When Netflix announced that it would be making free games for its subscribers, no one was entirely sure what the company’s aim was. Netflix released two Stranger Things games in Poland at the end of August but has mostly been hush about its plans. Little changes with Eden Unearthed, a game first spotted by UploadVR and found on the Oculus App Lab for Oculus Quest and Oculus Quest 2 headsets.
Eden Unearthed is based upon the Netflix original show Eden that launched on Netflix at the end of May 2021. The show Eden follows the story of two robots living a thousand years after humans disappeared from Earth. During a routine assignment in the farmlands outside the city Eden 3, they find an actual human girl — previously sleeping in stasis — and embark upon an adventure to raise her in secrecy. In the game, players ride a motorbike and ride at high speed through several environments, with narration and interaction scattered throughout the experience.
App Lab is the “testing grounds” of sorts for Quest games that haven’t met with final approval from Facebook for the proper Oculus Store. Because of that, there’s no way to find out what games have actually been released on App Lab as there’s no way to search for the games, at large. Instead, you’ll either need to search for the exact name of the title in the Oculus app or on a Quest headset, or you’ll need a link to the listing (which you can find below).
Whether this is a part of several similar show or movie tie-ins to come isn’t clear, but it seems clear that Netflix has followed this route with existing game releases so far. Particularly interesting — aside from the fact that this game isn’t limited to subscribers — is the fact that the App Lab listing shows the availability date of April 20, meaning it has likely sat in App Lab with no real fanfare from Netflix since the release.
