Spacious Places is a musical health and wellness app for times when life has no chill.
Monday morning, after making breakfast for my daughters, getting them ready for the day, and driving them to school, I spent 45 minutes paying bills. By the time my monthly mortgage, car loan, utilities, and incidentals had all been paid, my wallet felt quite a bit lighter and my psyche significantly heavier. I looked ahead, to a daily planner that showed eight hours of tasks squeezed into a five hour period. "That's life," I shrugged, before opening my email and beginning the workday, a stiffness building in my neck.
One particular email contained a review key and press release for a new experience called Spacious Places. Described as a "mindfulness and meditation app that blends nature therapy and music [that] invites players to unwind by playing virtual instruments inside calming, beautiful environments," Spacious Places sounded like the answer to my stressful morning.
A few minutes later, I had breezed through the app's incredibly succinct tutorial and found myself sitting upon the sands of a virtual beach, palm trees swaying luxuriously in a gentle breeze, tickling a xylophone and rapping a bongo in time with an ephemeral soundtrack of soothing spa tunes.
Two environments in Spacious Places, captured by UploadVR
The app allows users to jump between 18 environments at will, within which exist a number of "vistas," aesthetically pleasing views of natural beauty. Here, you can simply exist in peace and solitude, to observe the (virtual) natural world, and relax.
There's a "breathing mode" in which a pearlescent bubble blooms to life in the near distance, expanding and contracting in a slow rhythm which, if you match with your breathing, is designed to slow the heartrate and promote calm. There's a music mode in which a selection of 16 beautiful instruments coalesce around you. You can touch them with your hands or with controllers, playing freely or trying to match the timing of the existing background music. And there's a mode where the instruments and breathing bubble disappear entirely, replacing these with the ability to blow bubbles, create floating lanterns, shoot fireworks, or generate snowflakes.
Spacious Places vistas captured by UploadVR
Technically, Spacious Places does what it intends to do. The environments look gorgeous, the instruments play realistically (though with a simplicity that promotes accessibility), and the overall vibe is chill and peaceful. It's a relaxing little break from the everyday stress of modern living. While it won't change your life, and it's not designed to be a real replacement for getting outside, exercising, or talking to a therapist, it is indeed a nice place to visit, breathe, and twiddle with a xylophone.
A half hour later, I closed the app and pulled off the headset. Despite generally eschewing meditation and self-care in favor of adopting a "work through it" mentality, I had to admit that I felt a bit calmer, a bit more relaxed, and despite wearing a VR headset for the previous half hour, my neck muscles were less rigid than they had been immediately following my bill-paying spree. Now that's remarkable.
Spacious Places is free to download. It includes a demo level, with the full experience available as an in-app purchase for $12.99. A 20% discount is available for the first two weeks, post-launch.
Spacious Places is available now on Meta Quest.
