WaypostVR: Beautiful Places to Unwind After a Hard Day
A guided tour of WaypostVR, the VR game I'm building. Calm, beautiful places to stand in, with no enemies, no timers you have to beat and nothing chasing you.
Most VR games want something from you. Beat the clock, clear the wave, don’t die. That’s fine, and some of them are brilliant, but it’s not what I want after a long day at work.
What I want is to put the headset on and be somewhere else. Somewhere beautiful, where nothing is chasing me and nothing is counting down. So I started building it.
WaypostVR is a collection of beautiful places to stand in. No enemies, no fail states, nothing you have to do. You can do things if you want: fish, cook, paddle a canoe, ring a temple bell. Or you can just sit on a deck and watch the light change.
This post is a guided tour. If you’re reading along while I play, each stop starts with a cue saying where I am and what I’m about to show.
Why calm?
Work is loud. Phones are loud. Most games are loud too. I wanted the opposite: somewhere to go for twenty minutes that lowers your heart rate instead of raising it.
A few rules I try to stick to:
- No time pressure. Nothing counts down unless you choose to start it.
- Nothing hunts you. There are no enemies anywhere.
- Everything is optional. Every activity is there if you want it and invisible if you don’t.
- Beauty first. Light, sound and a sense of place matter more than mechanics.
1. The lobby: an island above the clouds
In the game: start in the lobby. Turn slowly towards the sun, then bring up the destination menu.
You arrive on a small floating island at golden hour, above a sea of clouds. It’s the waypost: the place between places.
The menu shows every destination as a big card, eight to a page. Point at one, pull the trigger, and you fade out and arrive somewhere new. The music button in the corner lets you pick what plays here. My favourite is shuffle, which mixes in songs from the jukeboxes and radios around the world.
2. Bora Bora: your own overwater villa
In the game: pick Bora Bora. Walk the boardwalk to Fare Waypost, the first villa on the left, then go out to the patio and the plunge pool.
This is where it all started. A turquoise lagoon with real-time caustics rippling over the sand, reef sharks and fish under the boardwalk, and Mount Otemanu behind it all.
Your villa is the biggest bungalow in the resort. Inside there’s a canopy bed, a jukebox playing island songs, and a glass floor panel over the lagoon. Out the back there’s a plunge pool that doubles as a spa: one button for bubbles and steam, one that cycles the underwater lights. Click the water and you sit in it, looking out over the lagoon.
In the game: turn the carved dial by the patio doorway to take it from day to sunset to night.
There’s a lot to do here if you want to: fish off the patio, grill your catch on the BBQ, ride the jetski round the lagoon, snorkel down to an old shipwreck, or make cocktails for guests at the tiki bar. None of it is required. Some nights I just turn the dial to sunset and sit in the pool.
3. Kyoto in spring
In the game: pick Kyoto in Spring. Climb the steps under the torii, follow the cherry avenue to the pond, and cross the vermilion bridge.
A temple strolling garden. You climb stone steps under a tunnel of torii gates, then walk an avenue of cherry blossom down to a still pond with koi, lily pads and a torii standing in the water.
This is the place for small, quiet rituals. Ring the great bell. Rake the gravel in the zen garden. Hang a wish on the ema board. Whisk matcha in the tea house, set floating lanterns on the pond, and bow to the deer.
In the game: use the sign board by the gate to switch to autumn, then to night.
The board changes the time of day (afternoon, sunset, night hanami with fireflies, morning mist) and the season, from spring blossom to autumn maples. The same garden feels completely different each way.
4. Alpenglow Spa
In the game: pick Alpenglow Spa. Walk through the indoor pools, then out to the terrace and the infinity pool.
A thermal spa on a cliff above a glacier valley in the Swiss Alps. Inside, turquoise pools wind between planter islands, and the water throws shimmering caustic light onto the ceiling. Outside there’s an infinity pool, a cedar hot tub, an ice plunge, and a panoramic sauna where you can throw water on the stones.
Grab a steaming tea from the counter, find a lounger and do nothing at all.
In the game: use the brass panel by the terrace door to go to blue hour, then night.
At night the stars come out and the aurora rolls over the peaks. The walnut speaker plays Nordic spa music. This is the one I go to when I really need to switch off.
5. Honeysuckle Cottage
In the game: pick Honeysuckle Cottage. Walk up the garden path, then around to the koi pond.
A thatched stone cottage in the Cotswolds, in a summer cottage garden full of lupins and foxgloves. Bees, butterflies, robins, blackbirds and blue tits go about their business around you.
Go inside and there’s a fire, a kettle and a lamp. Outside you can feed the koi, sit on the bench, lie in the hammock, turn on the radio on the patio or ring the wind chime by the door. It’s the smallest destination, and one of the most relaxing.
6. Loon Lake Lodge
In the game: pick Loon Lake Lodge. Start on the dock by the floatplane, then walk up into the lodge and sit by the fire.
A log lodge on the granite shore of a turquoise lake in the Canadian Rockies, at the end of summer. You arrive on the dock beside the yellow Beaver floatplane you flew in on, its propeller still winding down.
Inside there’s a river-rock fireplace already burning, a leather sofa, and a mug of hot chocolate on the coffee table (click it for a sip). Through the glass gable you look straight up the lake.
In the game: use the sky board on the deck to try northern lights, then deep winter.
The sky board changes the season as well as the sky: misty dawn, northern lights, a thunderstorm, golden autumn larches, and deep winter, when the lake freezes and you can skate on it. You can paddle the canoe, fish off the dock, or climb into the floatplane and let the autopilot fly you on a tour past the falls and up to a glacier lake. Loons call across the water the whole time.
7. Cappadocia sunrise
In the game: pick Cappadocia Sunrise. Look around the launch field first, then pull the burner handle above you and climb.
You start standing in the wicker basket of your own hot-air balloon on a launch field in Turkey, in the blue hour before dawn. Balloons all around you glow as their burners fire.
Pull the burner and you rise. The sun comes up as you fly, over valleys banded cream and rose and thousands of fairy chimneys, with about a hundred other balloons drifting on the same winds. The wind changes direction with height, so climbing and sinking is how you steer, just like the real thing.
If you’d rather not fly, the pilot takes off on their own and you can just watch. Scatter rose petals over the side, pop the champagne and drink a toast to the sunrise.
8. Cedar Hollow
In the game: pick Cedar Hollow. Walk the path from the porch to the pond, then over to the Kombi van.
This one’s personal. It’s my off-grid dream homestead, built in VR before I build it for real.
A clearing among towering firs, with a snow-capped volcano beyond the meadow. There’s a teal tiny home with solar panels and a rain tank, a natural swimming pond, a geodesic dome with cushions and a record player, a glasshouse, chickens, beehives, and a dog who follows you around (point at it to give it a pat).
You can collect eggs, pick vegetables and grill them on the BBQ, chop firewood for the hot tub, or just lie in the hammock between two firs.
In the game: use the painted board by the porch to switch to firefly night, then rainy day.
My favourite is the rainy day, with rain drumming on the tiny home’s tin roof.
Everything else
There are more destinations than I could fit in one tour. Here’s a quick look at the rest.
The one that breaks the rules
I said no killing, and I meant it. But I also asked my kids what they’d want in the game, and their answer was a safari where you can hunt. So Safari Camp has a rifle.
It’s not one I wanted to make, and it doesn’t fit the vision. I made it for them. I kept it as gentle as I could: an animal you hit lies down, glows gold and dissolves into fireflies. There’s no blood and nothing fights back. You can also leave the rifle on its rack and simply watch the herds cross the plain at golden hour.
The same honesty goes for a couple of other things. You can fish in a few places, and the Bora Bora jetski has an optional lap race against the clock. None of it is ever required, and nothing starts unless you choose it.
How it’s made
Everything in WaypostVR is generated from code: the scenes, the 3D models, the textures and the sound.
- Unity 6 with HDRP, running on a Quest over Link or SteamVR. It’s also playable on a regular PC with mouse and keyboard.
- Claude Code as my co-developer, writing the C# that builds each destination.
- Blender, scripted to build models without opening the editor.
- ComfyUI with Flux for textures and menu art.
- Sonic Pi for every song in the game, written as code.
- ElevenLabs for the sound effects and ambience.
Building it this way means I can try an idea in an evening, throw it away if it doesn’t feel right, and keep the ones that make me want to stay a little longer.
What’s next
Aurora Nights in Iceland is coming soon. After that, I just want to keep making beautiful places to land in after a long day.
Which one would you visit first? Let me know in the comments.