Meta Quest 3 Gets My Favorite Workout App of 2024 to Boost Your New Year’s Fitness Goals
As 2025 approaches and the “New Year, New You” pressure increases for those of us who don’t enjoy jogging or going to the gym, know that there’s a great alternative to traditional fitness with Quell, one of my favorite workout apps from 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 who missed Quell at launch, it was originally a PC fitness platform. You would use the controllers to fight your way through the fantasy adventure game Shardfall while wearing resistance bands that make it harder than typical shadowboxing. The full body HIT sessions still felt intense Shard trap did a great job of keeping me motivated by contextualizing my actions – I didn’t just do another rep, I threw another punch because I had to defeat the monster in my way.
VR players will soon be able to try out this experience with a Meta Quest headset – without resistance bands, unless they choose to buy some. That’s because Shard trap comes to Quest as Shardfall: FitQuest VR for $19.99 / £14.99 at Meta.comand I’m pretty excited about it.
Shardfall will feel 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 per month or $39.99 / £39.99 per year, which I think is a pretty good price for the kit compared to other fitness equipment or a gym membership, but it’s an added cost that people may not be willing to pay for a system that can only be used with Quell games.
As an addition to your existing $19.99/£14.99 VR headset, Shardfall in VR is a much easier sell, and I highly recommend everyone gives it a try at launch. The Fighting Exercises is an engaging boxing simulation that does a good job of incorporating a full-body routine with ducks and jumps to avoid certain attacks and dangers, and it also includes jogging sections between fights that will get your heart rate up.
It’ll be a shame to lose the resistance bands, but again, that might help Shardfall’s accessibility as the exercises will be a little less challenging – although I expect the full-body routines will still give you a decent workout without them will give.
When the VR version launches, I’ll be sure to give it a try, and if you’re looking for a more interesting way to kickstart your 2025 fitness regime, I encourage you to join me.