A new free roam VR concept, Sandbox VR, has opened in the Bay Area’s upscale San Mateo Hillsdale Shopping Center. I had an opportunity to experience one of the two adventures it offers, “The Curse of Davy Jones,” on a visit to the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago. The other title is a haunted house, “Deadwood Mansion.” Both experiences are 30 minutes and priced like an escape room, $36-$42. It’s stuck with me for a few reasons. It’s fun. And it really forces activity and interaction with others in the simulation.
The General Manager of the recently opened San Mateo, CA location, Yassir Abirou, told me “Deadwood Mansion,” is the more popular adventure, but that he prefers “Davy Jones” because of its innovative interactive strategies. Both of the free roam experiences Sandbox VR currently offers place up to six people guests together in a simulation. Guests suit up with a Vive Pro HMD, MSI backpack PC. We strapped on hand and leg trackers, which were delightfully moist from the sweat of the exuberant group of kids that preceded us. When the simulation begins you choose your full body avatars, which was one of the highlights of the show. I chose the Peg Leg Long John Silver avatar. It’s a thirty minute, multi-part experience that has many qualities of an escape room, and is priced accordingly. $36-$42. Guests get four: 30 souvenir videos by email to remember and share their experience.
Sandbox VR was founded by Hong Kong-based games entrepreneur Steve Zhao, who previously bootstrapped Blue Tea Games in 2009, a Hong Kong developer of PC and mobile games. SandboxVR’s First location opened in Hong Kong in late June 2017. There are currently 6 locations. Two company-owned stores, in Hong Kong, and San Mateo, a franchise location in Singapore, and a deal with IMAX to put Sandbox VR in LA, New York, and Bangkok. Zhao told me in an email the company plans to open at least sixteen locations by end of 2018.
My personal experience had me slipping into a simulation at the last minute with Guide-in-training Susan Washburn. She was starting her second week but said it’s been so busy she hasn’t had a chance to try “Davy Jones.” We’re teammates, pirates, looking through a haunted ship for Davy’s treasure. You send a lot of time dodging fireballs and shooting zombies. The haptic vest vibrates when the undead kill you, but you can be revived by the human touch of your teammate.
Zhao describes it this way, “It's like being in the Holodeck, each person can see their whole body in VR. Friends can give each other high fives, hold hands, and hug one another. It's like being in a movie where a group of friends are the stars. They'll go through a narrative journey where their collective outcome affects the ending.”
There are many players in the LVBR space, the leaders being Zero Latency, VRStudios, and The VOID, with a host on their heels, including the well-funded Hollywood startup Dreamscape Immersive, which debuted its spectacular “Alien Zoo” in a pop-up storefront in Westfields Mall on LA's fashionable West side this spring. The VR Company, Dave and Busters and VRStudios just put an extremely popular “Jurassic World” VR Simulation in 111 locations. VRCades are going free roam, as the Vive 2.0 tracker provides a much larger room scale, nearly free roaming, play space. A leading VR developer told me last week that he’s done developing for tethered VR. “Everything is free roam to us now.”
“Some VR LBEs treat the environment as the game pieces (touch a cushion in real life, but a creature in VR),” Zhao said. “Instead, we encourage social interaction, and treat the players as game pieces, so you touch a shoulder to revive, or you can pass a prop to one another, or pull a friend away from danger.”
Sandbox VR has had 4M in seed funding led by Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund. The company is in the process of closing a Series A round of financing led by one of the top VC firms in Silicon Valley, according to Zhao, who says the announcement will be made soon. Sandbox VR is still fewer than 50 people but seems poised for growth. Zhao told me the company is developing a space title based on a major intellectual property.
