Maloka
World-class multisensory VR experience that makes daily meditation beautiful, trackable — and also fun.
Metaverse
2021
How to get people to mediate daily? How to pave a path to scale it to millions of people?
Galaxy Labs / Mike Novogratz family office approached us to try help answer this question. We’ve looked at emerging trends at the end of 2019 and offered building a VR game to grow with the Oculus (now Meta) ecosystem. The decision was driven by deep research of mindfulness and healing practice and mediation, where VR performs much better than mobile.
VR Development
UX Design
Art Direction
Brand Design
Business Strategy
Mobile Development
Character Design
Worldbuilding
Mobile App
Maloka Mobile allows users to meditate, check in on their spirit, and view their island creation at any time. It has its own gamification and engagement features. The app was designed for iOS and Android.
Concept Development
Early concept work grounded the game design in one simple principle: The Mind as an Island. As you meditate, your island grows, new corners are revealed, and your spirit evolves!
Character Development
Each user is matched with a unique Spirit, which will grow and evolve with each meditation! We worked with legendary artist Bakea to create these charming, otherworldly characters.
World Design and Development
Your mind is an island.Within the world of Maloka, you will be united with your own unique island. The more you practice, the more your island grows and flourishes into a vibrant oasis filled with plants, sculptures, and more.
VR allows you to marvel your island from any perspective. Reflect on your work from above, or rest on the beach and gaze at the shooting stars.
Meditation Vortex
Our team designed the meditation vortex to fluctuate in intensity based on a sine wave structure. The visuals are procedurally generated, but retain a tactile and geometric quality.
World’s first VR Yoga
Our team worked with Yoga instructors to create a collection of mindful movement experiences. These are designed for any user to become more aware of his or her body and breath. To our best knowledge, this became the first yoga experience in VR (even if designed for seated position).
Sound Meditation
The Maloka sound meditation experiences were designed to be simple and powerful, utilizing ambisonic recording and an environment optimized for closing your eyes and sinking into sound. We worked with our double-Grammy nominated partner to bring out a rich sound experience across the entire Maloka universe.
Results
Over 250,000 people have tried Maloka just in the first 4 weeks since its launch in December 2021. Following the initial success and proof of concept, the project was handed off to a newly hired startup team managed by Galaxy Labs to spin it off as a full company. We continue to support it and build elements where necessary.
"HKEK led with strong vision and strategy to lead a route to market. They executed the branding, product design and development from end to end. Beyond a successful launch in app stores, HKEK partnered to iterate and evolve the product to glowing reviews”
— Xander Schultz, CEO, Galaxy Labs