Wall Town Wonders Review – Absolutely wonderful

Key points

• Wall Town Wonders turns your room into a miniature metropolis where you manage resources and expand your settlement.
• The game requires exploration of the entire room, with challenging minigames to collect resources such as mushrooms and berries.
• Despite some confusing instructions in the minigames, the game's attention to detail and mixed reality make it a fascinating and creative VR experience.

When I was growing up in the 1990s, the idea that tiny humans lived in the world around us was a popular thought. We spent our evenings watching the BBC adaptation of The Borrowers, Roald Dahl's The Minpins was a common sight in school libraries and bookstores, and even Hollywood was involved with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and the 1997 adaptation of The Borrowers.

Perhaps this early fascination with a miniature civilization contributed to my love of city building and god simulation games. I haven't thought about The Borrowers in years, yet it was the first thing that came to mind as I played Wall Town Wonders and discovered the little digital people who live within my walls.

This mixed reality VR game turns any room in your house into a budding metropolis as you help these little people build a thriving settlement. You start with a single door in a wall and expand from there, adding a mine, a town hall, a restaurant, a farm, workspaces, a port, and more, all as newcomers flock to your city growing via hot air balloon and airplane. My room now has a sprawling population on multiple walls, as well as the lake on the floor, and I still have new upgrades to unlock and plenty of room to grow my city further.

I was immediately fascinated by the world that lives on my wall. Everything in Wall Town Wonders is so detailed that I found myself stopping to peer into the buildings and look at the little furnishings and objects, or marvel at the quirky little characters that talk to me. It would have been nice to see a wider range of NPCs interact with each other and move to different locations, but I was struck by how natural their movement feels. These don't look like stiff video game characters, they're emotional. They lower their shoulders, everyone carries themselves differently, they walk with purpose, and overall, it all makes it seem a little more real.

Like most simulation games, the start is a little slow, but the more you expand, the more mechanics you'll have to juggle and play. Different buildings will have different roles. With some you will have to collect resources periodically, others open up specific minigames for your enjoyment and these in turn can be a way to unlock resources and money to upgrade or create new buildings, or you can earn Wonder stars to buy new ones. cosmetics for buildings, characters and vehicles.

I initially underestimated the gameplay, thinking I just had to find the perfect wall to build a city on, but Wall Town Wonders isn't just about being in front of a wall. It will make you explore the whole room and make the most of the space. Scan your room during initial setup (separate from the usual Meta limits settings) and even if there comes a point where it tells you it's scanned enough, I recommend scanning everything completely as you will fully utilize the space. Scan every last centimeter.

For minigames, you'll hunt mushrooms or flowers or guide lizard-riding characters to search for berries and resources throughout the room. Sometimes you'll be on the floor catching fish, other times you'll shoot arrows at bugs climbing the walls, or even chase butterflies, or smack bloated people floating in the air and try to submerge them in a giant basketball net. No, really.

There was only one frustrating thing about Wall Town Wonders, and that was the lack of directions for the minigames. Once you know what you're doing, you're good to go, but you might be stumped over a minigame for a hot minute initially as you scroll through each button to figure out what does what and even the description in the game menu of each. one doesn't fully explain what you need to do.

For example, when you collect mushrooms, you are asked to find spores for the farm, but I looked all over the room and found nothing. It turns out that you need to pull the trigger to spray a green mist to make mushrooms appear on the floor, but even after I figured that out, I didn't know how to collect them. It took me a while to realize that there are specific larger mushrooms hidden in the crop you're asked to collect. Some additional guidance for the first time you play a minigame would solve this problem.

Developer Cyborn has already taken feedback from the review period into consideration and added additional suggestions for the initial mushroom hunting mission.

I eventually moved rooms to a place more suitable for me to wander around without disturbing my family watching TV, but luckily you don't have to start from scratch. When you move to a new room, the game will ask you to place your buildings again, so it will be easy to move to a new game space at any time. Additionally, you can also move any building, so if you find you need to interact with one more than expected after placing it high on the wall, you can simply move it to a more accessible place.

Some minigames are more fun than others and some are more difficult, but despite some of them, the range of gameplay available was much wider than I expected. I really thought I would just build a city on a wall, but I was happily surprised to find that I was flying a plane (which I may have crashed a few times), painting butterflies, and driving boats around the harbor, to name just a few.

The gameplay loop requires you to farm resources to grow your city. While you can play more lazily and simply check each day to collect what your labs have produced naturally, you can also be more hands-on by making the most of the minigames and tailoring your choices to what you need. If you need more food, go fishing. If you need more building materials, I tend to prefer the cargo ship minigame.

Your mine fills once a day, but you can choose to spend a piece of food to use your lizard to hunt down a fresh mine. It's about balancing your resources and figuring out which ones you want to save or invest in, and choosing the minigames you like best to earn much-needed materials.

The minigames are the best showcase for Wall Town Wonders' creative and imaginative use of mixed reality. I was particularly impressed to find that furniture added during the scan blocks your view of things. If the lizard is behind a shelf, you can't see it through the furniture. Again, it adds to that whole feeling of willing suspension of disbelief and creating that sense of a living digital world within your living physical world.

Wall Town Wonders is one of the most creative uses of mixed reality I've ever seen and has quickly become one of my favorite VR games. It's easy to spend a few minutes checking out your city, or you can play for hours as you explore your favorite minigames to grow your little civilization more quickly. The detailed world you will find living within your walls is absolutely fascinating and one you certainly won't forget in a hurry.