Take the role of a psychic investigator in the latest game from the makers of The Room, with one of the most immersive VR titles on PSVR2.
Fireproof Games was set up by former members of Burnout developer Criterion, who left a few years after it was bought by EA. It’s a studio best known for The Room, a mobile franchise that recreates Victorian style brass and wood puzzles, some on a room-sized scale – their tactile nature and triple-A production values making the series a worldwide hit.
Five years ago, they released The Room VR: A Dark Matter, extending the games’ familiar, weighty sense of physical presence into virtual reality, which seemed a natural evolution from a touchscreen. It’s no surprise that they bring a similar feel to Ghost Town, a supernaturally themed narrative puzzle game, that specialises in transporting you into its lightly spooky world.
Set in 1980s London, you play Edith Penrose, a psychic investigator, or as a grumpy trawler captain puts it, on his way to dropping you off at an island that only becomes accessible after some paranormal hijinks, ‘a witch’. Along with your partner and flatmate, Rina, you get called on to sort out ghostly goings on in the capital and beyond. This time the problems stem from Edith’s younger brother, who’s got involved in some occult business that’s way over his head.
To help him out of his self-inflicted crisis, you head to various locations where you’ll need to investigate, solve puzzles, and then usually end up dispelling a lost soul using some well-used props of theirs from when they were alive. VR games tend to be relatively simplistic in their approach, and Ghost Town certainly isn’t a complicated game, but it doesn’t need to be because along with a well told and involving story, its puzzles are just as perfectly metered as The Room’s.
Fireproof’s skill in making scenery and objects appear solidly real is to the fore here, and everything you do makes excellent use of the PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers’ haptics, letting you feel ancient gears grind as you turn cranks, or mechanisms sturdily chunk into place. You’ll also never find yourself fumbling to complete a task. Everything works as it should, first time, leaving you to immerse yourself in the fiction rather than curse the imprecision of motion detection.
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The puzzles themselves are designed to offer just enough resistance to make them gratifying to solve, without being so tough you regularly end up in a jam. On the odd occasion you do feel yourself getting stumped, there’s a sympathetically created hint system, which only prompts you for the element of a particular puzzle you’re dealing with, avoiding spoilers, and initially just giving general pointers.
To access it, you grab and pull down on a tab in your inventory, a process that’s just as consistent and reliable as everything else in Ghost Town. To the right of the inventory you’ll find a torch, whose beam helps illuminate the shadowy environments to which you’re regularly summoned, and also works in puzzles, a number of which rely on light, shadow, and projected patterns for their solutions.
Given the nature of your job, you do meet a lot of ghosts, but there are no jump scares, the atmosphere tending towards mystery as opposed to horror. The game is brilliant at conveying a sense of place, whether wandering the crypt-like structures deep beneath a deserted London tube station, spending time in your flat in a block modelled after Brutalist masterpiece Trellick Tower, or in any of the strange paranormal vistas you visit on your travels.
Its characters are just as compelling. You hear a lot of American and British voices in games, which makes Edith and her brother’s Irish accents a delightfully refreshing change. All the actors are excellent and well cast, from Rina’s down-to-earth good humour to the various eccentrics you meet, both living and dead. It adds to the impression of reality, even when you’re going to places that most certainly are not.
When you aren’t solving puzzles, Ghost Town briefly resembles a highly focused walking simulator. There’s no open world, but there are sections that let you explore, one of the highlights being the private magical item collection of a pompous warlock whose house Edith and her brother break into. Picking things up, playing with them and seeing how they react is a fascinating aside, as well as a superb piece of environmental world building.
If there is a complaint, it’s that it’s all over and wrapped up in just under four hours, leaving the story on the sort of cliffhanger that strongly suggests a sequel but doesn’t actually promise it. But it would be hugely welcome. VR is a medium still struggling to find its audience and developers that apply this level of finesse and artistry are few and far between, making Ghost Town one to savour while we wait to find out what Fireproof will get up to next.
Ghost Town review summary
In Short: A compact and polished VR puzzle game with a sturdy, tactile feel and wonderfully evocative characters and environments.
Pros: Puzzle difficulty is elegantly judged. Great voice acting and atmospheric locations. Refined motion sensing, with none of the faff often associated with VR.
Cons: It’s a short game, whose narrative doesn’t wholly resolve itself by the end. Some of its handwritten notes can be a little hard to make out in the gloom.
Score: 8/10
Formats: PlayStation VR2 (reviewed), PC VR, and Meta Quest 2 & 3
Price: £19.99
Publisher: Fireproof Games
Developer: Fireproof Games
Release Date: 1st December 2025
Age Rating: 12
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