Wall Town Wonders, Cyborn’s latest offering, transforms your living room into a charming miniature metropolis, and it’s out now on Quest 3.
In a creative leap, Cyborn is shifting focus from the jaw-dropping visuals and run and gun style of their previous title Hubris to a more intimate and personalized style of gameplay. Wall Town Wonders stands out by using your walls as an interactive canvas for building a lively little town where players use hand-tracking to engage with the game’s miniature scale citizens.
Wall Town Wonders isn’t just a game, it’s Cyborn’s invitation to step into a vibrant world of creativity and play set inside the walls of your own home. This is a game that allows players to become part of its whimsical landscape, providing inventive quests and mini-games that keep the spirit of exploration alive while peeking into the tiny lives in this miniature metropolis.
The miniatures in Wall Town Wonders are exquisitely detailed, presenting players with vibrant little citizens to observe and detailed diorama-sized structures that turn each play session into a visual delight. Cyborn’s use of the player’s room space elevates the gameplay, making their physical rooms a part of the game’s narrative.
One memorable moment had a tiny passenger hopping into my hand as I transported them to a new location. I found myself guiding them through the familiar terrain of my living room as they pointed the way to the next destination; each step feeling like I was guiding this tiny person on a new adventure further into this miniature-scale world.
In the options menu the game offers customizations for both the lux and angle of the lighting. This is a useful feature we’ve not seen implemented like this before, and one that helped enhance the blending of the virtual and real objects presented in the game. This addition is one we hope to see in more mixed reality titles going forward.
While the game looks great and is very charming, the pacing is a bit on the slow side and might not appeal to everyone. Dialogue is presented as text boxes floating over the characters’ heads. This is a design choice that misses the chance to breathe extra life into the game with voiced characters. I found myself wishing for the miniature humans to speak up for themselves.
Additionally, Wall Town Wonders suffers from a few challenges that are, unfortunately, beyond Cyborn’s control. Meta’s mixed reality tools are still in need of improvements, with multiple games challenged by virtual objects not anchoring consistently to the physical world. It’s not uncommon to see items shift or appear slightly out of place from one session to the next in many of the mixed reality games we’ve been testing recently, and this issue appears in Wall Town Wonders as well.
Overall, our time spent in Wall Town Wonders was enjoyable even if the pacing was a bit slow and we’re excited to see what direction Cyborn will take for their next title, but until then… we have a lot more exploring and building to do in this one.
Wall Town Wonders is available today for the Meta Quest 3 family.
This article was originally published on uploadvr