Category: vr puzzle

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‘Puzzling Places’ Review – Putting Conventional Jigsaw Puzzles to Shame

Puzzling Places takes jigsaw puzzles in a new and clever direction by offering up multiple difficulties of some highly textured and interesting 3D scenes, making for an experience that’s better than either physical 2D or 3D puzzles in almost every way.

Puzzling Places Details:

Available On: Oculus Quest, (PSVR coming in 2021)  
Price: $15
Developer: Realities.io
Release Date: September 2nd, 2021
Reviewed On: Oculus Quest 2

Gameplay

The concept is simple: the game includes 16 puzzles at launch, all of which can be fractured into 25, 50, 100, 200, and 400 pieces. All scenes are based on photogrammetry—a technique for taking high resolution photos of a thing and stitching them together to make a 3D model—so puzzles have an extreme lifelike quality to them that wholly artificial objects typically don’t. Click the pieces together in any order you like and voilà: you have a detailed little model of something cool in front of you.

In Puzzling Places you’ll be able to build things like millennia-old temples in Armenia, a delicate and expressive Japanese kimono, and a densely-packed drawing room in Sweden that, when pushed to the max 400-piece difficulty becomes a smorgasbord of chairs, rich tapestries, and all sorts of finery that may take you literal hours to assemble. Playing Puzzling Places really can be as simple as clicking a large stretch of beach together like a Hot Wheels tracks, or going in to match miniscule bits of houses that all look very similar.

Image courtesy Realities.io

After the tutorial, the game invites you to run through a few 25-piece puzzles first to get your legs. Beyond that, you won’t hear a peep out of the game, even as you head on to more difficult puzzle configurations. Although the full gamut of puzzles available at launch feels fairly low in number, all puzzles have been thoughtfully fragmented from 25-400 pieces so you can play each level as if it were new. There’s multiple hours of puzzling here and Realities.io promises more is yet to come post-launch. A bit more on difficulty in Immersion though.

Anyway, here’s a great mixed reality look at what it feels like to build in Puzzling Places, courtesy of Fabio Dela Antonio:

Like conventional puzzles, you’re not only tasked with matching the crenelated edges of each piece, but also keeping tabs on the image’s different textures and how they align. An efficient puzzler tends to group pieces and solve the most obvious bits first, which thankfully is an uncomplicated thing in Puzzling Places since you can easily summon pieces from the puzzle backboard and either leave them anywhere in mid-air, or return them to any spot on the board you want. Once you create your system for sorting pieces, the real challenge begins and you’re forced to examine every aspect of the piece, looking for more context clues like stitching patterns, shadows from buildings, and logical flow from one to the next. Is that a bit of chandelier, or maybe a chair leg?

By default a few reference images taken from different angles are placed down by your feet, but if you’re looking for a real challenge you can turn them off and attack each puzzle without truly knowing the end result.

Image courtesy Realities.io

There are two tools in the game to make things easier, although they’re really more suited for users attacking advanced puzzles since so much can be done by hand. Tools include ‘Grouping’ and ‘See-through’, which let you respectively group pieces together for better organization, and temporarily render pieces invisible so you can work on obscured parts like interiors. You’ll see those projected on the backboard where you can select and summon it to you just like you do with a puzzle piece. Neither of the tools felt vital to puzzle-solving though, as I almost immediately forgot them as I went on about selecting, organizing and piecing together scenes naturally.

Thankfully, pausing and resuming a gameplay session is simple. It remembers every time a piece is moved thanks to the local autosave function. You can also save up to four profiles so you can share the game with friends and family too.

Immersion

Ok, I said it was better than physical 2D and 3D puzzles in almost every single way, although it notably lacks an inherent tactility that you might find important to the whole process of building things with your own two hands—or rather, two egg-shaped hands. Although realism suffers a bit here due to abstract hand models, pieces do ‘chunk’ together automatically when you fit them close enough, and that on its own is pretty satisfying.

Not as satisfying as picking up a piece and fitting it together, but on the flipside you also never have to worry about breaking a nubbin that’s supposed to slot in just right, or losing a piece. The game even encourages you with sound effects once you’ve reached your penultimate move, and gives you a tiny celebration once the last piece has been fitted.

Image courtesy Realities.io

Puzzles are impressively detailed, and are also variable in size. At first, playing through the 25-piece difficulty level I thought not being able to inspect the creations in greater detail was a missed opportunity. You can’t just zoom-in and make the puzzle bigger to see more. Puzzles physically scale according to difficulty though, so you’ll get a good and thorough look at each scene as you muck through piles of stones and golden relics galore in the 400-piece range.

Environments are fairly plain, offering either a grassy reed motif by default or a skybox with variable color themes which you can change via the Color-Picker tool. You’ll find that next to the other two puzzle-solving tools on the backboard.

Because your puzzling environment is so plain—probably to not step on the toes of its unique and detailed photogrammetric puzzles—the game has ostensibly focused on audio to bring you closer to the essence of each puzzle. Various parts of the puzzle trigger an audio cue, like when you hear sprinklers turn on once you’ve slotted in the golf course at the lighthouse on the Biarritz puzzle. It’s charming and immersive, although the ambient sounds personally became a little too repetitive and distracting for me during longer sessions.

Comfort

As you’d imagine, the default control scheme is extremely simple. The Index finger trigger pulls double duty and works for both selecting and holding pieces, which can be a bit tiring if you’re going in for a long session. ‘Tiring’ is a relative term, I guess. You may not be used to holding your arms out at 45-degree angles for 30 minutes at a time, but that’s what it takes to play. I didn’t have issue with it, but it’s fair warning just the same.

I wish the grip button was used for this because of common design conventions, however the game reserves this in a grip-the-world style locomotion method (also gripping B+Y works here too). I didn’t particularly like the locomotion implementation here since you have to physically depress each controller’s grip button to move anywhere, as opposed to naturally gripping one and moving forward like in many games that use the convention.

Still, Puzzling Places has a good range of options when it comes to how you want to play so you’re not forced to move about virtually if you don’t want to. You can remain seated and select and summon pieces from afar, stand for greater maneuverability, and room-scale to you can physically walk up to pieces on the backboard and grab them naturally. You can also select a 360 mode that takes the backboard and wraps it around you, making it so you don’t need to flip through the backboard menu tab in larger puzzles. In the end, Puzzling Places is one of the most comfortable games since every movement you make is 1:1 with the real world.

Puzzling Places Comfort Settings – September 2nd, 2021

Turning
Artificial turning ✖
Smooth-turn n/a
Adjustable speed n/a
Snap-turn n/a
Adjustable increments n/a

Movement
Artificial movement ✔
Smooth-move n/a
Adjustable speed n/a
Teleport-move n/a
Blinders ✖
Adjustable strength ✖
Head-based n/a
Controller-based n/a
Swappable movement hand n/a

Posture
Standing mode ✔
Seated mode ✔
Artificial crouch ✖
Real crouch ✖

Accessibility
Subtitles ✖
Languages n/a
Alternate audio ✖
Adjustable difficulty ✔
Two hands required ✔
Real crouch required ✖
Hearing required ✔
Adjustable player height ✖

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‘I Expect You to Die 2’ Coming to All Major VR Headsets August 24th, New Trailer Here

Schell Games today announced that its long-awaited follow-up to I Expect You to Die (2016) is set to launch on all major VR headsets August 24th. The spy-themed puzzler is already looking like a worthy sequel, offering fun and interesting ways to die, plenty of easter eggs, and a story that would be the envy of any would-be writer of a James Bond film.

I Expect You to Die is one of those early VR titles that seemed to have figured out the formula. It was popular when it first came to PC VR headsets in 2016, and it consistently ranks in the top 20 paid Oculus Quest apps to this day.

While there’s been plenty of DLC along the way to keep players coming back for more, I’d say the reason it continues to impress newcomers is owed to its clever puzzle design, fun and unexpected deaths, and a truly superb of world building that really brings the game’s spy-themed universe to life. Not only that, but all of it’s done from the seated position, which is a sort of unique bottleneck that forces the game to always serve up something new and surprising—typically in the form of a deadly gadget or unexpected plot twist.

Image courtesy Schell Games

Now, nearly a month out from launch, we’ve gone hands-on with I Expect You to Die 2: The Spy and the Liar both through its publicly available demo and a sneak peek at the first three levels too. I can’t say too much beyond what you can figure out from the demo—no spoilers here about the story or any specific puzzles—but it’s safe to say it’s really shaping up to follow in the original’s footsteps.

The sequel’s first three levels are strong openers to what I can only assume will be another twisty-turny, back-stabby adventure. It’s got six missions in total, but also includes speed run and souvenir card systems for the sake of replay value.

So far the first half of the game has been chocked full of interesting spy gadgetry and interactive objects, which oftentimes are more than meets the eye. Oh, and Star Trek TNG’s Wil Wheaton voices a guy. He may be more than meets the eye too… Wheaton, that is. I said I wouldn’t spoil anything.

Image courtesy Schell Games

Like the first game, you’ll need to fish around for clues but also tread lightly as to not inadvertently die by drinking something poisonous, running out of breathable air, or being sliced in half by a casual laser beam or two. You’ll need to get creative and use your brain to solve multi-step puzzles, sometimes accomplished in more than one way, and really truly try not to explode yourself.

I played on Quest 2, and it’s clear the studio is at home developing for the standalone format. Set pieces are well realized, and frankly look better than many PC VR games I’ve played in the past.

I’ll be saving the rest of my thoughts for when the full game comes out on all major VR headset on August 24th, where it will be priced at $25. Schell Games is putting out pre-orders on a few platforms starting today, which brings the game to a 10% discount for Oculus Quest and PlayStation VR. Anyway, make sure to check back then for our full impressions next month.

The post ‘I Expect You to Die 2’ Coming to All Major VR Headsets August 24th, New Trailer Here appeared first on Road to VR.

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Best Puzzle VR Games Available For Oculus Quest 2

Looking for some mind-bending puzzle games to play through on Quest 2? Here are our picks.

The Oculus Quest library is only growing larger and stronger by the day with a few options available in most genres. For puzzle fans, we’ve put together this list of some of the best in the genre available on Quest. Some are inventive and creative, some are mind-bending and challenging, but there should be something for everyone.

Here are our picks for the best puzzle games available on Oculus Quest.

A Fisherman’s Tale

Before its more recent game Maskmaker, Innerspace released the acclaimed A Fisherman’s Tale on Quest in 2019. It’s a short yet incredibly charming puzzle game, with ingenious puzzles will make you rack your brain until you finally reach that critical ‘a-ha’ moment that feels so satisfying.

A Fisherman’s Tale was nominated in our Best of VR 2019 Awards for the Best PSVR Game/Experience, Best Quest Game/Experience, Best PC VR Game/Experience, and overall Overall Best VR Of 2019. You can read more in our review.

Cubism

Cubism is a deceptively simple game. Each level features a 3D wireframe shape into which you have to fit different Tetris-like block pieces. The puzzles get harder and the pieces more complex – it’s a slow and measured puzzle experience.

Even better, the game’s recent updates include 120Hz and hand tracking support. The latter in particular is a near-perfect fit for Cubism – all you’re doing is picking up pieces and placing them into the wireframe, but it’s enough to create a sublime hand tracking experience. This isn’t a ranked list, but if it were, Cubism would be my personal #1.

You can read our review of Cubism here (written before hand tracking support was added) and read our impressions of the hand tracking update here.

Floor Plan 2

Floor Plan 2 feels like a VR episode of The Muppet Show, not just in the hilarious absurdity of its world but also in the constant, invigorating ingenuity of its puzzles. It is a logic-based puzzle game in a completely illogical world and one of the best recent releases on the Quest platform.

Read more in our Floor Plan 2 review.

Puzzling Places

This game takes the staples of 2D jigsaw puzzles and brings them into VR with a new element — all of the puzzles are 3D models of real-life places, brought to life through highly detailed photogrammetry captures. The 16 included puzzles range from landscapes to individual objects, each with accompanying ambient sounds that build up as you solve. It’s a slow, meditative but also appropriately challenging puzzle game that offers a similar yet fresh take on traditional jigsaw puzzles.

You can read more in our review.

 

A Rogue Escape

This is a tough, short (1-2 hours), claustrophobic puzzler that will set you stuck in the cramped confines of a submerged submarine. There’s no hand-holding here, resulting in an immersive yet excruciatingly slow set of submarine-based puzzles. If you’re looking for an incredibly short but difficult experience, then this might be the best option.

You can read more in our A Rogue Escape review.

Tetris Effect

If you’re a fan of Tetris, then Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Tetris Effect is an absolute must-play. It launched first on PSVR and PC VR before finally making its way over the Quest platform in 2020.

It is exactly what it sounds like – it’s Tetris in VR. However, it’s matched with a spectacular, powerful and at times hypnotic amount of visual and audio flair. While these visuals have had to be pared down slightly for the Quest release, we still deemed it the definitive version of the game across all platforms – the lack of tethered wires on Quest remains priceless.

You can read more in our Tetris Effect Quest review.

I Expect You To Die 2

Five years on from the release of the original, I Expect You To Die 2 is a game that executes a specific style of grueling puzzle game incredibly well. It’s a trial-and-error affair where you’ll spend an hour testing things, only to realize that the solution was obvious and right in front of you the whole time. It’s the mark of a quality puzzle — one where the solution is hidden not through obscure design, but through your own short-sightedness — but it can also mean a slow burn and periods of heavy frustration.

You can read more in our review.

The Room VR: A Dark Matter

The latest installment in The Room series is also its first installment in VR. This isn’t a mobile or PC port either – The Room VR: A Dark Matter is made entirely for VR from the ground up.

Developer Fireproof hasn’t lost its penchant for incredibly clever and creative puzzles in the transition. Read more in our review.

Myst

This seminal PC game made its way over to the Oculus Quest late last year. It’s an upgraded and all-around solid port of the original PC title that will have you reaching for a notebook or a friend to help work your way through the tough puzzles.

It’s a game everyone should play once and the Quest 2 port provides you with a modern but faithful way to do so. You can read more in our review.

Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs

While the Angry Birds franchise started on mobile, its first foray into VR is a completely natural transition and results in an extremely fun VR puzzle game. It’s an intuitive VR title that’s perfect for VR beginners and veterans alike.

The campaign levels do veer slightly to the easy end of the spectrum, but it’s also a game primarily targeted at kids. This isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable for all ages though, and the custom level builder and online sharing functions mean that you’ll be able to create and play more levels long after you’ve finished the campaign.

You can read more in our review.

What are your favorite puzzle games on Quest? Let us know in the comments.

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Mystical Adventure ‘Maskmaker’ Releases on PC VR & PSVR Today, Trailer Here

Maskmaker, a VR adventure game from A Fisherman’s Tale (2019) studio InnerspaceVR and publisher MWM Interactive, brings a host of unique puzzles and scenic environments to PSVR and SteamVR-compatible headsets today.

In Maskmaker, you step into a magical realm where you take on the role of a “Maskmaker’s apprentice” to the powerful Prospero. Here you learn to craft mystical masks while also “unraveling the mystery of the Maskmaker along the way.” The game promises plenty of mystical biomes to explore using your new found crafting skills.

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Image courtesy InnerspaceVR, WMW Interactive
Image courtesy InnerspaceVR, WMW Interactive
Image courtesy InnerspaceVR, WMW Interactive
Image courtesy InnerspaceVR, WMW Interactive

“With Maskmaker, we wanted to challenge ourselves and expand beyond the little world we had created in our previous game, and get away from the linear structure of storytelling. We also wanted to create a longer experience – which was the most critical feedback we heard with A Fisherman’s Tale,” said Balthazar Auxietre, creative director and co-founder at InnerspaceVR.

Auxietre says the studio’s previous adventure game helped inform what he calls a more open-ended world. “Maskmaker is definitely our biggest game to date, and it’s certainly not an easy task, especially for a VR game,” he says.

Maskmaker is now available for $20 on Oculus PC platform (Rift & Quest via Link), PSVR and SteamVR-compatible headsets. We’re expecting all store links here today, although it seems to already by live on Steam.

The post Mystical Adventure ‘Maskmaker’ Releases on PC VR & PSVR Today, Trailer Here appeared first on Road to VR.

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Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey Revealed From Survios And Taito

Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey from Survios and Taito brings the iconic bubble popping series to VR for the first time next month on May 20. It’ll release for both Oculus Quest and Quest 2.

Puzzle Bobble VR

This new entry in the long-running puzzle game series celebrates the 35th anniversary of the franchise with an all-new entry that takes place entirely from a first-person perspective. Puzzle Bobble VR will feature 100 levels for you to aim, match, and burst bubbles. We’ve seen other big puzzle games make the leap to VR with great results, like Angry Birds VR or Fruit Ninja VR, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed for similar success this time around.

Puzzle Bobble VR will feature a Story Mode with the 100 aforementioned levels that each contain 3-star ratings at the end, an Infinite Mode to try and get the highest score possible against never-ending waves, and an Online Duel Mode to pit your skills against an opponent in a 1v1 battle.

“We are excited to bring Puzzle Bobble to virtual reality through our partnership with Survios in Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey,” said Tetsu Yamada, President of TAITO Corp. “VR allows us to deliver a new approach to bubble-popping, allowing long-time fans and new players to experience Puzzle Bobble like never before and just in time for Bubble Bobble’s 35th anniversary.”

Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey is slated for release on Oculus Quest and Quest 2 next month on May 20. Wsihlist the game on the Quest Store now if you’d like. Find out more about the game over on the official website.

Let us know what you think of how the game looks so far down in the comments below!

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‘Puzzling Places’ to Launch on Oculus Quest Store This Fall

Puzzling Places is already on Quest via App Lab, Facebook’s unmoderated outlet for Quest games and experiences, however now developers Realities.io announced the 3D puzzle game has been officially accepted to the Oculus Store.

The developers of the photogrammetry-based 3D jigsaw puzzle game announced the news yesterday in a Tweet, stating that the game is targeting a Fall 2021 launch window.

If you own a Quest, you can check out the game on App Lab or SideQuest right now, which in its prototype form includes six freebie puzzles. The developers are currently supporting their work through Patreon, which includes access to many more puzzles.

Realities.io say there is still plenty more to announce about the game leading up to launch including upcoming puzzles as well as more content partnerships.

The game is also set to arrive on PSVR sometime in the winter of 2021. Check out the trailer below to see the game in action.

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3D Photogrammetry-Based VR Jigsaw Game Puzzling Places Coming To PSVR

Today in a slew of indie game-related announcements, Sony revealed that 3D jigsaw puzzle VR game, Puzzling Places from realities.io, is now coming to PSVR. Here’s the official PlayStation webpage.

Puzzling Places is a laid-back puzzle game in which you manipulate real-life 3D objects and locations that have been exploded into dozens of pieces and then gradually stitch them back together. The puzzles themselves are based on photogrammetry data of actual buildings and locations from the real world that were 3D-scanned specifically for the game.

You can try the beta version of Puzzling Places right now for free on Quest via Oculus App Lab, or subscribe to their Patreon for access to additional monthly (or weekly) test puzzles. It’s still unclear what the exact payment model will be for Puzzling Places on PSVR, but I’d expect a flat fee price to download the entire game is likely.

According to the PS Blog post there will be “a whole bunch” of puzzles at launch with “a lot more content” to be released after release—so take that for what you will. Every puzzle is scaled to different difficulty levels, such as only 50-pieces for something quicker and easier, or if you want way more to really challenge yourself.

 

There is no release date yet for Puzzling Places, nor a price, but it is expected to hit this year. Perhaps around the same time the game will reach 1.0 status on other platforms as well.

Let us know what you think of Puzzling Places and if you’ve tried it out yet on Quest for yourself.

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Suicide Guy VR Dreams Up Whimsical Puzzle-Solving For PC VR This Month

In Suicide Guy VR you solve puzzles by doing the unthinkable to escape a bizarre and wacky assortment of extraordinary dreams. It’s releasing on SteamVR for Rift, Vive, and Index on July 24th.

I had never heard of Suicide Guy until I saw the Store page for Suicide Guy VR, but as it turns out, it’s an existing non-VR game with the exact same premise that’s sold over 200,000 copies according to the developer. In these games from Chubby Pixel, you take on the role of the titular character as he is trapped in abnormal dream worlds with no escape. The only way out, as his name implies, is to commit suicide. But in order to accomplish that, you’ve got to solve the puzzles in whichever dream you’re trapped in at that moment.

For all intents and purposes, it’s the antithesis of Schell Games’ I Expect You To Die. In that puzzle game you’re a secret agent trying to escape clutches of death by the skin of your teeth, but in Suicide Guy VR you’re doing everything you possibly can do to end your captivity in dream land.

According to the Steam page it’s a little unclear just how much is completely original. The description says you’ll be able to, “find out the new custom levels that take full advantage of Virtual Reality,” but it reads as if that implies there are other non-original levels too.

Suicide Guy VR will have both smooth movement and teleportation movement, but other comfort options are currently unknown. You can look forward to learning more about the game very soon, as it’s due out very soon this July 24th for SteamVR.

The post Suicide Guy VR Dreams Up Whimsical Puzzle-Solving For PC VR This Month appeared first on UploadVR.

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VR Adventure ‘Firmament’ Releasing in May, From Studio Behind ‘Myst’ & ‘Riven’

Cyan, the studio behind iconic puzzle adventure games Myst (1993) and Riven (1997), garnered their fair share of success with their April 2019 Kickstarter campaign, which sought to bring to life their next VR-compatible title, Firmament. Now Cyan says the long-delayed game finally has a release date: May 18th.

Update (March 10th, 2023)

According to a Kickstarter backer update, Firmament is now set to launch on May 18th, coming to PC VR headsets including Meta Rift and Rift S, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and Meta Quest headsets through Quest Link. A flatscreen mode is also available for play on MacOS and Windows. A previous version of this article claimed it was coming in March, however this is untrue, as the game is confirmed to release on Thursday, May 18th.

The studio says it’s also set to target PSVR 2, PS4 and PS5 at some point “down the line.”

Two months ago the studio released an extended look at some of the game’s preproduction footage, which we’ve included below:

Update (October 26th, 2022)

Once targeting a July 2020 launch, Firmament has slipped again and is now targeting a Q1 2023 launch date. Here’s that statement is full; we’ve also included a 9-minute look at the work-in-progress game, embedded below this update:

“As a result of discussions with key team member and staff, Cyan is making the important decision to move the launch of Firmament to Q1 2023. The game is very closed to complete, and the development is rapidly approaching its final phase.

To our Backers, Fans, and Friends, thank you for your continuing patience and support. Your enthusiasm and excitement lifts our spirits daily. We cannot wait to share launch day news with you in (early!) 2023.”

Original Article (July 13th, 2020): Firmament’s launch window seemed a bit tight from the onset, however from an experienced studio that had previously created its latest VR-compatible puzzle adventure game Obduction to both PC VR and PSVR, it seemed not all together impossible.

The reality of creating a game however is admittedly “often quite a bit messier,” the studio says in a recent Kickstarter update.

Here’s a bit of Cyan’s reasoning behind the delay, which is said to push the game’s release date possibly to 2022.

With that in mind, Firmament’s Estimated Delivery date of July 2020 was- as it turns out- a wildly optimistic one. We know some of you had your heart’s set on playing Firmament this summer, and we’re genuinely sorry that you’re not going to be able to play it yet! We’re really bummed about that too!

Although there is no Release Date to announce today, we can tell you a couple things with some level of certainty: Firmament is not coming in 2020. And unless the stars align (which we all know happens rarely in game development), it is unlikely that Firmament will be coming in 2021.

In the studio’s own defense, Cyan says it has “always been about shipping things when they’re ready to be shipped, not picking a date and then trying to shoehorn the game into the box in an artificially limited amount of time.”

SEE ALSO
The 20 Best Rated & Most Rated Quest Games & Apps – July 2020

Firmament is said to be “something bigger than a studio [of Cyan’s] size would ordinarily be able to produce,” and that it will include a “richer and more substantial story” than was previously planned.

Whatever you thought of Obduction (and its initially uneasy technical performance on both PC VR headsets and PSVR) Cyan has a good track record of delivering, leaving the only real concern to when Firmament will arrive, and not if.

Food for thought: a prospective 2022 release of Firmament is slated to happen well within the lifecycle of next-gen consoles and PC hardware—and possibly VR hardware as well—so there’s no telling what technical advances the studio will need to adopt along the way if it’s looking to significantly lengthen the development roadmap. I guess we’ll see in a few years. As it is, Firmament is targeting PC, SteamVR headsets, macOS, and PS4 & PSVR.

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The Room VR: A Dark Matter Review – Supernatural Sherlock Holmes

There are some truly great puzzle games in VR. The genre lends itself very well to the interactivity, mystery, and tinkering play style that fits the puzzle genre so the two feel like they were made for one another. The Room VR: A Dark Matter is the latest example of how great a puzzle game built exclusively for VR can truly be.

Many of the best VR puzzle games, such as Transpose and A Fisherman’s Tale, use VR in novel ways to bend your mind and challenge your intellect, so The Room VR is rather muted by comparison. But what it lacks in brain-busting creativity it more than makes up for with a genuinely gripping narrative, excellent production values, and just good old-fashioned puzzles.

Fireproof Games have been making entries in The Room series for eight years now and each of their past games are some of the best you can play on mobile devices, so they’re a studio accustomed to getting the most out of new gaming platforms.

The tricky thing about reviewing a game like The Room is that the sense of continuous discovery is the crux of what makes it so special. You’re more than welcome to watch the gameplay video above, which includes the first segment of the game covering almost 10 minutes (although I’d wager it will take closer to a half hour if you didn’t watch it and went in blind) but I’m hesitant to show anything else. Going in blind is crucial to get the most enjoyment out of The Room VR.

the room vr evidence locker

Everything from the voice acting, environmental designs, object interactivity, and sense of existing in a living, breathing world are top notch here. Many VR puzzle games whisk players away to fantastical settings to sidestep the need to make places look and feel real and lived in, but that grounded nature is what makes The Room VR so good.

You begin the game on a balcony overlooking a very average city in a very average old-timey police station. There’s a projector rattling, a desk with some papers, and a sense of believability that’s missing from lots of VR spaces. This is what makes the paranormal aspects and otherworldly interference feel so intrusive and mysterious: it’s as if the real world itself is getting warped.

In The Room VR you’re tasked with investigating the disappearance of a renowned Egyptologist after a police investigation comes up with nothing. The adventure that follows spans around 5-6 hours, depending on how quickly you solve some of the more intricate puzzles, and spans much more than just the confines of a handful of boring police station offices.

What really sets The Room VR apart from its contemporaries is how effortlessly it melds various other things into its puzzle solving and exploration. Games like Form do a good job of subtly implying its narrative and Transpose is almost entirely esoteric in its delivery, but The Room VR wisely unravels a truly Sherlock Holmes-worthy drama with you at the center.

the room vr book

Visually, The Room VR is a feast for the eyes. Playing on PC with Oculus Rift S revealed great details in the textures, like when reading books such as the one pictured above for clues, and everything in the environments was extremely rich with detail. Obviously the Quest version doesn’t look quite as good, but I’ve played it on that platform as well and have no problems labeling it as one of the best looking games on Quest for sure.

Perhaps the biggest fault with The Room VR overall though is that, like a lot of puzzle games, it does sometimes struggle with pacing and difficulty. As intriguing as much of the story is, it would often feel like I’d go long stretches of time with nothing but my own frustration with getting stuck to keep me company. Getting stuck in a puzzle game in VR feels a bit more aggravating than in non-VR games because taking a break or occupying your mind with something else isn’t as simple as looking away or checking social media on your phone.

Once the headset is on you’re locked in which usually means solving puzzles more quickly since it has your full attention, but sometimes it means your frustration is compounded instead. On the flip side of that, it does give you plenty of time to solve things without holding your hand, which can be refreshing if you enjoy brain teasers.

Another impressive bit is how deftly The Room VR juggles so many different atmospheres and themes. It’s at once a detective mystery, an archaeological adventure, and an otherworldly thriller all wrapped together.

Comfort

Some people will definitely take issue with the movement system, since the game is entirely built upon node-based teleportation and snap turning. But realistically it makes sense for a puzzle game since all of the actual gameplay can be done standing in place interacting with your hands. You don’t really need to sprint around rooms using smooth locomotion at all. Plus, it’s got the added bonus of eliminating the guess work of blindly searching a room for what to do next since you can surmise that important things are probably at each of your teleport nodes. That being said, it would’ve been great to explore areas more freely.

One of the game’s most important mechanics, Spirit Vision, reminded me of the Lens of Truth from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When you hold the lens up to your eye it lets you peer into the past and look through into another dimension to reveal clues and traces within the world around you. You can see an example of what that looks like in the trailer thumbnail up above.

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The Room VR: A Dark Matter Review Final Verdict

The Room VR: A Dark Matter is an exemplary puzzle game that not only serves as a prime example of what makes puzzle games so compelling in the first place, but elevates the genre via VR with supreme interactivity, excellent visuals, and a palpably mysterious atmosphere. It’s only held back slightly by some minor frustrations with pacing and difficulty, but is otherwise one of the best puzzle games available in a VR headset. It carries the torch lit by Myst and demonstrates how engrossing a puzzle game can be when done right.

Final Score: :star: :star: :star: :star: 4/5 Stars | Really Good

the room vr pro con list review

You can read more about our five-star scoring policy here.

The Room VR: A Dark Matter releases today on all major VR platforms including Steam and Rift Home, Quest, and PSVR.

The post The Room VR: A Dark Matter Review – Supernatural Sherlock Holmes appeared first on UploadVR.