Mind Labyrinth VR Dreams review: explore your emotions in VR

I spent some time playing with Mind Labyrinth VR Dreams after the fellow community member Andrea Marinelli of Frost Earth Studio sent me a key to play this game. I think it is an intriguing game, but only if you like the genre. Discover it with me.

Gameplay

The game is described by the developer this way:

Mind Labyrinth VR Dreams lets you explore different kinds of imaginary environments and discover amazing new emotions in wonderful virtual dreams. It’s a meditative journey with inspiring and encouraging phrases and actions to enhance the experience along the way.
Explore different kinds of mental states and find your emotional balance while delighting yourself with the great soundtrack featuring music by Hollywood Oscar-winning composers and selections of the best international Artists.

What this basically means is that in Mind Labyrinth, you have different environments that you can visit, each of them with its peculiar visuals and music. You can be in a spaceship in the outer space, you can be in a forest, in a frozen world, in a place full of flames that looks like the hell. Every environment has its accompanying soundtrack, that also changes depending on the particular place you are in.

When you start, you find yourself like in a hub where there are various portals towards all the environments of the game. Inside each portal, you can already see how the place you will teleport in will be, thanks to an image that clearly highlights the type of environment and its predominant color. Of course, this will correspond to different feelings you will have in that environment. So you can choose, for instance, if you want to feel lonely in the outer space, or you want to feel the passion and the fear of being inside the flames of hell.

Before entering into any of the portals, it is better to go in front of the portal of the tutorial, that will provide you with lots of texts about how to play the game and what is the input control schema (that is not always intuitive). I have to say that the tutorial is pretty rough, since it is only composed by some walls of texts… maybe mixing some images and videos with texts would have been better.

After you have visited the tutorial, you can enter through one of the portals. You will find yourself inside the environment that you chose, and the music will start. You can move inside this environment, that will mostly feature halls and tunnels of various genres (even if there are environments that feature open spaces, you will always be inside a sort of labyrinth) and you will have to look for an “opportunity”.

While you move, there are no enemies or other things making your journey difficult. You just walk, and sometimes you find the symbol of the game, and if you shoot it with your right hand, in that place will appear a sentence from an enlighted person like the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Albert Einstein, etc… that should inspire you.

Sometimes in your journey, you can also encounter special areas (signaled by a written panel) called the “refuges”. If you enter the refuge, you will be presented a relaxing place with a breathing exercise that will guide you in inhaling and exhaling. While you breathe this way, some binaural beats will stimulate some particular waves in your brain (e.g. theta brainwaves). Refuges are places where you can stop for a moment and meditate.

During the journey, you can also find some special items that will let you win achievements.

After some time spent walking in the environment, that has always the structure of a sort of labyrinth, a message will inform you that “an opportunity has been spawn”. So you have to find this “opportunity”, that is a purple sphere, in the labyrinth. Once you have found it and grabbed it, you can exit the level finding where is the portal to exit it. You can also exit to the main menu every time you want by summoning the game menu.

Is it a game?

Let me clarify this now: as you may have understood from the above description, actually Mind Labyrinth VR is not really a game… and if you play it as you play a game, you will find it pretty boring.

There’s not a true purpose (yes, you have to find the opportunities, but it is pretty dull as a purpose), you have not enemies, you have not a difficulty. Even the labyrinths are so little that is difficult to get trapped there. I tried playing the first environment as if it was a game and I really got bored by it in no time.

Mind Labyrinth VR Dreams is more an experience, something that you enter in, to have “a vacation for your mind”, as the developer says. You walk in this “labyrinth”, you explore the environments, you enjoy the beautiful visuals, paired with the relaxing music, and let your mind relax. You read the sentences of great people and let them inspire you. You feel the different emotions that the different environments arise in your mind and your body and explore them.

This is the spirit that should guide you when playing Mind Labyrinth, not a goal to reach. And if you play it this way, you will find it very pleasant.

Multimedia elements

The visuals of the texts of the game (e.g. the sentences that you can see in the environments) are a bit rough… they don’t seem fully refined.

But apart from texts, all the rest is astonishing. The virtual environments are all equally beautiful. No matter what environment you choose, it will be breathtaking nonetheless. And it is fantastic that the developers have been able to create such diverse environments in only one application: there is nature, tech, fire, ice, etc…

The visuals are really a pleasure for the eyes. Look this hell-like environment for instance, and appreciate all the particle effects that make it so beautiful.

Every environment has many details, and it is also variated. For instance, in the first level that I played, that was set in underground tunnels, I was able to find at a certain point some luminous crystals, and later on even some waterfalls. I really loved discovering every corner of the environments.

The music is taken from high-profile artists, including Hollywood Oscars winners. They are simply great. It is also interesting that they change throughout the level, to be in sync with the visuals that you have.

Immersion

With those visuals and that audio, the immersion is great. The combination of studied visuals and music is able to let you immerse completely in the environments, and create a bond with them. I will explain that better later on.

Input

I think that the input schema, at least on the Oculus Rift, where I tried the experience, is a bit confusing.

You can move by default using the smooth-locomotion mechanic by tilting the thumbstick: it shouldn’t give you much nausea. But if you are very sensible, you can activate teleporting mode. What I haven’t liked at all of the smooth locomotion mechanic is that you move in the direction of your head, so if you rotate your head while you explore the environments to appreciate different parts of the panorama, you also change your walking direction.

You can grab objects with the middle-finger trigger. You can “fire” with your index finger by making the gesture of the gun with the thumb and index finger of the right hand and then pressing the middle trigger of the right hand. A magic fireball will be shot from your index finger and this will be useful to shoot the logos that will make you see the inspiring sentences. The problem is that when you move the middle finger to press the trigger, you finish to move the whole hand (index included) a bit, and so the bullet never goes in the spot you initially aimed to.

The game uses also the A and B buttons of the controllers and so for instance, when you find an opportunity, you don’t have to grab it with the middle finger trigger as you expected, but you have to press the A button. This is pretty confusing… in fact, if you try to play the game without reading the tutorial, you will hardly understand how to interact with the environment.

I think that the developer should work more in uniforming the control schema with the one of other VR games on the market.

Effect on the mind

You may wonder: does it work? Does it really foster some mental state? My answer is: yes.

Initially, I didn’t notice that, because I treated it as “a game to win”, and so I played it in a stressful way, and I numbed my mind. When I started exploring the levels just for the sake of seeing the beautiful environments and enjoying the music, I started feeling my mind reacting to them.

Nature relaxed me, the hell made me feel fear, the winter reminded me of how it is playing in the snow. At the end of my gaming session, I felt my mind different than when I started. I played Mind Labyrinth at the end of a stressful working day, and after more than one hour playing it, I was more serene, I felt better. I was still tired and busy, but my mind was a bit more relaxed. I can’t explain exactly what was the effect, it was a very special sensation… but I can tell you that there has been an effect.

Conclusions

If you are a gamer and want an experience that makes you shoot at robots or slice cubes, then Mind Labyrinth is not for you. If you want action, then you will find this experience boring.

But if you are into relaxation, or you like exploring beautiful environments, then you will for sure appreciate Mind Labyrinth VR Dreams, with its astonishing visuals paired with high-quality music. You will love letting your mind and your virtual body wander in these different environments while meditating and relaxing. It is a high-quality indie experience.

Yes, there are some little bugs here and there, some imperfections (e.g. once I found myself trapped in an environment), and an input system that has to be refined, but I think that they can be fixed in future updates. The core of the game works well.

If you are interested in Mind Labyrinth VR Dreams, you can find it on Oculus Store or Steam VR for 24.99€.