Virtual Reality Games in Barcelona

Two light sabres, one song and blocks coming at you to the beat. You slice each one in the direction its arrow points while you dodge the walls. You're going to sweat, and you won't notice until the song is over.

A city overrun and waves that never stop. You grab whatever weapon you find, cover whoever is next to you and hold out as long as you can. The worse you organise yourselves, the more you'll laugh.

A bow, arrows and creatures climbing up the wall. You pull the string with your whole arm and aim with your body, not with a button. The more you lean out, the better you see — and the more nervous you get.

A floating platform, drones firing from every angle and a shield in your other hand. There's nowhere to hide: you dodge by ducking and turning. It's the VR arcade classic.

An abandoned metro, very little light and things that appear far too close to your face. All you have is your hands and whatever you have time to reload. It's short, it's intense and it's not for everyone.

A future where robots explain to you what “working” used to be like. Kitchen, office, workshop: you can do it properly or send everything flying. The second is more fun, and nobody gets motion sickness.

You take the lift up to floor 80, the doors open and there's a wooden plank over the void. Your head knows you're in a 3×3 metre room. Your legs don't.

A kitchen, non-stop orders and hungry monsters. One person toasts, another chops and someone shouts that there's no cheese left. You win by talking and lose by not listening.

The fruit flies up and you're holding two katanas. You get it in three seconds and you can't put it down. It works best for anyone who has never put on a headset and doesn't want to think.

Free-for-all in a cartoon world, with weapons that get more absurd every round. Short rounds, the scoreboard in sight and everyone wanting a rematch. It's the one that copes best with a big group.

A face-to-face duel, but in slow motion. The shots move slowly and you dodge them with your body: ducking, turning, bending. It feels like chess until you realise you've been dancing for five minutes.

You stop, look at the bullets hanging in the air, decide — and then everything happens at once. It's not a shooter: it's a puzzle you solve with your body, and there's always a cleaner way out of the level.

A world of sweets with locked doors and clues scattered everywhere. You make progress by trying things, talking and getting it wrong. It's designed so the little ones can take the lead.

A sword duel where your weapon breaks if you use it badly. Every blow counts and every fighting style moves differently. You finish with both hands shaking and both agreeing to go again.

Two teams, pillars to take cover behind and a scoreboard that shows no mercy. You hop from cover to cover, shout warnings and lose by poking your head out. It's the closest thing to a proper match that you'll find here.

Everest at real scale: base camp, the ladders over the crevasses, the summit. There's nothing to win. It's for standing still and looking, which is sometimes exactly what you feel like.

Tasks to finish and someone among you who doesn't want you to finish them. Here nobody accuses in writing: you accuse by looking someone in the face. And it's much easier to tell who's lying.

Hordes coming straight at you, no tricks and no mystery. You fire with both hands, back off, reload and go back in. It's loud, it's over the top and it's exactly what it promises.

You step inside a Dalí painting and can walk around in it. The melting clocks, the impossible elephants, the horizon that doesn't fit: all around you and life-size. It's short, and you'll remember it for a long time.

The whole planet within reach. Your street seen from above, the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower at life size. Almost everyone starts by looking for their own home.

A ship, a crew and a mission that goes wrong. Everyone has their own station and nobody can pull it off alone. It's one of the few that takes up to eight at once.

You're left standing on the deck of a sunken ship, and the ocean does the rest. First a reef, then the abyss, and at some point a blue whale swims up until it's a metre from your face and looks at you. There's nothing to do and nothing to win: just look. Almost everyone goes quiet.

You're sat on a two-hundred-metre swing and set loose over an entire city. There's nothing to learn and nothing to aim at: just hold on. And when it seems to be over, it isn't. It's the stop where the person who spent all afternoon saying none of this impresses them grabs the bar without realising.