The free to play multiplayer job sim from Owlchemy Labs adds a new location to its growing world. We played it at GDC this month. Read on for all the details and our impressions.
Treeatle, Hexas, New Joysey, and now Sporelando. If nothing else, Dimensional Double Shift knows exactly what it is and the pun-filled dimension names just add to the cozy, light atmosphere synonymous with Owlchemy Labs' games.
Double Shift announced Sporelando (Orlando with mushrooms, get it??), its latest paid expansion, in the Spring 2026 VR Games Showcase. Sporelando drops on April 23 for Meta Quest and Android XR for $4.99. Like the previous dimensional packs, only one player in a lobby needs to own the world for everyone to play.
If you have not played Dimensional Double Shift yet, take the VR classic Job Simulator, add more refined hand tracking interactions, and make it multiplayer. That's DDS in a nutshell. Players travel to different dimensions to clock in for a workday in a number of different scenarios like automobile repair and a shift in a restaurant that was PTSD-inducing for this former restaurant manager turned journalist.
Sporelando takes players to a suburban swamp where humanoid mushrooms roam free. Expect to service decidedly impatient fungi across multiple jobs, like patching up golf carts (it's Florida, everyone owns a golf cart) and serving questionable products at a local diner, all while alligators roam the streets around it.
In a press release, Owlchemy Labs CEOwl Andrew Eiche said "It's the kind of place that feels weirdly familiar until you realize your clients are fungi and the diner menu is… questionable. That tension between the mundane and the absurd is where the best co-op chaos lives."
Our Impressions
We joined Andrew Eiche, and other members of the Owlchemy Labs team at the Game Developers Conference for a tour of Sporelando. The demo was played on a Samsung Galaxy XR, my first time in that particular headset. I won't turn this into a review of the headset, but I will say the visuals looked great and I remembered the color depth and sharpness when I put on a Quest 3 for another demo later during my trip. I missed it.
When I loaded in, my first thought was even though Owlchemy Labs is based out of Texas, someone on this team has to be a Florida native. My father's side of the family is based in central Florida and while most people think of Florida as nothing but beaches, a large part of the state looks like Sporelando: humid, swampy, and filled with golf courses. For some, it might be jarring to see an alligator just stroll down a street. If you are familiar with this part of the world, it's perfectly normal.
It had been some time since I played Dimensional Double Shift and I have not played either of the two previous expansions, Hexas and New Joysey. I was on limited time, so I only had a minute to take in Sporelando before we jumped into a lobby, but the signature Owlchemy Labs humor was front and center. Billboards with spoof products like Spore Loko (a take on Four Loko) and Six Swamps (Six Flags Theme Park) put a smile on my face.
The hand tracking is unlike what I have experienced in other VR games, even other Owlchemy titles like Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator. In those games, everything is decidedly bigger to allow for the low frequency hand tracking native to Quest headsets at the time. Buttons are huge, grabbable items are large, and so on. DDS uses a natural two finger interaction for everything, even its new snap turning system with menus feeling more normal sized compared to the aforementioned games. Nothing feels so big as to be cartoonish and intrusive.
The level we played involved fixing malfunctioning golf carts for cantankerous mushrooms who just wanted to get back out on the links. After loading the cart in, the stations loaded and we were off. Right away, two things stood out. The notable lack of grab jank often experienced in hand tracking games and the required teamwork. My station had an air pump to my left on the first and a water pump on the second, but I never had to use it for my repairs. A teammate needed it, so I either had to toss it or reach across and spray it myself.
Eiche instructed me to depress the trigger with just my thumb because he noticed I was trying to squeeze it with my whole hand, something I am just used to doing in hand tracked games without this level of refined interactions. I paused, thinking that wasn't going to work, and it did. "Finally," I thought to myself, "someone used finger tracking in a more meaningful way than pressing a button or flipping the bird."
The cooperative stations were also great because they forced all of us to communicate back and forth. "Hey, I need a spray over here" or "what's that configuration showing on your side?" were common lines in the few minutes it took us to complete a repair. Through the laughter, it all felt very organic and easy. That is the biggest triumph for Sporelando and DDS as a whole. With the exception of some bad throws on my part, everything felt normal. It's silly and funny, but the game doesn't get in the way of itself with finicky controls. If I grabbed for something, more often than not, I got it on the first try. It cannot be overstated how huge of an accomplishment this is.
Sporelando was a joy to play and spurred me to double back and catch up on what I missed. During this time, I also conducted an interview with Andrew Eiche. Look for that on UploadVR soon.
Dimensional Double Shift is available free to play on Quest and Android XR. Sporelando releases on both platforms on April 23 for $4.99.
