Inside BATTLE START: The 2025 Retrospective

Traditionally, December is a time for summing up results and announcing plans for the next year. We’ll be no exception.

If you're short on time, just read the first part of this article. It contains everything we'd like to share about 2025 in terms of BATTLE START's achievements, key statistics, and groundwork for the future.

And for those ready to dive deeper, we have lovingly crafted the second part of the text. For the first time in our team's history, we will show you the people without whom we couldn't have created a single one of our coolest free-roam VR games this past year.

In our view, it's the living people, their experiences, dreams, and thoughts that truly reveal what can be called the foundation of our company's life.

Everything you know about BATTLE START has been created by the hands of the professionals who came together to rewrite the history of VR.

Does that sound too loud to you? We simply won't settle for less!

In 2025, our partners' VR arenas opened in 16 new countries across the globe. BATTLE START now has a presence in 430 VR arenas in 42 countries.

On all those venues, players spent nearly 65 million minutes immersed in our free-roam VR worlds. That’s almost 120 years of pure, shared adventure.

In 2025, more than 2 million gamers played our games!

We expanded our toolkit for entrepreneurs, introducing unique arena formats with no direct competitors on the market: Mini Arenas and Mobile MR Arena. We refined our existing models to be more profitable for our franchisees.

We witnessed our partners not just launching their first VR businesses but scaling their success, opening second and third locations.

And our game-dev heart kept beating strong, releasing two major titles—Zombie Vegas and Magic Party—directly into the BATTLE START game subscription.

And now, we've already shared the numbers, but behind them are people. We gathered five members of our team and asked them to talk about the past year, no holds barred. About what took off, what didn't work, and what they honestly think about it all.

We have never revealed before who is behind the entire BATTLE START ecosystem. But when better to do so than at the end of an incredibly successful year?

So, if you've ever wanted to know more about the behind-the-scenes of VR, but weren't sure who to ask, this is your chance. There are no right answers here—just personal experiences.

Format Change: Error Recognition & Reassembly of Working Options

For me, 2025 was the year of business reassembly. We sat down and crunched the numbers: which formats were making money for our partners, and which were stalling. And we started phasing out what didn't work.

Take the Portals format, for example. We adored it ourselves. Multi-level, with teleporters—for us gamers, it was genius. But when we brought it to real conditions with ordinary people who are playing VR for the first time, customers just didn't get it. It turned out that what seemed like an innovation to us was just a complicated thing for the average client.

Our strength lies in ensuring that the VR business we offer as a ready-made franchise is primarily beneficial for our partners. That's why we didn't stick to the portal format just because we love it specifically. We have reworked it and created other formats suitable for the same platforms.

We're focused on the mass market, on families, on casual players. They need to have fun from the very first second. We analyzed the data and came up with new mini-formats without teleporters. We gave portal owners the option to switch with a single button on their tablet—for free.

The second significant development was the introduction of the new Mobile MR Arena format.

Now, to start a mobile business, you don't need to rent a space. You can buy the equipment, get our game subscription, and work at weddings, corporate events, city festivals. You just load the VR headsets into your car—and the VR business is running. It's an answer to a market demand: people want to start with a small budget.

About Our VR (and MR) Games: What's New

We had to adapt our games for the Mobile MR format so they would complement reality. Our first step was to evaluate our existing library and port over what made sense. Some games transitioned seamlessly. Tactics, for instance, fits perfectly into any urban or outdoor landscape. We barely had to change a thing; it just worked.

Others, however, didn't translate at all. Our horror game was a clear example. Its entire atmosphere depends on darkness. Playing it outdoors in broad daylight is not scary. The core vibe evaporated completely, so we removed it from the MR lineup.

We applied the same logic across the board.

This process led us to a fundamental realization: our game lineups will diverge. In the future, the catalog for our VR Arenas and the one for Mobile MR Arenas are becoming two collections.

For MR, we're now building dedicated games from the ground up. We already have three such games in active development. These games will be exclusive to the MR format—you won't find them in our traditional VR arenas.

Continuing the theme of games - our passion... In 2025, we released 2 games.

The biggest surprise and a reason to be proud was Zombie Vegas. We knew the shooter format worked, but it became something more.

Our Sound Designer Eugene and Game Producer Konstantin turned it into an industry and company breakthrough. We essentially defined a new genre: the Interactive VR Show.

The team created not just a VR game, but a rock show where up to 20 people in the arena aren't the audience—they're the main performers. That hadn't been done on the market before. This format is unique. There's no direct comparison. When you watch a circus or a rock concert in a movie, you're a passive observer. Here, you're in the center of it. The closest parallels might be immersive horror rooms or narrative-driven mobile laser tag, but even those don't capture the scale and spectacle of what we've built for the VR arena space. No other VR franchise or club offers this.

The biggest risk was the Magic Party. For the first time, we entrusted a key family game not to the core team, but to three newcomers: a programmer, a 3D artist, and a game designer. It was scary—handing over your brainchild. But they pulled it off, releasing 11 quality mini-games. This allowed the core team to focus entirely on Vegas. We proved we'd grown not just in our products, but in our people.

How We Look for Diamonds: The Agony of Choice

The most important thing players don't see is the iceberg of discarded ideas. We come up with a thousand concepts. 800 get filtered out immediately, 200 we start developing, and only 30 make it to the finish line. Months of work on mechanics that later get completely cut from the game—that's normal. If we released everything we dreamed up, we'd end up with a boring, awkward, or even dangerous game. Our main quality guarantee is this ruthless selection process.

New VR Games in 2026? Of course!

Traditionally, our team releases 2 new vr games annually. 2026 will be no exception. And we are absolutely confident that these new adventures will appeal to everyone. As per our established practice, one game will be aimed at a more mature audience, while the second will be designed as a family-friendly game format. These adventures will not only feature a unique storyline but also a more positive PvE (Player versus Environment) mode for shared playtime, replacing the usual PvP (Player versus Player).

We want the team to unite against a common enemy, so everyone feels like a winner. Two such games are already in the works: a summer shooter codenamed "Agents" and a New Year's adventure where families will save the universe together. It sounds like a good allegory to me.

The game that, in Alex's opinion, will make anyone fall in love with VR:

In my view, Zombie Vegas is a sure bet. This rhythm shooter won't leave anyone indifferent. It's within this VR show that you can truly understand how thrilling an experience can be when each player is at its center. Furthermore, Zombie Vegas will show you the high bar the BATTLE START team has set. If we created such a mind-blowing game in 2025, just imagine what's next!

Behind The Scenes of BATTLE START's Games

This isn't just a job; it's production in its purest, most rock 'n' roll form. My role at BATTLE START is full production from zero to release. I essentially create a game like a film. Think of me as the director: I write everything, envision how people will play, for how long, what they will do, the graphics, the actions, the emotions to be felt. From voice acting to animation—it's all part of my domain. In our corner of the game dev world, there's no such thing as a person who just "draws boxes." Everyone does everything possible. I even delved into level design myself back when we were creating Tactics and Battle—deciding where obstacles go, whether they're destructible, and how the space flows.

The Real Challenge: Pleasing Everyone

Honestly, recalling 2025, nothing felt overwhelmingly difficult in the technical sense. Things come relatively easily now. The real challenge, the one that's constant every year, is making a game that people will genuinely love. You have to juggle a myriad of tastes: the venue owners who buy our arenas want one thing, the players who visit want another.

It took us a considerable amount of time to convince the market that while shooters are fine, they aren't the core of VR's future. There are already plenty out there. The crucial insight was recognizing that the primary customers for VR arenas aren't hardcore gamers. Families and children are a major source of revenue for your VR arena. The hardest part was waiting for that understanding to spread organically through word-of-mouth, for owners to realize that family-friendly content was the key. Now, that's an accepted axiom, and things are easier.

Why We Have Few Competitors: Only Fanatics Win

The free-roam VR market is hardcore—incredibly interesting but tough to survive in. There's money only in the specific format we've mastered. Few want to make VR games because the return is much lower compared to console or mobile. You enter this field out of pure love for it. Our entire team is like that. We don't just want to be first; we want to propel the entire VR games market forward, to become the flagship others look up to when they finally realize the incredible, innovative things possible in free-roam VR.

The Formula for Success: Thinking Like Your Audience

To create something that appeals to absolutely everyone, you have to be deeply immersed in the context.

Making a shooter? Play every existing version out there.

Want to design a VR show? Seek inspiration from films with similar themes, immersive attractions, theatrical performances, escape rooms, and specially designed mobile laser tag games.

If your goal is family-friendly games, your task becomes even more complex. Essentially, adults need to put themselves in children's shoes and understand what interests them, what will make them want to come back again and again. In this regard, TikTok helps me a lot, where I spend a huge amount of time. That's how I grasp the modern context.

But the most important tool for creating children's games is direct experience performing for kids and interacting with them. You can assume whatever you want, but only through real interaction will you understand what truly captivates, amuses, and engages them. It's challenging, but essential.

Additionally, I intentionally transport myself back to my childhood and my experiences (since a family game implies parents as players, too). To make non-violent, bloodless games interesting for moms and dads as well, we need to strike a chord with their sense of delight and the magic they once felt long ago while playing, for example, the Sega Mega Drive or Super Nintendo.

Pride of 2025: We Have Created Legends

Everything in 2025 turned out great, though often differently than I first imagined. I'm proud of the JELLY VOLLEYBALL mode in Magic Party, the MISCHIEVOUS SLIMES mode that teaches real-world physics in a fun way, but above all, I'm most proud of Zombie Vegas.

It became the best game of the year. It perfectly resonated with players and with me. Zombie Vegas looks great, has a clear flow, and was a joy to develop—everything built logically, step by step. It's the best game we made this year and, I believe, the best among all free-roam VR games released. There's nothing else like it that delivers a story understandable at any level, to any person of any age, paired with straightforward gameplay where you shoot but also interact meaningfully with enemies and the environment.

The Shift Towards PvE for Our Games? I'm All for It

This means our new games will have much more narrative. I want them to be blockbuster films where people go to VR arenas as if they're going to the cinema—but a cinema where you can participate. That's the key unique selling point: why go to a movie theater just to watch a beautiful picture when you can be part of the movie in VR? Virtual reality wins in that regard, hands down.

The Dream: To Become a Legend

Professionally, I dream of becoming a legend. I want everyone to look up to our VR games as the benchmark for something incredibly cool and unattainable. As for BATTLE START as a company? We're already the best. One hundred percent. No one can do it better than us. And 2026? It will be a breakthrough year for us, packed with releases, with two major titles leading the charge.

The game that, in Konstantine's opinion, will make anyone fall in love with VR:

Play Zombie Vegas if you are a teen or adult. For a younger audience? Magic Party. Any mode works, but if I had to choose just one, pick the FINAL mode with the dragon. It shows all the possibilities of the VR world: real 3D objects flying at you with sound and physical feedback, and a gigantic, awesome dragon soaring right before your eyes. That's the true magic.

The Challenge of a First Full Game

This year, I was tasked for the first time with creating an entire game featuring 11 different scenarios. The hardest part was probably building the right pipeline—the step-by-step path you follow. First you do this, then that, then the third thing. As a structured person who needs to know everything from A to Z, setting this up correctly was the biggest challenge. Everything else was pure improvisation and creativity, which I love. Inventing and thinking through the visuals, colors, textures, and how everything comes together as a whole—that was the most interesting and important part for me, the work I truly want to do.

Breathing Life into a Character

It starts from internal feelings. You look at a character and understand if you like it—how it looks, its colors, textures, and silhouette. A character should have a strong, beautiful silhouette so that even with the lights off and colors removed, you can tell who it is. To understand what I'm talking about, imagine Stitch. You recognize him by his shape. Form is crucial. Then come colors and textures. They should be recognizable, appealing, and work harmoniously together.

I rely heavily on this innate sense of aesthetics, my feeling for what's beautiful. Of course, there are technical aspects to consider in creation, but the foundation is internal.

From a "Girl Fox" to a Living World

Nothing in our games is random. Everything has its own meaning, idea, and purpose. For an adventure to truly come alive, not only the characters must be meticulously crafted, but even something as basic as the floor and the ceiling. Our games are so awesome because they remain engaging even if you're not actively fighting or participating in the game's narrative. Many players have told us after their sessions: "Wow! I couldn't start battling my opponents for a long time because I was just glued to the spot, taking in the world I had entered! It's something incredible!" Hearing this, I know my work has truly been done well.

What lies behind every story? Of course, the foundation of everything is characters. During brainstorming sessions, we develop the concept, figuring out who they are, their personality, the vibe they should give off. Then, their appearance is layered onto this conceptual foundation. It can change many times, but at a certain point, you understand: that's it, it's time to stop—this is exactly what's needed.

However, our characters need a place to exist. And that's where the work on the entire environment begins. We also conceptualize the world down to the smallest detail. Everything around must "breathe" life. Even if the world is rendered in a cartoonish style, the player must still believe in it, in its reality. This means that if you enter, for example, the SUNKEN PIRATES mode, you will stand on the deck of a ship made of wood with cracks and chips, as it has long been sunken and started decaying. A huge and incredibly beautiful whale will swim around you, and the light will behave exactly as it would refract underwater on a sunny day. Yes, you'll be in a virtual world, but you will distinctly feel like an organic part of it. And that—that is real magic. That's what I do.

Why People Choose Our Games

For their uniqueness, I think. We have games no one else has, games we invented ourselves. For instance, we were the first to create a VR horror quest for 20 simultaneous players. We have the awesome Zombie Vegas with its interesting story. Magic Party, enveloped in pure wonder with its mini-games. I think overall, people choose us for the formats we create and the visuals we deliver.

Why VR is The Future

Because it's something new, something that will keep surprising people for a long time. Even now, not everyone knows what VR is. Not many have actually played in VR. It's a field where you can invent new technologies. It's something not yet fully explored, especially in the gaming industry. I believe we can create something even bigger and brighter in the future. Development is already happening; the growth of VR games has skyrocketed in the last couple of years. I think there's much more to come.

The Ultimate Professional Dream

I want to create an iconic, super-recognizable character that would later be used for merchandise, put on posters. That's my dream. And you know, I believe I can do it with BATTLE START. Shall we put it to the test?

The game that, in Lina's opinion, will make anyone fall in love with VR:

If someone who's never tried VR came to me, I'd probably choose a family-friendly game. I really love Magic Party, and so does everyone else. My favorite mode is HUNGRY TOTEMS, because of those cool, funny totems. They're amusing and playful. We're now focusing on ensuring our games have these elements—things that are both funny and unique in style and visuals. That's the direction for our future games as well.

Crafting Worlds for Magic and Controlled Chaos

I develop game concepts, visual style, story, and mechanics.

What does that mean? Well, let's say Alex comes in with the idea: "slimes on a witch's table." A non-trivial concept, isn't it? First, we all discuss together what we're going to develop, how we'll do it, what the story will be, and what will specifically happen on that game level. As a game designer, I have to meticulously plan out all the logic so it holds up despite the inherently magical plot. So, if we're talking about slimes, how should they move? What challenges should arise when collecting and moving them to a designated point? How should they combine into one giant slime? And on top of all that, it has to be fun.

Our games, no matter where they're set, don't break the laws of physics. The player needs to understand how to move and interact with objects. For you, as the consumer, everything should feel comfortable and intuitively clear from the start. But you have no idea the monumental effort behind every single story like this.

If You're Not a Gamer, It Will Be Very Difficult

Every member of our team is a passionate VR gaming enthusiast. You need to be deeply versed in both gaming legends and the latest releases. A broad perspective is the fundamental foundation; it's what develops your imagination.

Looking at the games being enjoyed in arenas today, what I'm most proud of is probably the MISCHIEVOUS SLIMES mode from Magic Party. It’s playful, engaging, and full of humor.

The Challenge of Magic Party Is a Thinking Like a Child

As one of the three core team members behind Magic Party, the greatest challenge was learning to think like a child. Understanding their unique perspective—what captivates them and holds their interest—proved exceptionally difficult, as adults naturally see the world in a different way.

We bridged this gap through consistent inquiry and testing. This meant showing early versions of the game to young players, gathering their feedback, and then carefully tuning our design to resonate on their wavelength. It's interesting to bring joy to children and observe their reactions. They are probably the most sincere emotions there are.

What to Expect Next Year

For gamers — more fun and exciting VR games. For me personally — more difficult challenges. I believe the foundation of interesting work is growth. As long as there's no stagnation, you can do something for a very long time. My dream is to get a task that makes me think, "Wow, I don't know how to do this yet," or "I only know a little, but I'll figure it out and make it fantastic." I'm sure 2026 will follow this pattern, because VR is the fastest-growing industry. It simply can't be any other way.

The game that, in Arthur's opinion, will make anyone fall in love with VR:

Personally, for myself, I'd choose Tactics—if we're talking about a teenager or child. But for an adult, definitely Zombie Vegas. It's arguably our most technologically perfect rhythm shooter, showcasing the full richness of game mechanics. It has a very cool story, and it's important that players unite against a common evil. It's a truly beautiful, excellently crafted game that immerses you completely in its reality.

The Invisible Architecture of Immersion

Here's how that sound process is built. A new project appears. For a month or even several, I try to capture the vibe of the entire project. Initially, I constantly consult with our producer, and together we find our path for the sound in the future project. Once I've fully grasped this creative line, I become a completely autonomous unit. I do everything myself, understanding what works better and what sounds cooler. The result is often something quite interesting.

Sounds are created in a variety of ways. Simple ones, like a knock or a creak, can often be found and then processed to be more pleasing to the ear. But for sounds that have no real-world counterpart, you have to invent them entirely from scratch.

Depth and Density: From Two Sounds to a Singing Chorus

The complexity of sound design varies greatly between different VR games. For example, there's a mode in Party 2 where I used only two sounds—no joke. Yet it was executed so correctly that none of the players have even noticed it to this day. On the other hand, there are games for which nearly full symphonies were composed. It all depends on how much the music is meant to support and enrich the storyline.

The diamond of 2025 in terms of sound is, of course, Zombie Vegas. Alex isn't afraid to call it something of a rock musical. I love Vegas myself; I really felt it deeply. I tried very hard, and it turned out great. I'm particularly proud of the musical boss battles—the Chef and the final boss. I was fully responsible for them. It's all done very coolly and drive-heavy, in my opinion. I've noticed everyone really likes it, and I enjoy the action of those sequences myself.

The Philosophy of Sound: Immersion and Indication

In virtual reality, where the goal is total immersion, sound serves two fundamental purposes. First, it makes the digital world feel tangible and real. Second, it provides crucial feedback, instantly signaling the success or consequence of a player's actions. Immersion and indication: these are the twin pillars of VR sound design.

This requires paying a lot of attention to details players won't even consciously notice. The sensation of acoustic space in the game: for example, when characters speak, the density of the sound must match the space they're in. Sound in a closed space and an open one is completely different, and this must be accounted for to avoid breaking the illusion. There are many basic design elements, like footsteps. When a person walks, the sounds should be asynchronous because that's exactly how we all walk, though we never think about it. And of course, the sound of footsteps must match the surface. All of this is necessary to keep the player immersed. People rarely say a game has a great sound. But if they say the sound is bad, then something has definitely gone wrong.

What distinguishes good sound from bad? There shouldn't be moments where you think, "My God, what is that sound?" You should either be thinking, "Wow, that sounds awesome!" or not paying any attention to it at all. It depends on the task.

A Professional Dream

I love the sound of The Last of Us. It's an incredible soundtrack. People who have played that game even once recognize it, in part, by its soundtrack. My goal is to create something just as iconic.

The game that, in Eugene's opinion, will make anyone fall in love with VR:

For an adult, I think it's best to choose Zombie Vegas, so they can enjoy the thrill, get an adrenaline rush, and have a blast. For kids, it would probably be perfect to turn on the FINAL dragon mode in Magic Party—they'll definitely love it.

Made it to the end? Then you're just as passionate about VR games as we are!

We're thrilled to have lifted the curtain and given a voice to the people who usually in the shadows—the very people who directly shape the quality of BATTLE START's free-roam VR games.

Join our community and watch together as we push this industry forward!