Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Apr 23, 2020

  Im a meditation teacher. Im also a proponent of psychedelic usage amongst consenting coherent adults. I wasnt sure what this game would bring me to. So far upon writing this review ive just slightly played around with what mantras the feedback loops really works with well. So far, good mantras are OM, Om mani padme hum, Om Shanti Shanti Shanti all work really well. The only one I tried that I didnt hear a feedback loop was Om Namah Shivaya. If you dont know any of these Mantras you can simply do as the game tells you and makes a single solid tone with your voice, such as a long a sound and it will recognize it flawlessly. 10/10 best meditation game out there but needs more fractals! :-) <3
• gamedeal user

  Apr 23, 2020

  I've been trying (not very hard admittedly) to meditate for about 30 years. Yesterday evening was the first time I've ever done 15 minutes of breathing and chanting and not feeling bored (I also didn't trip out), so for me it might be what I'm looking for. Does feel somewhat expensive (I'm tight) for what it does, but I'm willing to give it a try. Hope the developers add some more visuals and maybe some guided meditations and maybe some of that acoustic brain sound stuff (which I kind'a thought this would have on release) for different mind states. In fact it would be good to see if they have any sort of road-map for the future of this software or if it's done and dusted. Not sure if I recommend it but I guess if you're into it then it's probably worth it (keeping it 'cause I feel they deserve the support).
• gamedeal user

  Apr 23, 2020

  Pretty much a glorified guided meditation. Textures are low res which pulls you out of the experience. It requires you to keep making "tones" throughout the experience which makes the audio experience pretty interesting but not worth anywhere near $30 maybe $5. Refunded.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 25, 2020

  While this is a unique and interesting experience, and was something I was looking forward to playing, I found myself disappointed. This has been in development since 2013 from a Kickstarter that raised over $36k. I'm not entirely sure where the money went or why this is $30, as there are a multitude of problems. For reference, I'm using a Valve Index. * There is no controller support, just looking at menu options to select them. This is tiresome and really only for very limited experiences that don't need options. I can overlook this, though. * The graphics are often low res, distractingly so at times. Jagged edges, poor texture implementation, and wildly inconsistent visuals. * Using your voice to create the music and tones works very well, and the visuals are at times truly engaging, but not with the graphical fidelity being so poorly optimized. * Why is there no mode to use music from your hard drive? A 3D visualizer would be amazing, but there's only this guided mode, which is absolutely not worth the money. * Even if this were a perfect experience and there were no issues with graphics, this just simply isn't worth $30. I could possibly see $10, or maybe $7.99, but $30 is excessive for what you get. I also can't get over the fact that this was in development for 7 years and this is the result? What a disappointment. I'm going to have to get this refunded until the price drops and the graphical issues are fixed.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 10, 2020

  Review for usage in VR. This is an incredible experience. It's truly something else. However, it sadly is also a buggy, broken mess that will regularly pause during the experience for no reason whatsoever, destroying your immersion and meditation state. Why the developer has chosen to make a pause function that can be activated at random in such a trippy experience is beyond me. The menu navigation in VR is also very bad as you don't select menu point with your controllers, but rather by looking at it for a second. It's really easy to select something without wanting to select it. And there is no option to disable any of this. I really want to recommend this as the experience is so otherworldly, but honestly for this price point the bugs and random pauses which ruin the experience are absolutely inexcusable. If it was a 5$ experience, I'd be more forgiving but at 25$ I just can't recommend it. Only get it on a deep sale.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 1, 2021

  Very enjoyable while on LSD
• gamedeal user

  Feb 13, 2021

  tl;DR: I am genuinely amazed at how effective this "game" is at its stated goal of inducing transcendental states of consciousness. Was skeptical, but then profoundly amazed. Literally helped transform my consciousness. (More on what that even f***ing means down below.) It can have the same sort of power (and therefore danger) as psychedelics, be careful. Lay down or get a neck pillow with a HMD. I have a lot of experience with meditation, hypnosis, LSD, mindfulness, and healing complex PTSD, so I did have some background in mental restructuring before going in. However, I didn't take the claims or warnings seriously, I figured it was marketing fluff. "Ask my doctor? Don't operate heavy machinery? What the hell, I mean, it's just some computer program, how much could it really do to me? I've done heroic doses of acid, I've even done DMT man. I bet it'll barely do anything outside of a placebo effect." I now know that if this game is used properly, and the individual is a tiny bit open to ego-death, the warnings are all very necessary and perhaps even understated. This is like a psychedelic drug, not just because it looks trippy, but because it is very likely to cause the same fundamental shifts in consciousness and perception. It is based on hard neuroscience, inspired by cultures and religions across human history, and specifically engineered to exploit loopholes in the brain. If the human brain is like a computer, then that computer has security vulnerabilities, and this game exploits a lot of those weaknesses to essentially hack your head into a state of nirvana/timelessness/oneness/thoughtlessness/ego-death/transcendent consciousness. I want to briefly explain what a "transcendental state of consciousness" even is, in hard terms. A "state of consciousness" is the whole of how you perceive and process the world around you at any given moment. Most everyone is very familiar with at least 3 of these states: Wakefulness, dreaming, and deeply sleeping. * Wakefulness can be thought of as being awake while having concepts in your conscious mind (like thoughts, anxieties, or an awareness that your popcorn is burning). * Dreaming can be thought of as being asleep while still having concepts in your mind, which are interpreted by your unconscious mind as dreams. * Deep sleep can be thought of as being asleep without any concepts in your mind. There's no mental activity or thought, just pure rest and reaction to stimuli (like a bug crawling on your face) The human brain is actually capable of more states of consciousness than those 3, but they are much less common and often don't occur naturally. Transcendental consciousness is one of these states. * Transcendental consciousness can be thought of as being awake WITHOUT concepts in your mind. Like deep sleep, there is no mental activity or thoughts (and therefore no ego, hence the term ego-death), but you are wide awake and alert, able to perceive all around you without any concepts forming around that perception. You have "transcended" thought as a cognitive function. This is nirvana, often described as pure bliss or divine. The brain no longer makes a distinction between the subject (the universe) and the observer (you), leading to a permeating feeling of oneness. All tension and stress in both mind and body works its way out, which if there's a lot, could either be utter ecstasy or hopelessly overwhelming. This state is almost impossible for me to truly convey if the reader hasn't experienced it firsthand, although many cultures and religions through the ages (and recently neuroscience) have given it their best shot. The more concepts are explained to the reader, the more concepts that are in the reader's mind, only getting them further from knowing the experience of "absolutely no concepts while wide awake". This state of course can only occur with Soundself if the player is properly willing and prepared, which could either take 5 minutes or 5 years depending on personal traumas and such. Look up advice for taking LSD for the first time, and almost all of the info you find will apply to this game. If your ego is unable to accept temporary disintegration, your psychological defenses will go up, and it's likely to not do much at all (or worse, it might feel very uncomfortable and maybe even scary). On the other hand, you might find you are particularly susceptible to its mental exploits, and so you also want to be prepared to deal with the psychological fallout of that. Due to the length limit on Steam reviews, I had to type up the long details of my personal experience with Soundself on pastebin. Please read it here: [url=https://pastebin.com/tKuzKNXx]https://pastebin.com/tKuzKNXx[/url] If this review seems unbelievable to you, then that makes a lot of sense, because I also am still having trouble believing what I am bearing witness to in my own mind. But what I said here is genuine and my best attempt at explaining this game. Andromeda Entertainment made something really special here, something I didn't think was possible until yesterday. What else can I say? This game is, in some ways, a more powerful drug than actual drugs. Take the warnings seriously. Fire can burn just as easily as it can illuminate. Aim for single solid tones in an even rhythm. Lose your mind so you can come to your senses.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 16, 2021

  So I've been trying a lot of different meditation routines (especially where VR is concerned since I need to be able to shut out the world to be able to even ATTEMPT to meditate). This is the one that generally works the best for me. Some people can calm their mind to the point where they aren't thinking a ton of extra thoughts. My brain is like a hyperactive yippy lap-dog. Even when it's perfectly still it's vibrating like 1000hz or something. When it's not perfectly still it's bouncing off the walls. Maybe one day i'll learn to calm my brain down but until then, this is just about the closest I've come to "silence". You can't be silent in this game though because the idea is to make noise and it sends it back to your ears as pitch shifted feedback (maybe slightly delayed too). Maybe that's what does it for me though. If you slightly delay yourself speaking and feed it back into your own ears, it interrupts any thoughts and makes speaking very difficult. That's not exactly what's going on here, especially since the goal is not to talk or have your voice fed back to you 1/10th of a second later. Let's try this again. Soundself is a program for meditation that lets you focus on the sound of your own voice as a way to obtain inner peace or whatever. Between the voice humming and the crazy visuals, your brain almost gets into a dream-like state while you're still awake. It's sorta like when you were a kid and you could rub your eyes so hard that you'd see stars flying by or whatever, except your eyes are open and you're making what sounds like Mongolian throat singing noises with a VR headset strapped to your head. Man if anyone saw me doing this I'd be so embarrassed. I mean, there's never anyone who would care to watch so I'm good, but if there was, man oh man, so embarrassing. So if you're not a hermit (I almost typed "hobbit") you might want to lock the doors to keep people from bursting in the room and going "GOOD GOD MAN! Why are you moaning and lying on the floor? Did you hit your head?!" But seriously though, it's a decent program if you're willing to put your time into it. I think they also try to goad you into doing this every day so that you can build up a streak, but I don't think it's like some of the others where you get really punished for not making this part of your daily routine. Also this works with or without VR but I tell you, if you have VR you have got to do it at least once. I can't imagine the same kind of experience without VR. I guess the closest you could get is taking a hit of acid and sitting in a dark room with only one monitor shining in your face showing you all the weird patterns. I'm not saying you should do drugs; I'm saying that with VR you can probably trick your brain into the alpha wave or whatever that's like a lucid dream or whatever. That's pretty neat. Give it a shot.