Thanks to Sandbox VR for partnering with me on this post. As always, all opinions are my own. 

Have you heard of VR experiences? I knew that they existed on a small scale but I recently learned about Sandbox VR and let me tell you – my mind was blown! It was my husband Tyler’s birthday last week so we headed to Sandbox VR in Eden Prairie, Minnesota to try out their newest experience – Deadwood Origins. 

If you haven’t done a VR experience before, let me walk you through it. First, you can book online – you’ll choose your experience, time, and location. Sandbox VR is located all over the world and you can find the nearest one by using their location search feature along the top menu bar of their site. 

When you arrive, the team will get you outfitted with haptic suits, trackers on your wrists and ankles, headphones, and your VR headset. They’ll go over some rules and guidelines to help you have a great experience, and then give you any tools you’ll need – for example, in Deadwood Origins we were all given guns after we were outfitted and ready to begin. We did get to pick which type of gun we wanted, and the kids upgraded to saw blade launchers (so cool!) while Tyler and I chose more traditional rifles. 

You’re in a large room for the experience, and when it begins…let me just say…it is IMMERSIVE! You’re surrounded on all sides by the visuals, and you can see your teammates next to you but they look like characters in the storyline. Looking over to see my kids and husband dressed in army fatigues as we headed into the jungle ready to fight the infected? It’s impossible to explain what that feels like, but it was truly a crazy fun experience! Now…let me tell you about Deadwood Origins!

Deadwood Origins – Sandbox VR

There are actually four Deadwood experiences at Sandbox VR and this is the newest release! All four experiences feature the infected/zombie storyline, and in Origins, you discover where the Deadwood story began. In Deadwood Origins, you and your squad will fight through a remote jungle overrun by infected villagers, monkeys, dogs, bats, snakes, and more as you search for the source of the virus. As you can imagine, this is an intense experience and you do have infected creatures coming at you from all sides! The haptic vest vibrates in reaction to you getting ‘hit’, and you do have to duck, crouch, and move around the room as you fight off the hordes. That said, it is SO fun! 

To keep things really interesting during your experience, your group travels via plane, gondola, and more rather than staying in just one spot of the jungle. It’s amazing how you feel like you’re really flying through the air – but I’m happy to report that I didn’t feel any motion sickness because my feet were planted on the floor. In fact, when I looked down I could see my army boots and gun – it felt so much more real than a VR headset at home! The visuals are incredible and you really feel like you’re a part of the story. You can talk to your teammates through your headset and the characters in the storyline also communicate bits and pieces to you.

If you ‘die’ during the experience, your teammates can revive you by touching your shoulder for about 5 seconds. We definitely all died a few times throughout our half hour in Deadwood Origins, but it was a quick process to come back and start fighting again. I’ll never forget looking over and seeing a massive, zombie snake falling from the sky onto my ten year old son (in all his miliary gear) while he did his best to chop it up with the saw blade on his gun!

Deadwood Origins was such an awesome storyline and introduction for us into the Deadwood series – I can’t wait to see what the other experiences are like. I LOVE a good zombie story! 

As a big time memory-keeper, one of my favorite things about Sandbox VR is that they make a ‘trailer’ from your experience which you get to take home! It’s a combination of clips showing you both inside and outside the VR world while you’re playing – I laughed so much hearing our daughter shriek as we all tried to duck away from swooping zombie bats. I’m so happy we get to relive the experience for years to come with the videos we received! You’ll also get team stats which are fun to check out and compare. Yes, we have some silly names – you can pick whatever name you’d like but I had fun using the auto-generating option before our game began. 

In addition to the Deadwood series, Sandbox VR offers a variety of other experiences! If you have younger children who aren’t quite ready for a zombie room, something like Age of Dinosaurs or Squid Game could be good options. I know the Squid Game TV show is definitely not for kids, but the Sandbox VR experience is super family-friendly! (Keep an eye out for my Squid Game review – coming soon!) While my whole family loves zombies, we’re also huge Stranger Things fans, and I think I’d LOVE to explore that room next time we visit!

And as far as Tyler’s birthday outing goes? I think we may have accidentally set the bar pretty high for future birthdays – ha! It was one of those experiences that all four of us could enjoy together, which isn’t always easy to find when you have kids of different ages. I went into this thinking it would basically be a more advanced version of the VR games we’ve tried at home, but Sandbox VR is a completely different experience. Being able to physically move around, see my family members inside the game, feel the haptic vest react, and work together to get through the story made it feel much more like stepping inside a video game than playing one. It was such a fun birthday activity for Tyler, and we already can’t wait to go back to try another experience at Sandbox VR!

• Book now and play Deadwood Origins beginning September 25th!

Amber

Hi there! I’m Amber, a 34 year old wife and mom of two from central Minnesota. I love to be outside with my family anywhere the weather is warm (which means I spend half the year freezing). We’re a homeschooling family that loves to travel as often as possible! When I have a spare free moment, I love to read, take photos, and scrapbook. I’m interested in anything that makes life more fun; I also love socializing and sharing about my favorite products!

www.emilyreviews.com/