LUMEN Reviews

This is a very nice and relaxing meditative experience, one that can be experienced repeatedly.

[h1]Experienced on the Oculus Rift. [/h1] This is a very basic, barebones relaxation app. You have one 360 stay still environment. The artwork is very simple as well. The music is just okay for this type of app. Controls are done by gaze so if you stay any decent amount of time in this app meditating while trying to change your surroundings via gaze, then you will get neck strain for your efforts. You basically just move the pointer around and you can grow tree branches or change colors of the sky from pink, light blue, light green, or purple. That's the whole app. This app has zero negative reviews, some reviewer said he would be an A-hole for giving a negative to a children's meditation app developed by Stanford doctors. Well, they are charging $5 for this. Luckily, I only spent $1.29 but this is really a .99 cents app maybe. I wish I could get my money back, but that's what I get for waiting too long to try out a game after buying it. [b]Rate 4/10. If you want to give your money away or you want to feel good about yourself, just make a straight donation to a children's hospital versus buying this. Yeah, I can be an A-hole apparently.[/b]

The experience is extremely simple and unreplayable. It feels like an unfinished work in progress. All you can do is look around (and your gaze can make certain things grow). For me, it wasn't as de-stressing as advertised, sorry.

What I really like about this meditation experience is that you don't need the really expensive VR kits to run it. It will work with a basic smartphone-and-cardboard setup, although it's a bit nicer with a more robust HMD like a Gear VR. Being able to navigate purely by gaze direction is a great advantage over most current VR titles which expect you to have a full Vive setup. Including basic keyboard & mouse navigation "for the rest of us" is a feature ALL VR software should include, otherwise only the wealthy will ever expereince it.

It's visually appeasing and stimulating, but not really that relaxing as it advertised in the game description (YMMV). Interactions are very simplistic but there are nuances on how you create the tree growth so there are no 2 trees that is going to be the same that you create. You could change the color palette of the background to maybe choose your favourite color or to match what is your current mood. Unfortunately, that's pretty much this VR Software. It could be a free to play but it could also be ok enough for $5 since it's polished, but not enough content to justify it. I should give this a not recommended review especially I'm a guy that bases mostly decide based on price per content, length and replayability. But I mean, this game is created for kids (read game description), me giving this a not recommended makes me look like an a-hole right?