Celebrate the spirit of Halloween in VRChat through our latest seasonal jam where our talented creator community transports us to mysterious and often terrifying worlds, or shows us what it means to haunt the night with their creative and uncanny avatars.
Be warned! Jam opens EARLIER this year on October 1st to give people all month long to enjoy our spooky content! You can submit and update as often as you like until the October 22nd deadline.
Prizes include Valve Index VR kits, Oculus Quest 2s, and HTC Vive 3.0 trackers! For all the details and full terms and conditions, please check the Spookality page here.
You can read more details about the VRChat Spookality Jam, and enter the contest, here on the Itch.io website. All content submitted must make use of VRChat SDK3 to be qualified for entry. World submissions must use VRCSDK3 for Worlds and Avatar submissions must use VRCSDK3 for Avatars. While the use of more advanced features within the SDK (such as Udon and Avatars 3.0) is recommended, it is not required. There isn’t a requirement for your content to be cross-platform compatible, but it will play a very strong role in the judging, so please keep that in mind.
VRChat will be updating the VRChat Home on October 29th, 2021 to showcase the winning content, so you will be able to explore and enjoy it over the Halloween weekend!
Tell by the way you hang your head The way you cast your eyes and things you haven’t said You’ve gathered past ten years written on your face Your whole damn life’s been one big race Everybody goes there whether they want to or not Everybody starts to hold on to what they got And start to settle in with the long haul Real life baby, oh, you can’t have it all
When you got nothing left to lose Might sound good, but I’m not sure that’s true You carry the pain around and that’s what sees you through The different shades of blue
—Joe Bonamassa, Different Shades of Blue
Depression is a funny thing (not literally, of course; perhaps it would be more accurate to say that depression is a strange thing). It can go away or come back, settle in for the long haul and then lift unexpectedly, at a moment’s notice. I have become accustomed to my moods, sometimes only noticing them when remarked upon by friends, family, and coworkers.
I am often feeling different shades of blue, cranky and exhausted, worn out by twenty months of pandemic and a very busy September at my university. I often find myself lying on the sofa, with the lights turned off, listening to one or another relaxing music livestream on YouTube. I seem to be spending a lot of time on YouTube lately for some reason, rabidly consuming content which seems to fall into four main categories:
Here’s an example of the kind of video I like to put on when I am feeling stressed and depressed, and I need to chill. It’s just a livestream of a tropical beach somewhere, where the waves crashing onto the shore. Sometimes I even leave it on and go to sleep! I find the sound of the waves so soothing.
One livestream video channel, which I find I like to listen to while lying on the sofa in the darkness, is deceptively simple but very soothing: 1920s-1940s oldies music playing muffled (as if it were in another room), with the sound of crickets chirping. Metro reports:
A wave of videos have emerged on YouTube since the pandemic began. Creators are putting together playlists of muffled oldies music (from the 1920s-40s) with sound effects of rain, thunder, and log fires over the top to create the illusion of being inside a cozy room with distant background music…
At a time when things life feels far less certain and predictable, it makes sense that people are turning to comforting sounds to help them unwind or relax while getting on with other tasks.
Creator of YouTube channel Nemo’s Dreamscapes, which currently has over 103k subscribers, says they’ve noticed these kinds of videos have existed for a few years now, but it’s only more recently they’ve become a ‘trend’.
Here’s an example from Nemo’s Dreamscapes:
If you are also feeling different shades of blue, I hope that you can find a bit of serenity with my YouTube picks! I find it also helps to take a firm break from my newsfeed and my social media (I tend to doomscroll the COVID-19 news until I am thoroughly angry, anxious, and demoralized!).
Stay safe and stay healthy!
P.S. Did you know that Ryan’s 15-minute three-cheese lasanga is clinically proven to cure depression? 😉 (Hey, it’s gotta be better for you than ivermectin!) Here’s the recipe. All the fabulous serotonin-boosting lasagna taste, in just fifteen minutes!!!
