As 2025 approaches and 'New Year, new you' pressures build for those of us not keen on jogging or hitting the gym, you should know that there’s an awesome alternative to traditional fitness with Quell, one of my favorite workout apps of 2024. And today’s big announcement is that the gamified routines it offers are finally coming to Meta Quest headsets in January 2025.
For those of you that missed Quell at launch, it was originally a PC fitness platform. You’d use the controllers to punch your way through its fantasy adventure game Shardfall while wearing resistance bands that make it tougher than typical shadow boxing. The full-body HIT sessions felt intense, yet Shardfall did an excellent job of keeping me motivated by contextualizing my actions – I wasn’t just doing another rep for the sake of it, I was throwing another punch because I needed to defeat the monster in my way.
VR players can soon try this experience using a Meta Quest headset – sans the resistance bands unless they choose to buy some. That’s because Shardfall is coming to Quest as Shardfall: FitQuest VR for $19.99 / £14.99 at Meta.com, and I’m pretty darn excited about it.
Shardfall will be at home in VR
The Quell hardware system costs $199 / £189 while the software subscription to access Shardfall (and future game releases) only costs $4.99 / £4.99 a month or $39.99 / £39.99 a year which I feel is a pretty good price for the kit when compared to other fitness gear or a gym membership, but it is an added expense that people might not be willing to pay for a system that can only be used with Quell games.
As a $19.99 / £14.99 add-on to your existing VR headset, Shardfall in VR is a much easier sell, and I strongly recommend everyone give it a try at launch. The combat exercises are an engaging boxing sim that does well to incorporate a full-body routine with ducks and jumps to dodge certain attacks and hazards, and it also includes jogging sections between fights that get your heart rate up.
It'll be a shame to lose the resistance bands, but again that could aid Shardfall’s accessibility as its exercises will be a little less challenging – though I expect the full-body routines will still give you a decent workout without them.
When the VR version launches I’ll certainly be there to give it a go, and if you’re looking for a more interesting way to kickstart your 2025 fitness schedule I recommend you join me.
