Pararea: A Brief Introduction

Pararea 31 Dec 2018.jpg

Pararea is a Unity-based social VR platform by a Chinese company, the Metaverse Technology Company of Beijing. It’s available under the Early Access Program on Steam, so I decided to download it and give it a try.

Here’s a seven-minute YouTube video showing you what the game looks like:

This is one of those virtual worlds which could use a good English translator (as you might have guessed by the somewhat fractured English of their website). Most of the in-world signs are in Chinese only, which makes it difficult to figure out how to navigate. After a few minutes, I figured out how to modify my starter avatar (a head, torso, and hands only, much like Rec Room), how to teleport, and how to turn around.

I visited a few places but Pararea was, unfortunately, deserted. Let me save you the trouble of downloading and testing this out for yourself: it’s not worth it, unless you are fluent in Chinese. The customer reviews on Steam have been almost universally scathing, too:

Its like VRChat and RecRoom had a child, but the child was ugly…..

Oh, dear. The worst part is, it’s accurate!