Face Jumping is a surrealist VR adventure that quite literally puts you in someone else’s position eye tracking.
Developed by Tender Claws, best known for Virtual Virtual Reality and Stranger Things VR, we first learned about Face Jumping at SXSW back in March. It’s a short experience on Quest Pro where you leap between the minds of other humans, animals, and more, swapping perspectives by meeting someone else’s gaze through eye tracking.
What follows is a journey of rebirth and evolution, and I went hands-on during Venice Immersive 2025, beating this in about 25 minutes. Given how many surrealist projects are often showcased at this annual event, Face Jumping immediately stood out even before putting on the headset thanks to the demo area’s floor being covered in comically large eyes.
In a sense, Face Jumping almost feels like a puzzle sometimes in figuring out whose gaze you need to meet to advance. Tender Claws states its intent is to make sight an active mechanic rather than being “merely a cursor.” It’s certainly succeeded, offering one of the better uses of eye tracking I’ve seen so far, up there with Synapse and Before Your Eyes. That said, it’s very much a one-trick pony and doesn’t do much else beyond this.
Some scenes are a little more intense than others. Your journey begins with a three-way standoff in the Wild West and meeting someone’s gaze brings up this big red background, which is followed by an initially jarring perspective shift. Another scene takes the more comical approach by letting you throw sets of eyes onto inanimate objects; it’s all very strange and rather funny.
That’s not to say there aren’t other controls in Face Jumping, though further interactivity is limited. You may need to hit the trigger in some scenes to perform a particular action, and that’s about it. You must also choose certain dialogue options every so often, though I’m unsure if your run changes because of this as I could only play once.
However, there’s not much else here to really discuss without detailing the entire thing. Everything looks pretty good with the stylized presentation, and I’m glad this is a shorter title. It’s an unusual experience that doesn’t really do anything too notable beyond the novel use of eye tracking, and I’d love to see more developers experiment with hardware features like this.
A home release was previously confirmed, though a release date is currently unknown. We’ve contacted Tender Claws and will update this if we learn more.