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Every person has had a dream at least once in their life. As children it was easy to have massive dreams because of how little we understood the limitations of reality. If you looked at my 3rd grade classmates’ “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up…”essays, they would have ranged from: a football star in the Superbowl, winner of The Nobel Peace Prize, astronaut in outer space, a student at Hogwarts, or Superman shooting lasers from his eyes (that was mine).

Growing up with technology and especially video games, it has been all too easy to become desensitized to progress. Progress happens so frequently these days, we hardly even realize a game we’re playing now was actually your childhood dream. Take a step back, and remember your dreams when you were a child. With that perspective, you’ll quickly understand just how mind-blowing it is that these “dreams” are now a very real Virtual Reality.

With that in mind, here are some great games to SINK INTO. With the virus and social distancing, no one has the excuse that “they don’t have time.”

Here are a few games I would recommend if you’re looking to relive a childhood dream:

Everyone has dreamt of being a rock star. If we were to be honest (myself included) we all tried our hand at the guitar or drums for that very purpose. Why? Because we wanted fame and to smash up hotels with our ruckus parties.

Stuck in your apartment and so frustrated you wish you could just start smashing things? But don’t want to buy an entirely new TV? This is the solution. Hotel R’n’R is a great smash and bash game that’s a lot of fun to just break things (based on Joe Walsh — the rockstar)

Don’t lie, astronaut? You’ve dreamt of it. Astronaut who can puppeteer space dragons, able to shoot laser beams from their mouths on a mission to free interstellar space giants? You’ve probably dreamt of it…in your dreams.

In Space Dragon, you’ll get to live it. Take a minute and think what this game could mean for you right now. With coronavirus boxing us in, I’ve never felt more claustrophobic. Living in relatively small quarters all day, only periodically venturing outside, and even then, mostly just to get into an also small and cramped car to drive to a fast food drive thru! Enclosed in our cars driving to that Wendy’s, the one thing that gives us a sense of EXPANSE is the visual. So it shouldn’t be surprising that when you pug on a VR headset and launch into outer space, confined by nothing, no vehicle, no small room, limited only by the speed at which you can fly through the stars, all that pent up sense of claustrophobia completely disappears. It’s ironic that the game starts with you being imprisoned, quickly enacting your escape into the vastness of space…where all space dragons should be free to roam. Go ahead, roam the vastness of space, you astronaut dragon puppeteer.

Although a small dream, as a boy too young to have any coordination, I dreamt of flying a kite. My patience paid off one summer when over three days my cousin taught me how to fly one. Those were some of my favorite memories. Sadly, there was no wind for so long, and now with the virus, I might not ever been able to fly a kite outside again…if Stunt Kite Master didn’t exist.

Not a known game, but a must try. A fantastic experience that draws you back to great memories. Flying a kite has always been a fun, simple (once you learn), relaxing action to do. It’s a natural thing, like throwing a frisbee. This game does a great job of helping your mind wrap around the physics. You don’t necessarily need to understand the wind, just be able to feel it…and you can nearly feel the wind in this game. The reason I think great games like this go undiscovered or are underplayed for a while is that they aren’t spread by word of mouth for the purpose of playing via multiplayer. So, sadly this game doesnt have multiplayer yet, but it would be amazing to fly a kite alongside a friend.

We all had that childhood experience where we dashed off into the woods to pretend we were knights saving the realm, or wizards terrorizing the countryside from our tree fort castle . No? That was just me?

Anyways, OrbusVR has been out for a while, which is all the more reason to re-discover it. It was originally only desktop, but now on Quest. It has a great combat system, amazing multiplayer capabilities and expansive visuals. But it quickly becomes physically demanding. The biggest issue I have with it, is that compared to similar desktop games like World of Warcraft it has no true storyline, or at the bare minimum its story line is just text conversations. All the more room for taking your imagination out of that box you stored away since your childhood and coming up with your own story line. Either way, it was a great early step for VR Multiplayer in my opinion and is amazingly optimized. So, if you’re looking for something to play with friends, try this out.

Turn the tables. You’re 35, sitting at your desk job (or your COVID-19 “home office”), and dreaming of being a kid again, sitting in front of your gaming console all summer long. EmuVR literally lets you do just that.

Its an emulator to play all your favorite games in VR, desktop only. Amazing. Email https://www.emuvr.net/ to get added to their discord and download the tools to play it.

Harry Potter. Wizards. Witches. Magic. Easy Dream. This is that.

Live Out Your Childhood Dreams With These 5 Oculus Rift Games was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.