Nature Treks: Together

September 25, 2023 admin

$0.99 Early Access Meta Quest • Steam

Greenland Games • Multiplayer relaxation & creative sandbox • Proximity voice chat • Hand-tracked painting tools

Nature Treks: Together

A calm, creative, social VR space where groups gather around natural environments to relax, draw, shape the world, and talk. Less a structured lesson tool and more a shared sensory wellbeing space — built for connection rather than curriculum delivery.

Developer: Greenland Games

Price: $0.99 (Early Access)

Platform: Meta Quest • Steam (PC VR)

Players: Solo or up to 16 together

A note on naming: this is a distinct product from "Nature Treks VR." Greenland Games has two related but separate titles. The original Nature Treks VR ($9.99) is a well-established single-player relaxation app with 15 biomes and 30+ animal species, holding a 3.9/5 rating from 74% positive reviews on SideQuest. Nature Treks: Together (reviewed here, $0.99) is a newer, currently Early Access multiplayer-and-creative-tools product built around shared social spaces, painting, and world-shaping rather than animal encounters and biome exploration. The XR School's existing page describes features (picking up objects, climbing trees, custom environment building) that blend descriptions of both products — this review focuses specifically on what Together actually offers today.

6.0

/10

XR School Score

Cautiously Recommended

Early Access • Genuinely calming social space • Creative painting/sound tools are distinctive • Very low cost • Content depth still developing • No structured curriculum content

Early Access $0.99 • Up to 16 players
Greenland Games

Overview

Nature Treks: Together is described by its developers, Greenland Games, as "a place just for you or a place to connect with others using a combination of shape, color, and sound." It is currently in Early Access on both Meta Quest and Steam, priced at $0.99, and supports either solo exploration or shared sessions with up to 16 people in beautiful, detailed natural environments — untouched beaches and clear waters among the settings available so far.

The defining mechanic is creative and expressive rather than exploratory or educational in the traditional sense. Activating "thought mode" gives access to a paint palette: using your index finger via hand tracking, you can draw freely in the air, and each line you draw becomes a unique instrument based on its colour, width, and length — turning the act of drawing into a form of generative ambient music-making. A "creator halo" lets you shape and grow elements of the environment itself, and an "emotion halo" lets you express mood through coloured auras visible to others nearby.

Proximity Voice Chat Around a Campfire: Genuine Social Design The social structure centres on natural gathering points — campfires and similar focal spaces — where proximity-based voice chat encourages organic conversation, much as it would around a real fire. This is a deliberate design choice that differs from many multiplayer VR social spaces built around lobbies or menus: the environment itself is the social hub. For wellbeing, mindfulness, or PSHE contexts exploring concepts of calm shared space, this design has genuine merit as a discussion prompt, even if the application itself isn't curriculum content in the conventional sense.

Core Features

🎨

Painting Instruments

Draw freely in the air with hand tracking. Each stroke becomes a playable instrument shaped by its colour, width, and length — a genuinely creative audio-visual tool.

🌍

Creator Halo

Summon and shape elements of the environment around you, growing and customising the natural space collaboratively or alone.

💜

Emotion Halo

Express mood through coloured auras visible to others in the space — a simple but distinctive non-verbal communication tool for a relaxation-focused social app.

🔥

Campfire Social Hub

Proximity voice chat centred on natural gathering points, encouraging organic small-group conversation rather than structured activities.

🏖

Beach & Water Biomes

Untouched beaches and clear waters are the environments currently available, with the developer continuing to expand content during Early Access.

👥

Solo or Up to 16 Players

Flexible group size makes this usable for individual reflection time or a full class session, though larger groups will need careful facilitation given the unstructured nature of the space.

Curriculum and Wellbeing Value

Wellbeing / mindfulness use

7.8

Creative expression (Art/Music)

7.4

Social skills / PSHE discussion

6.8

Structured curriculum content

2.2

Content maturity (Early Access)

4.0

Best Use Case: Wellbeing Time, Not a Science Lesson Despite some overlapping branding with the original Nature Treks VR's biology-rich animal encounters, Together is not built around teaching about plants and animals. There is no field-guide structure, no labelled species, and no formal learning objectives. Its genuine value for schools sits in wellbeing, mindfulness, and creative arts contexts: a calm shared space for a small group to decompress, draw and make ambient sound together, and talk informally around a virtual campfire. Framed this way — as a guided relaxation or creative expression session rather than a content delivery tool — it has real value; framed as a nature or biology resource, it will disappoint.

What Players Say

SideQuest community summaryEarly Access status

"Nature Treks: Together offers a serene VR sandbox focused on creative expression and social connection, currently in Early Access... Best for players seeking a tranquil, creative social space; less suited to those desiring structured objectives or competitive gameplay."

YouTube reviewerFirst impressions

Described as "a gorgeous, multiplayer beach getaway" — a relaxation and nature-walking-simulator style experience where a group of friends can gather by the campfire together.

Strengths and Limitations

Strengths

Distinctive creative tool: hand-drawn lines become playable instruments
Genuine, organic social design via proximity voice and campfire hubs
Very low cost ($0.99) — minimal financial risk to trial
Supports both solo reflection and groups up to 16
Available on both Meta Quest and Steam (PC VR)
Calming, detailed visual environments well-suited to mindfulness sessions

Considerations

Early Access — content and stability still developing
Currently limited environment variety (beach/water biomes)
No structured curriculum content or learning objectives
Easily conflated with the separate, more established Nature Treks VR
Unstructured nature means larger groups need active teacher facilitation
Online multiplayer with strangers possible — supervise group composition

$0.99

Meta Quest • Steam (PC VR) • Early Access

View on SideQuest → Find on Steam →

Quick Facts

Developer: Greenland Games
Price: $0.99 (Early Access)
Platform: Meta Quest • Steam (PC VR)
Players: Solo or up to 16 together
Core tools: Painting/instruments • Creator halo • Emotion halo
Social design: Proximity voice • Campfire hubs
Related title: Nature Treks VR (separate, $9.99)

Verdict

A genuinely calming, creatively distinctive social VR space, currently held back by its Early Access status and limited content depth. The painting-as-instrument mechanic and proximity-based campfire social design are both thoughtful, original ideas worth experiencing. For schools, the realistic use case is wellbeing and mindfulness time or creative arts enrichment for a small supervised group — not biology or nature curriculum delivery, despite some surface similarity in branding to the separate, more established Nature Treks VR. At under a dollar, it's low-risk to trial, but teachers should set expectations accordingly: this is an unstructured creative-social space, not a lesson plan in a headset.