The Plainspoken Review

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What is a mixed reality horror game? HAUNTED as an example

Published on . Written by The Plainspoken Review team. About 5 minutes to read.

In short

  • Mixed reality shows your real room inside the headset and lays game objects over the top.
  • In a mixed reality horror game, the scares happen in your own home.
  • HAUNTED uses your walls, your floor and your ceiling as the play area.
A cartoon living room wall with a glowing crack down the middle

You may have heard of virtual reality. For a few years now there has also been mixed reality. That sounds technical, but it is easy to understand. In this guide we explain the term. Then we use HAUNTED: Are You Alone? to show what a horror game does with it.

Three terms, simply explained

Virtual reality (VR): You put on a headset (goggles that cover your eyes completely). Everything you see is artificial. Your real room disappears. You are standing in a virtual castle, for example.

Passthrough: The headset has cameras on the outside. These film your surroundings. The picture is shown to you straight away inside the goggles. So you see your real room, even though you are wearing the headset.

Mixed reality (MR): This is the mixture. Through passthrough you see your real room. The game lays artificial figures and objects over the top. A monster is then not standing in a strange castle. It is standing next to your sofa.

An everyday comparison: VR is like a cinema film that you are standing in the middle of. Mixed reality is more like a play performed at your home.

What a mixed reality horror game does differently

A classic horror game shows you a strange, dark house. That is creepy. But you know: this is not my home.

A mixed reality horror game turns that around. The horror takes place in the room you see every day. Your wall, your floor, your corner of the room. That is exactly what makes it so effective for many people.

For that to work, the headset has to know your room. Before the game you scan the room (you walk around slowly, and the headset picks up walls, floor, ceiling and furniture). After that the game knows where it can make things appear.

The HAUNTED example

HAUNTED: Are You Alone? is a mixed reality horror game for the Meta Quest. It is published by ThreeFlavors LLC and came out on 9 October 2026. The store has the line „YOUR ROOM IS THE NIGHTMARE.“ (Your room is the nightmare).

Here is how the game uses your room, without giving away any big surprises:

  • Your walls: Something knocks from inside. Then long, pale arms break through the wall.
  • Your floor: A round hole opens up, with cold mist rising from it.
  • Your corner of the room: At first a witch stands there with her head bowed.
  • Your wall as a gateway: In one chapter a wall collapses. Behind it lies a graveyard in the moonlight.

The sound uses the room too. Footsteps come from behind. Knocking comes from one wall. Voices come from under the floor. This is called spatial audio (sound that seems to come from a particular direction in the room).

And your body becomes the controller. You look away, duck, crawl and reach out. The game never moves the camera. Your view only changes when you move yourself.

What you need

  • A Meta Quest 2, Pro, 3 or 3S. These are the models the store lists for HAUNTED.
  • A room with some free space. According to the maker, any room size works.
  • Good light in the room. The cameras need light to recognise the room.
  • The controllers or your hands. Hand tracking (the headset recognises your hands through the cameras) works too.

What it costs

HAUNTED cost £3.99 in the British Meta store on 10 October 2026. It is a one-off purchase. You can find more on the HAUNTED store page.

How to try mixed reality for the first time, step by step

  1. Clear a space in your room.
  2. Turn the light on.
  3. Put the headset on.
  4. Start the game and read the warnings.
  5. Choose your room or scan it again.
  6. Have a quick look around. You see your real room. That is passthrough.
  7. Start „New game“ and listen out for noises around you.

How mixed reality differs from a film

With a horror film you sit on the sofa. The scare stays inside the television. With a mixed reality game you stand in the middle of the action. And you are not just a spectator.

In HAUNTED you do things yourself. The first chapter is about where you look. In another chapter a puppet copies your movements. In yet another you shine a torch into the darkness. Each chapter brings a new task.

That has two consequences. First, the horror hits harder because you are involved. Second, you need to be able to move. You turn, duck and in one chapter even crawl on your hands and knees.

Good to know

  • Colour or black and white: On the Quest 2, according to Meta, you only see your room in greyscale. The Quest 3 and 3S show it in colour.
  • Not seated: HAUNTED calls for ducking and crawling. The store lists only „Room-scale“ and „Standing“.
  • Ages 18 and over: The game is rated PEGI 18. It contains blood and loud jump scares.
  • Hide your room: With „Hide my room“ the game replaces your room with a virtual padded cell. Then mixed reality becomes almost full VR.
  • Other games: Other titles use mixed reality for horror too, such as Hauntify. The principle is similar.

If something goes wrong

  • The room looks blurry or dark: Turn on more light. Wipe the cameras gently with a glasses cloth.
  • Figures are half stuck in furniture: Scan the room again and let the headset pick up the furniture.
  • You feel queasy: Take the headset off and have a break.

Unsure about a word? Look it up in our glossary of technical words.

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