Lucid Dreams Realidad Virtual is a Chilean location-based entertainment operator that runs free-roam virtual reality arenas inside shopping malls. Visitors buy timed sessions and walk freely inside a tracked arena rather than playing at seated stations. The company reports more than 30,000 people have taken part.
Sources disagree on the founding year: panoramia.cl (30 October 2025) and the company's LinkedIn page say 2017, while La Tercera (8 July 2025) says 2018. Both name Cristobal Baixas as founder and chief executive; Portal Innova (10 October 2024) also names Cristobal Villaseca as co-founder and CTO. La Tercera reports the business began with experiences at Hotel W in Santiago, closed during the pandemic, and opened its first permanent centre at Parque Arauco in 2024. Its financing is reported to come from the Chilean state development agency Corfo and an Epic MegaGrant, with Miami Dade College also named as an institutional backer.
Four venues operate: Parque Arauco in Las Condes, Santiago (Av. Pdte. Kennedy 5413, reported as a 260 m2 format), Mallplaza Vespucio in La Florida (listed by Mallplaza under Entretencion, Nivel 2), Mall Marina in Vina del Mar (150 m2) and Mallplaza Antofagasta (Av. Balmaceda 2355). Five experiences run across the sites: three team titles branded Inbattle - Champions Warfare (player-versus-player), Infected (cooperative zombie shooter) and Dark Nest (cooperative team horror) - plus Xpedition VR, an exploration experience, and Boost VR Racing on a motion platform. The Inbattle arena takes up to six simultaneous players in roughly 15-minute sessions; Boost VR Racing takes up to three. At Parque Arauco the arena costs CLP 16,000 per person midweek and CLP 20,000 at weekends and holidays; Antofagasta charges CLP 18,000 and CLP 24,000.
The platform runs on Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S headsets using inside-out tracking, described as "completamente inalambrica... sin mochilas, cables ni restricciones de espacio" - no external sensors or backpack PCs - with StrikerVR Mavrik Pro haptic gun controllers. Development uses both Unreal Engine and Unity; Infected, launched in October 2025, was built in Unreal Engine 5 and described as developed entirely in Chile. Boost VR Racing is a separate stack: a motion platform with haptic wheel and progressive-resistance pedals driven by a PlayStation 5 with PlayStation VR2. Reported investment exceeds USD 1 million, split roughly between USD 500,000 of development budget and USD 500,000 of equipment.
Importantly for attribution, Inbattle is not a third-party platform the operator licenses: it is the same company's own game brand and its former Miami arm, founded by the same person. The company describes the pandemic as the point at which it went "de ser operadores a ser desarrolladores", so Lucid Dreams both develops the software and operates the venues.
Timeline: the Parque Arauco flagship opened in 2024, with a launch press wave in October 2024 and a company post announcing the reopening on 17 November 2024. Mallplaza Vespucio is reported to have opened on 20 June 2025, tied initially to a Plaza Gamer by Festigame activation with permanence dependent on public reception, and was announced on the company's own site on 28 June 2025. Mall Marina in Vina del Mar was announced on 14 December 2025 and covered by Chilean media that month and in January 2026. Mallplaza Antofagasta is the newest site; its venue page publishes full hours and prices but no opening date was found. Baixas has said he expects around ten centres within three years, naming other Chilean regions and Mexico.
Alongside walk-in visitors, Lucid Dreams sells corporate sessions under a Lucid Teams programme in three tiers (Foundations Lab, Performance Lab and Strategic Custom Deluxe), priced in UF per person and pitched as an organisational diagnostic with a "Lucid Interactions" sociogram and debrief reporting. No client organisation is named for it. Two adjacent projects are separate records rather than part of this venue network: a bespoke VR activation for Banco de Chile at Lollapalooza Chile 2025 in Parque Cerrillos, and the company's earlier US work, including a test arena on the north campus of Miami Dade College in 2021, mentorship of MDC's game-design programme in 2022-2023 and an InBattle arena in Wynwood, Miami, opened in July 2022.
