Umbrella Up: Only Way is Up With Umbrellas?

Racula
Sep 18
3 min read

Developed by Monstarai, Umbrella Up is a virtual reality (VR) climbing game for the Meta Quest. Where players use two umbrellas as their primary tools to navigate a vertical obstacle course and simply start climbing up. Even though I do have a fear of heights and do suffer from vertigo and a bit of motion sickness whilst on the VR, I decided to give this game ago and see if it would help me get over one of my fears. Did over come my fear of heights or was it just too much to deal with? Read on to find out.

Climbing Smart With Umbrellas

Umbrella Up seems simple enough, as it involves opening and flipping the umbrellas to hang on to objects, swing and use the wind to glide - using the umbrellas opened up, however it does provide a challenging and chaotic experience, where the umbrellas can get in the way and they are also your only means of moving about as well. It does feature: checkpoints, mini-games and so much more, it's currently in early access with plans for plenty of more updates.

To play this game, you do need to be standing up, as you will be pretty much moving around in a circle on the spot, with the occasional bit of movement - so make sure you have plenty of space. You play as a snowman on a unicycle, as weird as it sounds this does make things more challenging when moving around, as move too fast and you could accidently propel yourself off the edge. To move the snowman about, you need to move your arms about, as if you were using hiking sticks to walk, or use both at the same time as if you were skiing.

If you get stuck or fall off a ledge and manage to land on another platform further down, hold the B and it will restart you back at the last check point you reached, this comes in very handy as I did get stuck a few times and fell off as well.

It took me a while to get the hang of the game and controls, as there is a small tutorial at the start, but it doesn't really explain much, it's a trial and error to figure everything else out for your self, such as which button brings up the game menu, which is the A button on the meta quest 2 I think.

Umbrella Up's Audio and Visuals

The graphics for Umbrella Up are very much like those for Peak. They have a cartoonish simplicity, resembling a giant soft play/climbing frame area. The colours are bright, vibrant, stand and out, so you can easily spot if there is a climbable ledge or pole with the different colours used. The only graphics that are different are the visuals in the distance, used as a stationary background as you start to climb. It's like a panoramic picture with mountains, a view of the ocean, and a city, which are very nice to look at as you climb higher.

As for the audio, the music is very pleasant to listen to while climbing, it does change at certain points the higher you climb, but the music remains subtle and never overwhelming. There were times where I was dancing along to the music, whilst waiting for a moving pole to come back.

My Final Thoughts

Even though it's still in early access and the developers are constantly updating the game and posting in their discord about it, Umbrella Up is an enjoyable and fun VR game to play. My only issues I had with the game are: the tutorial really doesn't go into much detail, such as how to bring the menu up or if you get stuck. Also even if you have the VR set to sitting down, the game doesn't actually let you play it that way nor does it even tell you, so regardless you have to stand to play this game. Though I still have a fear of heights and still have motion sickness when on the VR, I do feel like this game did help me out a bit. If you enjoy playing climbing games and want a challenge and strengthen your arms up, then Umbrella up is for you.

Thank you to everyone who took time out of their day to take a moment to read this review, your support is always appreciated and means a lot to us all.

Umbrella Up is available on:

Meta Quest

XPN Rating 3.5 out of 5