I'd had this game on my Wishlist for a while, back before Valve became more open to suggestive or adult VR content on Steam. During a recent sale, I decided to finally bite, since I still liked the concept, even though I knew it would be a relatively tame presentation. But I wasn't prepared for how much I was let down by it.
Obviously, the store trailer starts off with her adjusting her top strap, setting the tone for this "not actually an instruction simulator". [i]Scandalous![/i] But the game as a whole, you'd struggle to call it PG-13, even though camera angles and poses were clearly chosen for the angles and motions they provided. Now I'm sure if pushed on it, the developers would say, "But of course! This is a Yoga Instruction simulator after all!" But we both know what a load of bull that would be.
The actual Yoga Instruction angle is lame. You start the day picking a "Lesseon" plan, involving stretches, a break with a scented candle or lotion, and then a main exercise. Each exercise is roughly 20 seconds long, and you're forced to view it from the side the first time. From there, you can choose to view the stretches from a front-on or rear-view angle when it comes to the stretches, but you [b]must[/b] watch the main lesson from all 3 angles before you can proceed. Which means watching her do the same thing over and over again. Near the end, it'll "Quiz" your instruction ability. It'll give you two options, such as "Make sure not to hurt your back" and "Hang out your tongue and bark like a dog". So of course, you want to try picking the latter one, but all the game does is admonish you for picking the wrong one and dock her final "Grade". The performer doesn't actually do anything different. If you aren't going to record alternate video, why not at least offer more than two options, make it actually something difficult? Oh, right, because this isn't actually about Yoga Instruction.
If you get 80+ points in one of three different stats (Confidence, Flexibility, or Body Strength), you'll unlock a different ending and videos featuring one of three "outfits". I say that very loosely, as the cat outfit is literally a pair of cat ears (no tail), the bunny outfit is a pair of cheap ears, and the trainer outfit is... a slightly different outfit in orange. The endings and unlocked videos are the only instances where the 360° aspect of the videos matter at all; it might as well be 180° videos with a static image of the apartment behind you to save install space. The unlocked videos do a neat trick of compositing two copies of the performer into the same scene, something I wish they'd done more with. The unlocked outfits can't be used in the main game, unfortunately.
And speaking of unlocking, that's an adventure. My play time is WAY higher than it should be for a game with such a bare-bones amount of content. For starters, if you qualify for multiple prizes, you only unlock one. And it may award you one you've already received, to boot. (Oddly, after watching the video for the other prizes, it defaults to showing the Fitness Trainer outfit video, so you can watch that without actually getting it.) And for a game that literally just plays some 360° MP4 videos with some menus and subtitles, it seems to softlock at the slightest breeze, at least in my experience. Often I was stuck staring at a blurry image of the performer, or a black screen, and there's no menu options that'll fix the game. You have to force-close the game and start the Day over. It does save your current Day, but not how far you got into the Lesson, and strangely stat changes and item use are still applied. During my last session, I was on Day 4 following several softlocks, but I'd already used every item available, and the game was insisting I pick a candle or lotion I didn't have to continue. (Luckily you can work around this by Canceling out, picking your Yoga again, and this time it'll let you through, glitching past the Break Time sequence.) And there's no skip functionality for the videos I'm aware of, apart from not watching all of the initial stretches. You can get all the way through a day's lesson, only for it to softlock at the very end, making you do it all over again. The experience becomes a frustrating time-sink, which is the polar opposite of what this should be.
One other brief note: The music. The game will randomly pull from a small pool of short clips to play during the lessons. I'm not kidding about short; approximately 20-30 seconds. These aren't in the videos themselves, and actually muffle the audio of her exercising a bit. I don't understand why they didn't go with longer music tracks, as it gets repetitive very quickly to hear these disjointed clips start and stop so much.
I really like the concept of this, which is why the poor execution lets me down so much. It's a fun idea! I like that there was at least some attempt to gamify what might otherwise be just a simple video. But this really isn't worth your time or money. You'd be better off using the cash on a month's subscription on TotallyAboutVRExercise dot biz, if this is the sort of thing you're looking for.
