iO Inner Self: From Award-Winning Short Film to Wave Shooter on the Lava Planet

The label promises a journey inward. Most of the people who tried it found a shooting gallery in virtual reality instead.

A universe that started as a short film

iO Inner Self - The Lava Planet VR grows out of an award-winning animated short, iO - Inner Self, and drops its main character into the Lava Planet, a hostile place he visits inside his own head. Spaceboy turned that fantasy into a first-person shooter built for virtual reality (VR) and nothing else: hordes of enemies come at you in waves that keep getting harder, you raise your weapon, throw up your shield when the pressure builds, and try to last the whole round, chasing your own high score. There are two difficulty settings, and once the mechanics click, the game becomes a contest against your previous score.

Not everyone experiences it as a shooter. One player who spent an hour with it in December 2025 described something closer to contemplative immersion: a psychedelic lava landscape, slow-shifting geometry, a soundtrack built to soothe. That same player warns that anyone after fast pacing and a hard challenge may find the experience repetitive — the opposite of what the official description promises.

The studio kept working after release

In March 2023, Spaceboy added an endless mode to the game: once you have beaten your score on the standard difficulties, that is where you head next, into waves of enemies that never stop, with power-ups to vary your strategy and extra achievements to unlock. The same announcement promises further projects set in the iO universe, and the game's own description backs the plan up: this is the first adventure in a new franchise, with more content promised down the line.

It runs on any headset, say the players who tried it

The most detailed thumbs-up says little about story and a great deal about compatibility. Tested in January 2025 on an HTC Vive, on a Quest 3 running over Steam Link and on an Index, the game held steady in image, controls and sound on all three headsets, and was easy to pick up — the answer for anyone wondering whether their own kit can handle it. The same write-up credits the game with thirteen Steam achievements for trophy hunters, calls the wave challenge considerable, and recommends it to anyone curious.

It is the same loop the store page leads with: waves, a score, one more achievement banked.

Fifteen hours in, still no explanation

Picture putting more time into the game than anyone else in the sample the file draws on — fifteen hours, logged in April 2026 — and still not recommending it. That is what happened in the one write-up that says no: it points to no flaw in the game, it turns into a joke, with a nod to a war film and a picture made of keyboard characters, without a line about what made this player withhold a recommendation. It is the single dissenting voice on record, and even it does not attack the game: it simply turns its back on it.

Who the Lava Planet is for

iO Inner Self is for players who already own a VR headset wired to a PC with SteamVR or Oculus PC, tracked controllers in hand, and who want a session alone, with nobody else on the other end: you strap in, work through the waves, and come out with a new number on the board and maybe one more achievement banked. It runs on more than one headset, according to those who tried it, but it remains a game built for Windows, with no version for other systems.

Open it expecting what the name promises — a journey inward — and you come away let down: that reading came from a single write-up, after an hour of play, not from the script. The rest of the experience — including for the player who reached fifteen hours — is enemy waves, weapon and shield. It is a fine way to fill some spare time with a VR headset on; it is not for anyone expecting the idea of looking inward to turn into the game's script.