

The roguelike mechanics in Quantum Threshold are at the heart of its replayability and progression. Every run you play takes place in the same environments—the layouts, enemy placements, loot drops, and even some enemy behavior patterns are different each time. That unpredictability forces players to adapt on the fly, which is a big part of the challenge and fun.

Each run starts with basic gear and gradually builds as you collect randomized modules, weapons, and combat enhancements. The key twist is that you’re not just upgrading your handheld weapons—you’re also modifying your wheelchair combat rig. You might build out a run with robot arm turrets and defensive shields one time, then go full offense with slow motion and screen wipe the next. The modular upgrade system lets you experiment with different playstyles on every attempt.

On top of that, we’ve built a layer of permanent progression. As players push deeper into the game, they earn persistent upgrades that carry across runs: new module slots, base damage boosts, or unlockable tech that expands your arsenal. These upgrades create a long-term sense of mastery and give players more tools to survive longer

We’ve always been inspired by the gritty, high-concept sci-fi of the ’80s and ’90s—movies like RoboCop, The Terminator, and Blade Runner were huge influences on Quantum Threshold. That era had a unique blend of dark futurism and over-the-top action, and we wanted to capture that same vibe in our worldbuilding.

Quantum Threshold is set in Mega City, a sprawling cyberpunk metropolis on the edge of collapse. Rogue AIs have broken containment, and something sinister is happening beneath the surface—systems are failing, machine minds are evolving, and players are caught in the middle of a war they don’t fully understand. Your mission isn’t just survival—it’s to figure out what went wrong and how to stop the AI uprising before the entire city spirals into a full-blown apocalypse.

We’re not telling a story through cutscenes or walls of text—instead, it’s layered into the environment, the enemies, and the evolving chaos you encounter. There’s a mystery here, and players who pay attention will start to piece together what’s really going on.

Accessibility was a core principle for us from the beginning. We didn’t want Quantum Threshold to be a game that only works if you have a large room, perfect tracking, and the ability to stand for long periods. Not everyone has that setup—and not everyone can play that way.

We wanted to make something that feels intense, tactical, and immersive, while still being fully playable from a seated position in a small space. That approach doesn’t just make the game more inclusive—it also opens up new design opportunities.

Players often end up playing standing VR games while seated—we do the same ourselves. I mean, no one’s standing for an entire Skyrim VR session, right? Designing for a seated experience was actually our starting point from day one.

It wasn’t so much a challenge as it was part of the process. Early on, we started with a traditional wheelchair setup where players could manually roll and accelerate. But it turned out to be way too wild.

We’ve always felt that a lot of modern FPS games can be overly hectic and unrealistically fast, especially when it comes to movement. Maybe we’re just a bit too old for the current-gen, twitch-reaction shooters! The wheelchair movement in Quantum Threshold actually feels more grounded—it mirrors real-life motion and ends up being one of the most intuitive ways to navigate in VR.

Start decking out your war machine wheelchair and get in on the cyberpunk action in Quantum Threshold right now. It’s available on the Meta Horizon Store for $23.99 USD.