System: Oculus Rift, Rift S
Price at Time Of Review: £7.99
Comfort Rating: Green (No Movement)
Genre: Interactive Experience
Input: Oculus Remote, Gamepad, Keyboard & mouse
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
Description: You’ll try to overcome your fear of spiders, starting with a friendly cartoon drawing of a spider. The audio guide will then walk you through the whole experience, step by step, at your own pace. We do NOT thrust you directly into a nightmare scenario. This is not a game, and not a horror experience. Fearless is inspired by the well-proven principles of exposure therapy.
Review: Fearless is probably one of the world’s very first exposure therapy apps. The idea is you confront your fear in VR (where you have to keep reminding yourself that it is not real) then real life situations won’t seem so bad. Using all sorts of therapy tricks this app with its soft talking voice guides you towards conquering your fear.
For this app, they try and conquer your fear of spiders, but I could easily see it working for just about any phobia in the future. I loved the way the app listens to you and always leave you in control of what is happening. Facing your fears in VR is something you might read about in New Scientist magazine, but this app is very real indeed and I could easily see it helping people to lose their fear of things.
It is innovation like this that will make VR a success. While the demo version was never going to cure my fear of spiders it gave me an insight as to how it might go about doing so. For many people, this app will be a lifesaver and save them a fortune on hypnotherapists and psychologists. But like any other cure, it will only work if you believe it will. If you go into this app with doubts that it won’t work that is exactly what will happen. So go in believing and this app should conquer those 8 legged fears.
