• Ragnarock is a Viking-themed VR rhythm game where you drum to power a longboat — and it doubles as a surprisingly effective upper body workout.
• The game is available on Meta Quest, PCVR, and PSVR2, making it accessible to most VR headset owners.
• Multiplayer is where Ragnarock truly comes alive — racing other Viking ships online is a rush that solo play can’t fully replicate.
• The soundtrack leans heavily into black metal, pirate metal, and Celtic metal, which fits the theme perfectly but may limit long-term appeal for some players.
• There’s no story mode or progression system, but at around £19.99, Ragnarock delivers enough sweaty, hammer-swinging fun to justify the price — especially for fitness-minded gamers.

Ragnarock Is One of the Best VR Fitness Games You Can Buy Right Now

If you’ve ever wanted to feel like a Viking drummer powering a longboat through a raging sea while getting a genuine arm workout, Ragnarock is exactly what you’ve been looking for.

Developed by WanadevStudio, Ragnarock is one of those rare VR games that delivers on both the fun and the fitness fronts without feeling like either is an afterthought. It launched alongside the PSVR2 and has built a loyal following across Meta Quest and PCVR platforms as well. For gamers who want to move without feeling like they’re exercising, this game hits a sweet spot that few titles manage to find.

Fitness gaming is a growing space, and resources like VR fitness communities and guides have helped thousands of gamers discover just how effective games like Ragnarock can be as part of a real workout routine. This review breaks down everything — gameplay, physical intensity, music, multiplayer, and where the game falls short — so you know exactly what you’re getting into before you pick up those hammers.

What Is Ragnarock?

Ragnarock is a VR rhythm game set in a Norse Viking world where you play as a drummer aboard a longboat. Your job is simple: hit the notes, power the boat, beat your rivals to the finish line. It’s part rhythm game, part racing game, and part arm-day workout — all wrapped in a metal soundtrack and a surprisingly immersive VR environment. If you enjoy VR fitness games, you might also like Beat Saber, another popular title in this genre.

The Viking Rowing Race Concept

The core concept is refreshingly original. Instead of just hitting notes for points like in a traditional rhythm game, every note you land directly fuels your Viking ship. Your rowing crew responds to your drumming — the better your accuracy and timing, the faster your longboat cuts through the water. You’re not just playing music; you’re literally driving a race.

The races themselves are structured around reaching a series of goal posts along the course. Three goal posts mark the journey, and your ship’s position at each one is determined entirely by how well you’ve drummed up to that point. It creates natural pressure spikes in the music that make even familiar songs feel tense and competitive.

How Hitting Notes Powers Your Boat

Notes appear as glowing runes traveling down two lanes toward a set of drums in front of you. Hit them accurately with your VR controllers — which you’re holding like drumming hammers — and your ship surges forward. Miss notes and your boat slows, giving opponents the chance to pull ahead. It’s a direct cause-and-effect loop that makes every single hit feel meaningful, similar to the experience offered by Beat Saber.

Action	Effect on Boat
Accurate Note Hit	Ship accelerates forward
Missed Note	Ship slows or stalls
Cymbal Hit (Special Note)	Crowd cheers, speed boost triggered
Combo Streak	Sustained speed advantage over rivals

What makes this mechanic work so well from a fitness standpoint is that you can’t phone it in. To keep your boat moving at a competitive pace, you have to stay engaged and keep swinging. There’s no passive way to play Ragnarock — and that’s exactly what makes it such an effective workout. For those interested in exploring more about VR fitness, VR fitness and nutrition integration offers additional insights.

Available Platforms: Meta Quest, PCVR, and PSVR2

Ragnarock launched on PCVR through Steam before making its way to Meta Quest and eventually PSVR2 as a launch title. Each version delivers the same core experience, though there are some platform-specific differences worth knowing about.

The PSVR2 version takes advantage of the headset’s eye-tracking and haptic feedback through the Sense controllers, which adds a subtle but noticeable layer of immersion when your hammers connect with the drums. The Meta Quest version is the most accessible since it requires no PC or console, just the headset and enough arm room to swing freely. For those interested in exploring more VR fitness options, the Beat Saber VR fitness app offers a similar immersive experience.

On PCVR, the game benefits from higher graphical fidelity if your rig can handle it, and it also supports custom songs through the modding community — something the console versions don’t offer. That’s a significant advantage for players who want to expand the song library well beyond what comes bundled with the game.

• Meta Quest (2, 3, Pro): Standalone, no PC or console required — most accessible entry point
• PCVR (Steam): Best visual quality plus custom song mod support
• PSVR2: Haptic feedback through Sense controllers enhances the drumming feel

How the Gameplay Works

Stripped back to its core, Ragnarock plays like a Viking-skinned rhythm game — but the physical execution of hitting those notes is what separates it from anything you’d play sitting on a couch. For a more detailed look, check out this Ragnarock VR Fitness Game Review.

The Hammer Drumming Mechanic

You hold a virtual hammer in each hand, represented by your VR controllers. Notes come at you in two vertical lanes — one for each hand — and you swing downward to strike the drums as each rune passes through the hit zone. The motion is a genuine overhead swing, not a flick of the wrist, which is why your shoulders and arms start to feel it after just a couple of songs on higher difficulties.

Note Highways and Difficulty Levels

Ragnarock uses a two-lane note highway system. Runes travel toward you along each lane, and you must strike the correct drum at the right moment. The difficulty levels range from Easy through to Master, with each step up increasing the note density, speed, and complexity of the patterns you need to execute. For more details, check out this Ragnarock review.

On Easy and Normal, the patterns are manageable even for rhythm game newcomers. Hard and Expert introduce rapid alternating hits and faster tempos that will genuinely test your coordination. Master difficulty is brutal — the note streams come fast enough that maintaining accuracy while physically swinging full hammers becomes a real athletic challenge, not just a gaming one.

• Easy: Slow note patterns, ideal for first-time VR rhythm players
• Normal: Balanced pace, good starting point for casual gamers
• Hard: Faster patterns, alternating hands required more frequently
• Expert: High note density, demands rhythm accuracy and physical stamina
• Master: Maximum speed and complexity — a full cardio challenge

The jump between difficulty levels is well-calibrated. You won’t feel stranded between tiers, and the natural progression from one level to the next gives you a built-in sense of improvement over time — which is exactly what keeps fitness-focused gamers coming back.

Cymbals, Goalposts, and Crowd Cheers

Beyond the standard drum notes, Ragnarock introduces cymbal notes — special runes that trigger a crowd response and deliver a burst of speed to your boat when hit correctly. These are placed at high-energy moments in the music and serve as the game’s version of a power-up, rewarding players who stay locked in during the most intense sections of a track.

The three goal posts spread across each race course act as natural checkpoints that give you a mid-song read on how you’re performing relative to your opponents. Hit your goalposts while your rivals are still far behind, and the crowd erupts. Fall behind, and the pressure to drum harder becomes very real — which, from a fitness perspective, means you naturally push yourself harder without even thinking about it.

The Ragnarock Workout: How Hard Does It Actually Hit?

Ragnarock won’t replace a gym session, but it will absolutely make you sweat — and on higher difficulties, your arms will remind you the next morning that you played.

The physical demand comes from the overhead hammer swing mechanic. Unlike games where you can get away with small wrist flicks, Ragnarock actively rewards full arm swings because the motion tracking picks up the arc of your movement. Players who commit to real swings hit notes more accurately, which means the game essentially trains you to work harder through its own feedback loop. The result is a surprisingly effective upper body session disguised as a rhythm game.

Why Upper Body Takes the Biggest Beating

Every note requires a downward strike with one or both arms, engaging your shoulders, biceps, triceps, and forearms continuously throughout each song. Songs in Ragnarock typically run between three and five minutes, and on Expert or Master difficulty the note density is high enough that there are very few moments of rest. After two or three back-to-back tracks, the fatigue in your deltoids is real and measurable.

The standing position also activates your core throughout each session. Maintaining balance while swinging hammers in a VR environment naturally engages stabilizing muscles in your trunk and lower back, even though you’re not explicitly targeting them. It’s the same principle as standing dumbbell exercises — the secondary muscle activation adds up over the course of a full play session.

How Intensity Scales With Song Difficulty

On Easy and Normal, Ragnarock is light activity — comparable to a brisk walk in terms of cardiovascular output. You’ll move, you’ll swing, but you won’t break a serious sweat. This makes those lower difficulties genuinely accessible for people who are new to VR fitness or who are easing back into physical activity after a break.

Crank it up to Hard, Expert, or Master and the equation changes completely. The note patterns arrive faster, the alternating hand strikes become rapid-fire, and maintaining accuracy while physically swinging full-motion hammers demands both coordination and endurance. At Master difficulty on a longer track, your heart rate can climb into genuine cardio territory — enough to count as a moderate-intensity aerobic workout by most fitness standards.

The Soundtrack: Celtic, Black, and Pirate Metal

The music in Ragnarock is unapologetically loud, fast, and metal — and for the Viking setting, that’s exactly the right call.

The base game ships with a selection of tracks spanning black metal, pirate metal, and Celtic metal subgenres. Artists like Alestorm, Saltatio Mortis, and Eluveitie feature in the lineup, alongside tracks from lesser-known but equally energetic bands that fit the Norse aesthetic perfectly. Every song has been chosen with the drumming mechanic in mind — the driving rhythms and relentless tempos translate directly into engaging note patterns that keep your arms moving.

Why the Music Fits the Viking Theme Perfectly

The thematic alignment between the soundtrack and the gameplay is one of Ragnarock’s strongest design decisions. Celtic and Viking metal is built around pounding percussion, galloping rhythms, and anthemic choruses — which maps almost perfectly onto a game about drumming a longboat through a race. When the music swells and the crowd cheers as you cross a goalpost, the combination of audio, physical motion, and visual feedback creates a moment of genuine immersion that’s hard to find in most VR titles.

From a fitness motivation standpoint, the soundtrack is a genuine asset. High-energy music with a strong beat is one of the most well-documented tools for improving exercise performance and perceived effort. Ragnarock essentially builds that into the core experience — you’re not choosing to work out to metal, the game makes it unavoidable, and your workout benefits from it whether you realize it or not.

How the Homogenous Genre May Limit Long-Term Appeal

The flip side of that laser-focused soundtrack is that if you’re not already a fan of metal — or at least open to it — the music library can feel one-dimensional. Every track sits within a fairly narrow genre corridor. There’s no pop, no hip-hop, no electronic, and no rock in the traditional sense. For players who use music variety to stay motivated during workouts, this is a real limitation.

The DLC packs do expand the library with additional bands and tracks, but they stay firmly within the same metal and folk-metal territory. It’s consistent, and fans of the genre will love every addition — but it does mean Ragnarock has a narrower long-term audience than a game like Pistol Whip, which spans dozens of genres and artist collaborations.

On PCVR, the custom song feature partially addresses this through community-created content, where players have mapped tracks from entirely different genres onto Ragnarock’s note system. Console players don’t have access to this, which is a meaningful gap. If you’re on PSVR2 or Meta Quest and metal isn’t your thing, the base soundtrack may grow stale faster than you’d like.

Multiplayer: Where Ragnarock Really Shines

Solo play in Ragnarock is fun — but multiplayer is where the game goes from good to genuinely great.

The online multiplayer mode pits your Viking longboat against up to five other players in a live race, all drumming the same song simultaneously. Watching a rival ship pull ahead of you mid-song is one of the most effective motivational triggers in any VR fitness game — the competitive instinct kicks in, you start swinging harder, and suddenly you’re pushing well past the effort level you’d sustain in a solo session. It’s competitive exercise without the gym.

The matchmaking is straightforward and the online community, while not enormous, is active enough that finding a race doesn’t take long. Local multiplayer through passing the headset also works well as a party game format, making Ragnarock one of the few VR fitness titles that genuinely functions as social entertainment in a group setting.

What Ragnarock Gets Wrong

Ragnarock is a genuinely excellent VR fitness game, but it’s not without its rough edges — and some of those rough edges are more significant than others depending on what you’re looking for.

The most noticeable issue across all platforms is the bare-bones structure outside of the core gameplay loop. There’s no career mode, no unlockable content tied to performance, and no narrative framework to give your drumming sessions any sense of long-term progression. You pick a song, pick a difficulty, race to the end, and repeat. For players motivated purely by the music and competition that’s fine — but for anyone who needs external progression hooks to stay engaged, the lack of structure becomes a problem quickly.

No Story Mode or Progression System

The absence of a progression system is Ragnarock’s most significant design gap. There are no experience points, no unlockable Viking customizations tied to performance milestones, and no ranked mode that tracks your improvement over time. You can chase high scores on individual songs, but there’s no overarching system that makes coming back tomorrow feel meaningfully different from today. For a fitness game — where long-term habit formation is the entire point — this is a missed opportunity that keeps Ragnarock from reaching its full potential.

Blurry Menus and Lower Resolution Text on PSVR2

The PSVR2 version of Ragnarock has a noticeable issue with menu text and UI elements appearing softer and less sharp than the in-game environments. The game world itself looks great through the headset, but navigating song selection and settings menus can feel like squinting at a slightly out-of-focus screen. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it is inconsistent with the overall visual quality the PSVR2 is capable of delivering.

This appears to be a porting issue rather than a hardware limitation, since other PSVR2 titles handle text rendering more cleanly. WanadevStudio has patched the game since launch and improved several elements, but the menu sharpness remains below what you’d expect from a premium VR headset. For most players this becomes background noise after a few sessions, but it’s worth flagging for anyone who is particularly sensitive to visual clarity.

Custom Song Section Included but Non-Functional on Console

Both the PSVR2 and Meta Quest versions of Ragnarock include a custom songs menu option that appears in the song selection interface — but on console, it leads nowhere. The feature is fully functional on PCVR through Steam, where the modding community has built an extensive library of user-mapped tracks. On console, the menu option exists as a visible reminder of a feature you simply cannot access.

This is genuinely frustrating because custom songs are one of Ragnarock’s strongest long-term engagement tools on PC. The ability to map your own favorite tracks into the game dramatically extends the replayability and keeps the fitness routine fresh. Console players are locked out entirely, and the presence of a non-functional menu option for it feels like an oversight that should have been removed from those versions entirely.

Is Ragnarock Worth £19.99?

At around £19.99 — roughly $24.99 USD — Ragnarock sits in a comfortable price range for what it delivers. The base game gives you a solid song library, full multiplayer access, five difficulty levels, and one of the most physically engaging rhythm game mechanics available in VR right now. You’re not paying for depth of content; you’re paying for quality of experience, and on that front Ragnarock consistently delivers.

The value calculation does depend on your expectations. If you’re looking for a progression-heavy game with unlockables, story content, and genre variety, Ragnarock will feel limited at any price. But if you want a fun, sweaty, pick-up-and-play VR fitness game that you can run through a few songs on and genuinely feel it in your arms afterward — especially if you have friends or an appetite for online competition — Ragnarock is an easy recommendation. For fitness-focused VR gamers, it punches well above its price point.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the most common questions players have about Ragnarock before buying, covering fitness, platforms, content, and how it stacks up against the competition.

Is Ragnarock a Good Workout for Beginners?

Yes — Ragnarock is actually one of the better VR fitness entry points for beginners specifically because the difficulty scaling is so well-managed. On Easy and Normal, the physical demand is light enough to be accessible without feeling trivial, and the fun of the racing mechanic keeps new players engaged long enough to build a genuine habit around it.

The key advantage for beginners is that Ragnarock never feels like exercise in the traditional sense. You’re focused on hitting runes and beating rival ships, not on rep counts or workout timers. That psychological shift — from “I’m working out” to “I’m playing” — is exactly what makes VR fitness games so effective for people who struggle to stay consistent with conventional exercise. Start on Normal, play two or three songs per session, and build from there.

Can You Play Ragnarock Without a PSVR2?

Yes. Ragnarock is available on Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, and PCVR through Steam in addition to PSVR2. The Meta Quest version is the most accessible since it requires no console or gaming PC — just the standalone headset. The PCVR version offers the best visual fidelity and full custom song mod support, making it the preferred platform for players who want the most complete experience. For those interested in other VR fitness games, check out our review of Pistol Whip.

How Many Songs Does Ragnarock Have?

The base game launches with a core library of songs spanning black metal, pirate metal, and Celtic metal genres. The exact track count has grown since the game’s original release as WanadevStudio has added free and paid updates to the library. As of the most recent updates, the base game contains over 20 tracks, with additional DLC packs available that each add a handful of new songs from bands within the same metal subgenres.

On PCVR through Steam, the custom song modding community has expanded the playable library to hundreds of additional tracks mapped by the player community. These span genres well beyond metal and are available for free through community platforms. Console players do not have access to custom songs and are limited to the official licensed library.

If you plan to play Ragnarock as a regular fitness routine, the base library alone may feel limited within a few weeks of consistent play. Budgeting for at least one or two DLC packs is worth considering if you want to keep your sessions varied and your motivation fresh over the long term.

Does Ragnarock Have Multiplayer?

Yes, and it’s one of the game’s standout features. Ragnarock supports online multiplayer with up to six players racing simultaneously, as well as local pass-the-headset multiplayer for group settings. The online matchmaking is accessible directly from the main menu, and the competitive racing format — where you can watch rival ships in real time — makes multiplayer sessions significantly more intense and physically demanding than solo play.

How Does Ragnarock Compare to Beat Saber for Fitness?

Both games deliver genuine physical activity, but they target different muscle groups and movement patterns. Beat Saber is primarily a full-body game at higher difficulties — the slicing mechanic involves wide lateral arm sweeps, ducking under obstacles, and stepping to dodge walls, which engages your core, legs, and cardiovascular system more broadly. Ragnarock, by contrast, is focused almost entirely on the upper body, with the overhead hammer swing driving shoulder, arm, and forearm fatigue.

For pure cardiovascular output at maximum difficulty, Beat Saber has a slight edge because the full-body movement generates a higher overall energy expenditure. But Ragnarock’s competitive racing mechanic and the social multiplayer component create a motivational environment that Beat Saber’s solo-focused structure doesn’t replicate as well. The rivalry of watching another ship pull ahead mid-song is a uniquely effective way to push harder without consciously deciding to.

The other major difference is accessibility. Beat Saber has an enormous genre-spanning music library including pop, electronic, rock, and licensed artist packs — which means almost any player will find music they connect with. Ragnarock’s metal-only soundtrack is a strength for fans of the genre and a genuine limitation for everyone else. In terms of long-term fitness habit formation, a wider music library tends to win.

Ragnarock is a rhythm-based VR fitness game that combines the excitement of drumming with a full-body workout. Players find themselves on a Viking ship, drumming to the beat of epic rock and metal tracks to propel their vessel forward. The game offers an immersive experience that is both fun and physically engaging. For those interested in exploring more rhythm-based VR workouts, the Beat Saber VR fitness app is another popular choice that provides a similar adrenaline-pumping experience.