Dimensional Double Shift Slaps Hog Butt & Milks Udders In Paid Hexas Expansion

Dimensional Double Shift sends you to a Texas-inspired dimension in its first paid expansion today on Quest.

Launched last September, Dimensional Double Shift has now released its first 'Dimension Pack' after the co-op hand tracking multiplayer game recently surpassed 500k downloads. As employees of Gas N’ Grill, you're now tasked with serving patrons across Hexas and that's packed with “demonic patrons, oversized food, and monster trucks” that all require your attention.

During GDC 2025, Don Hopper and I jumped into the expansion for a multiplayer session with Owlchemy Labs. Gameplay remains unsurprisingly similar to the 'Treeatle' dimension with the base game, with two new versions of the diner and garage levels available. Just like before, your group will serve the local citizens through preparing food orders and fixing cars.

My previous impressions cover the core gameplay, and several updates since launch have left Dimensional Double Shift feeling more polished. The activities remain rewarding with friends as you coordinate to prepare meals or fix these cars, with certain ingredients only being accessible in another person's station, and I appreciate the game's relaxed nature with no time constraints.

Hexas offers some welcome twists that fit the demonic theme perfectly, alongside other improvements like a 'Room Browser' for creating public rooms. While your goals largely remain the same, the art style has been fittingly reworked for this new dimension. Between cooking in a cauldron of blood to new puzzles when fixing Monster Trucks, there's some appropriately themed new challenges.

What caught me by surprise was the, uh… well, the udder milking activity. Yes, that's right. Anyone else remember that minigame in 1-2 Switch? I never thought I'd write this, but the hand tracking-only controls make this feel even more socially awkward. I had to briefly stop because I burst out laughing mid-demo, a game hasn't tickled me this much since Thank Goodness You're Here.

That's before we discuss slapping hog butt. You do that to open the hog's mouth in a different station and then spray it with barbecue sauce. Another task involves picking boogers out of a giant head before adding a fresh brain. It's chaotic, incredibly silly, and these new activities walk a fine line that's both suitable for kids while being hilarious for adults.

“One of the big pillars of this is that it's hell not heck,” explained Owlchemy CEO Andrew Eiche in a post-demo interview, where he was joined by COO Sandra Marshall.

“We didn't want to pull any punches, so we did that. We're still a team game and I can assure you that we've met the limits of that rating, but we've always wanted to say that the game appeals to all ages. It's tough to appeal to all ages when everything feels a bit younger.”

At $4.99, I was pleased to learn that an entire party won't need to all buy the Hexas Dimension. Only one player must own it for other party members to access it, though only DLC owners will get Hexas-themed cosmetics like the rhinestone cowboy and desert road warrior. Eiche cites Walkabout Mini Golf's guest pass, Golf+, and Jackbox Party Pack as influencing this decision.

“It was really tough to justify four people spending $20 sight unseen on a game. It's much easier to say, everybody else gets it for free.”

As Owlchemy's first free-to-play game, the studio's learning from this experience by following three streams of information. Analytics, for which Owlchemy hired someone who formerly worked on Minecraft to assist. There's also what the studio itself thinks of the game, and community feedback.

“There are things we thought would happen that didn't. We do events once a week, we do matchmaking, and we were like, the second we do this, all of our players are gonna say, “just leave the matchmaking on all the time.” But they didn't, they were like perfectly content with having it be once a week.”

Other lessons include learning that people don't often respect the play spaces they've been assigned, which saw Owlchemy adding a feature that'll count down from five as a warning to go back. Marshall advised that people are making friends through these events, and this led to Owlchemy implementing a button that lets you add the person you're playing with as a friend.

Owlchemy sees the VR market heading toward social and embodiment experiences, something Eiche previously touched upon in a previous interview. The studio also remains fully committed to hand tracking in games, believing this controller-free option has proven itself further with PlayStation VR2 adding hand tracking support.

“They're the last ship out of the port in terms of doing it, and that's not a knock on them. [Sony's] focus is the hardcore of the hardcore, yeah. PlayStation is for the gamers, and if they're doing hand tracking? Wow. We didn't expect it.”

That doesn't mean hand tracking support for Job Simulator is coming to PlayStation VR2 anytime soon, however. At the time, Owlchemy advised that Sony doesn't have a direct path through Unity for this, meaning Aldin Dynamics had to create their own for Waltz of the Wizard. That means there are still some technical hurdles to overcome.

While Owlchemy wouldn't comment on Dimensional Double Shift potentially reaching other platforms like Android XR, more content updates are coming beyond the Hexas launch. New gameplay features and more dimensions are in development, and we'll check back in when those become available.

The base game for Dimensional Double Shift remains free in early access on the Meta Quest platform, and the Hexas Dimension Pack costs $4.99.