What makes a great VR fitness game?
Virtual Reality (VR) fitness games are killing it in the Oculus store right now. People have finally woken up to the fact that you can escape everyday life and fully immerse into a new environment to sweat it out in, rather than drive to the gym, and get rained on as you cross the car park, not to mention the amount of carbon wiped off your individual footprint.
You're now a green super hero by proxy!
But what makes a great VR fitness game?
Let's break it down and dive in!
Immersive Environments: A great VR fitness game should transport you to a fully immersive virtual environment that makes you forget you're actually exercising. The more realistic and engaging the environment, the more likely you are to stay motivated to keep playing. This could be in a shiny new virtual gym, where there are no germs, or creeps for that matter, or it could mean Yoga on the beach with yopur avatar instructor.
Engaging Gameplay: A VR fitness game should be challenging, yet fun and engaging. This means it should be easy to pick up and play, but also have enough variety and depth to keep you coming back for more, but more important still, is you have to feel like it's a proper workout with every body part thoroughly worked.
Personalisation: A great VR fitness game should allow you to personalize your experience, set you own goals etc. This means being able to adjust the difficulty level, choose the type of exercise you want to do, and track your progress over time, that way you can see your own progress.
Social Features: Social features such as individual and group leaderboards, people love to challenge themsleves, some love to benchmark "where they at" against others. Multiplayer games can be a great way to motivate and encourage players to keep exercising as long as they are well moderated. We don't want 'that' type of behaviour in our headsets.
Feedback and Progress Tracking: A great VR fitness game should provide feedback on your progress, such as tracking your heart rate, calories burned, and other metrics. This can help you stay motivated and see the results of your efforts. later this year we will see Apple come to the table with their headset offering, so I expect all those those juicy stats will be available in headset and iPhone and Watch too.
Accessibility: A great VR fitness game should be accessible to all types of players, regardless of their fitness level or physical ability. This means providing options for players who may have mobility or other physical limitations. Though, this is where the current VR fitness apps actually excell, they are more upper body geared, which make them more accessible for people in a wheelchair. Everyone can take part in the fun.
Sound and haptics: A great VR fitness game should have an immersive and dynamic sound and music system that enhances the overall gameplay experience, and the use of haptics after a goal or win! Feel the buzz yet people?
A great VR fitness game does everything listed above, there are plenty available from, and more and more are comming to the app store and lab each week.
Choose your poison and enjoy! Oh, and don't forget to stretch!
Mark Nicoll