Laser Thief or HAUNTED: which game for an autumn evening with guests?

In autumn, around Halloween, guests often come round. Perhaps you’d like to get out your Meta Quest. Two games lend themselves to this, and both are played in your own room: Laser Thief and HAUNTED: Are You Alone?. Both use mixed reality (the headset shows you your real room through its cameras and places game content into it). But they suit very different evenings. This comparison gives away no secrets from the HAUNTED story.

What you need

• A Meta Quest. According to the store pages, both games run on Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3 and Quest 3S.
• A cleared room. For Laser Thief the store recommends at least 3 × 3 metres. According to the studio, HAUNTED works in any room size.
• A room scan (a survey of your room carried out by the headset).
• For spectators: a television the Quest can send its picture to. This is called casting.

What it costs

In the UK Meta Store on 10 October 2026:

• Laser Thief: £7.99
• HAUNTED: Are You Alone?: £3.99

Both are one-off purchases. According to the store pages, neither needs an internet connection to play and neither has adverts.

The two games briefly explained

Laser Thief is a laser heist in your living room. You collect loot and carry it back to the starting square without touching a beam. A little robot called BLIP gives tips and cracks jokes. According to the studio there are 120 levels across five worlds. Touch a beam and you simply go back to the start. Here is the Laser Thief store page.

HAUNTED: Are You Alone? is a horror game. According to the studio, your own room becomes the haunted house. There are jump scares, loud noises and eerie figures. According to the studio the story lasts about 25 to 35 minutes. On top of that there are three arcade modes (short scored rounds you can play again and again). Here is the HAUNTED store page.

The comparison in a table

Question	Laser Thief	HAUNTED
Age rating	PEGI 12	PEGI 18 (“Extreme Violence”)
Mood	Cheerful, exciting	Creepy, loud jump scares
Movement	Ducking, steps, side-stepping	Turning, ducking, kneeling, crawling
Who is it for?	Mixed groups, family	Adults only, horror fans
Length of a round	Short levels, good for taking turns	Story about 25–35 minutes
Controls	Hands or controller	Hands or controller
Players at once	One	One

Which one suits your evening

Mixed guests, children, grandparents

Here Laser Thief is the right choice. It’s exciting but not creepy. Spectators laugh along when someone touches a beam. According to the studio, after every hit the game shows a short slow-motion replay of which body part touched the beam. That often lifts the mood in the group.

An evening with adults only who like a fright

Then HAUNTED may fit. Please take the warnings seriously. According to the studio, the game shows a two-page content warning every time you start it. It is not suitable for children, pregnant women, or people with epilepsy, heart conditions or anxiety disorders. There are sudden loud noises, flickering and dimmed light, blood and intense jump scares.

A mixture of both

You can plan for both. Play Laser Thief first with everyone. Once the children are in bed, HAUNTED comes out for the adults who want it. Ask every guest beforehand whether they want to join in. Nobody has to.

How to plan the evening, step by step

1. Ask your guests beforehand who is coming and how old the youngest will be.
2. Clear the room: no glasses, no candles, no pumpkins in the play area.
3. Set up casting to the television so everyone can watch.
4. Start with Laser Thief. Under “SETTINGS”, set the level to Casual. According to the studio you then get three shields per level.
5. Let each guest play a level. Then swap over.
6. After half an hour, take a break with drinks.
7. Only if wanted, and only with adults: start HAUNTED.

Getting spectators involved

In both games only one person wears the headset at a time. So the others don’t get bored, hand out small jobs:

• Timekeeper: In Laser Thief the game shows the time and the number of hits at the end of a level. One guest writes down the results.
• Announcer: One guest says out loud which guest is next, and makes sure nobody walks into the play area.
• Light watcher: For HAUNTED, an adult sits close to the light switch. If anyone wants to stop, the light goes on straight away.

That way everyone has a role, even those who don’t want to play themselves. In Laser Thief, according to the studio, the little robot BLIP keeps everyone entertained too, because he comments on hits with short quips.

Good to know

• Put real candles away. You move around while playing and only see your surroundings through the cameras. Open flames don’t belong anywhere near.
• Keep the light on. Mixed reality needs a room that’s brightly lit enough for the headset to see well.
• No spoilers. If you already know HAUNTED, please don’t give anything away to the others.
• Spectators stay outside. Guests stay outside the play area so nobody gets bumped into.

If something goes wrong

• A guest gets too much of a fright: stop HAUNTED straight away. Take the headset off, turn the light on, have a drink. After that, it’s better to carry on with Laser Thief.
• The lasers end in the middle of the room: the room scan no longer fits. In “SETTINGS”, choose “RESCAN / CHANGE ROOM”.
• The picture on the television stutters: put the headset and the television on the same Wi-Fi (wireless home network) and restart the casting.