The Lab

Welcome to The Lab, a compilation of Valve’s room-scale VR experiments set in a pocket universe within Aperture Science. Fix a robot, defend a castle, adopt a mechanical dog, and more. Still not sold? It’s free!

The Lab is a free to play, vr and singleplayer game developed and published by Valve.
Released on April 05th 2016 is available only on Windows in 21 languages: English, French, German, Czech, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese - Portugal, Portuguese - Brazil, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Swedish, Italian, Japanese, Spanish - Spain, Danish, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Turkish.

It has received 6,266 reviews of which 5,952 were positive and 314 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.2 out of 10. 😍

The game is free to play on Steam.

The Steam community has classified The Lab into these genres:

Free to Play VR Singleplayer Action First-Person Funny Adventure Sandbox Casual Sci-fi Family Friendly FPS Puzzle Shooter Memes Strategy Archery Atmospheric Simulation Multiplayer

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at The Lab through various videos and screenshots.

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Requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows

OS *: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10
Processor: Intel® i5-4590, AMD FX 8350 equivalent or better
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 970, AMD Radeon™ R9 290 equivalent or better, Video Output: HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2 or newer
VR Support: SteamVR. Standing or Room Scale
Additional Notes: 1x USB 2.0 or better port also required

Reviews

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Jan. 2025

Good demonstration of VR gaming, recommended to check what you can do in VR, but is too short, so you need to get some games

Dec. 2024

Pretty fun game overall. Runs great on my PC and over a wired connection to my headset. This game feels like it was made for modding support ala bonelab/garry's mod.

Nov. 2024

Look, it's free. And it's got some charm to it, since it's made by Valve. Neat little demo for your first VR experience. But also, don't expect much. VR has come a long way. There isn't much interactivity here. Longbow, and Xortex are probably the highlights. Postcards, Human Medical Scan, and Solar System have no interactivity and no dialogue (postcard are just 3D snapshots of some real places, where you can't even move freely). The robot repair room is just a 5-minute Portal short with very little interactivity (bit of a disappointment actually, I thought there'd be more). The secret shop doesn't seem to have any interactivity, and just crashes for me always at a certain scripted point (your mileage may vary, I couldn't be bothered to try to fix it). So yeah, this isn't the same quality as the the Steam Deck tech demo Aperture Desk Job. And if you've played the Meta Quest tech demos on their headset before this (like me), there is nothing new here VR gameplay wise.

Aug. 2024

It's a great place to start when getting into VR. Gives you a basic rundown of VR and it's capabilities. Not much replay value, but all the activities are great. The Portal-themed levels are obviously the best ones lmao.

March 2024

The longbow game will ruin VR bows in every other game for you. It just works.

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Data sources

The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.

Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.

Last Updates

Steam data	19 November 2024 10:05
SteamSpy data	21 January 2025 10:04
Steam price	19 November 2024 10:05
Steam reviews	20 January 2025 21:51

Free to play

9.2

5,952

314

Online players

Developer

Valve

Publisher

Valve

Release 05 Apr 2016

Platforms