"Anxiety haunts a lot of people I know. Sometimes my friends and I trade tips for evading its clutches: deep breathing, white noise apps, staying off Twitter. But what if a virtual reality game could offer something even better: a total sensory oasis from anxiety attacks? Deep, a virtual reality game developed for the Oculus Rift, has set out to do just that. It's based on the same sort of deep breathing exercises that many anxiety sufferers—and meditation/yoga enthusiasts—are already familiar with, coupled with immersive visuals and audio that make you feel like you're suspended in a dreamy, underwater world. A belt secured around your body senses when you inhale and exhale, causing you to "rise" and "fall" rhythmically within the water as you explore a "zen garden" of coral and colored lights." - CW

"Developer Owen Harris had been using breathing exercises to manage his own anxiety for years, and "when VR arrived... I knew exactly what I wanted to do: I wanted to build something where at the end of a stressful day I could just go to, and it'd become my own little isolation tank," Harris told Vice. "I was building this thing for myself; it never really occurred to me to be showing it to other people." When other people started finding therapeutic value in the game, however, Harris decided that maybe the game had something to offer a wider audience. One of those people was Christos Reid, the developer of Hug Marine, who tried Deep for the first time at a crucial moment when he felt a panic attack was imminent. " - CW