Increasing digitalization and automation in the maritime sector places great emphasis on the technical skills of crew. However, non technical skills (NTS) including teamwork, leadership and communication are equally crucial. Resource Management Training courses can be expanded with Resilience Engineering and immersive Virtual Reality (VR) through a'learning by doing'approach. This paper presents a pilot study in a highly immersive VR environment, to examine the impact of increasing stress levels on NTS for resilient and safe bridge operations. First-year maritime officer students at the Rotterdam Mainport Institute played a multi-player 'VR stress game' where they trained communication in a team on the bridge of a virtual vessel. The game, with varied expected and unexpected triggers, challenged teams to use NTS for resilient and safe operations. Results showed that the VR stress game effectively enhances communication and teamwork under pressure. Participants valued its immersiveness and practical relevance in fostering receiving and giving feedback after a 'learning by doing 'experience, deeper learning on NTS, increasing self-awareness, student's confidence and motivation when dealing with stressful situations in a maritime context. But most importantly they all enjoyed learning with VR compared to other learning methods. The results showed that 52% of the students even rated the game as very much enjoyable. Potential future scenarios of the VR stress game for maritime education of students and applications for professionals are discussed enabling more innovative, such as VR or VR combined with Al, and effective training methods for NTS in the future.