While the casual pacing and lack of strategic depth may not appeal to everyone, those who approach Wall Town Wonders with the right expectations will find a delightful, relaxing experience that brings a touch of magic to their daily routine
There's something magical about watching a tiny civilization emerge from your walls. Wall Town Wonders for Meta Quest 3 & 3S taps into that childlike wonder of imagining miniature worlds existing alongside ours, bringing it to life through mixed reality in a way that feels genuinely special.
The premise is simple yet captivating: using your Quest's mixed reality capabilities, you'll build and manage a growing settlement that exists within your very walls. Starting with a single humble doorway, you'll expand your town across your room's surfaces, watching as tiny citizens go about their daily routines, buildings sprout from your walls, and an entire ecosystem of activities unfolds in your living space.
How the game actually works though and how the town gets built on your walls, I don't think anyone has really talked about it. When I started to play the game, I was a little bit confused cause I thought it would just map the wall in front of me and I would be able to start my game. But that's not what happened in my case. I put the headset on, set up the Quest boundary thing for the room I wanted to play in and started the game. Then a window saying "Please move to a valid room to continue" popped up and no matter what I did, I couldn't get past that. I restarted my Quest and did the boundary thing again and the same thing happened. I was like "what the heck is going on here?". Turned around, walked around the room and still nothing.
Then just out of curiosity, I went to the room I actually play most of VR games and the game just started. Now, I don't really know if the game actually mapped the entire room when I launched Wall Town Wonders in this room or if it worked because I had already mapped the room when I initially setup my Quest 3 (which I don't even remember doing). This is not explained in the game, and I think it should be. Once I was in the game, I went to the Settings and there's indeed an option where you can see the actual room mapping, but you can't really modify it in any way, more on that later.
Anyway, I was in the game and as soon as the first building popped up, I was in complete awe. The visual implementation is nothing short of remarkable. Buildings appear to be genuinely embedded in your walls, with impressive depth that creates a convincing illusion of these structures extending into your home's architecture. The attention to detail is apparent in every aspect, from the intricate building designs to the charming animations of your tiny citizens.
What makes the experience special is how alive your little town feels. Citizens don't simply stand in place - they walk around, enter buildings, work at their assigned tasks, and interact with each other. Hot air balloons and planes occasionally arrive with new residents, and you can use your hand-mounted tools to help guide them to safe landings.
The game takes a distinctly casual approach to city building. There's no pressure, no fail states, and no urgent crises to manage. Instead, Wall Town Wonders encourages you to grow your settlement at your own pace, focusing on the joy of discovery and expansion rather than strategic challenges.
Resource management forms the core gameplay loop. Your various buildings produce different resources over time - shops generate coins, crafting stations create wood or metal, and farms yield crops. These resources are then used to construct new buildings or upgrade existing ones, gradually expanding your town's capabilities and population.
Apart from just passively waiting for these resources to come in, you can also actively participate in collecting them through cleverly designed interactions and minigames that make full use of your physical space. You can go mining for wood, stone and metal, you can go fishing for food, you can guide a tiny plane through your room to deliver supplies, you can fly a blimp to move resources to the correct location and so many other ones. These activities range from simple to surprisingly engaging, though their entertainment value varies. Some become repetitive over time, while others remain consistently fun thanks to their novel use of mixed reality. Personally, I never got bored of catching and flinging manure to fertilize my crops.
It's important to note that Wall Town Wonders moves at a deliberately slow pace. Resources accumulate gradually, and progress requires patience. While you can accelerate growth by actively participating in minigames to gather additional resources, the game is fundamentally designed for short, regular play sessions rather than marathon gaming.
This relaxed approach has both benefits and drawbacks. On the positive side, it creates a zen-like experience where you can drop in for a few minutes, check on your town, participate in some activities, and leave feeling satisfied. On the downside, this means that if you are seeking a more immediate gratification or strategic depth, you might find the pacing frustrating.
The lack of consequences for resource shortages means there's no real strategy required in town management. I wish there was more complexity in this aspect. Of course, I wouldn't want my citizens to starve or die, but I would love to see some more complex interactions and maybe even some disasters or events that could impact the town's growth. Even when something like that happens, for example some bugs will try to eat your crops and you need to shoot them with cannons mounted on your hands, the game not only tells you that this is happening, but in fact you need to press a button to actually even start this mini-game.
The mixed reality implementation is impressive throughout. The game makes a really good use of Quest's room scanning to ensure buildings and activities work naturally with your space. Having said that, it is still not perfect as often furniture and obstacles are not properly accounted for and you end up with blimps flying through your wardrobe or mushrooms growing under your bed making it near impossible to gather them.
The visuals are crisp and detailed, with buildings and characters that look exceptional up close while still looking good from a distance even though the game swaps them out for with lower LODs. The only issue, and it is kinda a major one, I have with the presentation is the text inside the text boxes isn't really fixed and it flickers a lot as you move around the room. I don't know if this has been fixed or improved, as I haven't played the game recently, but if it hasn't, I really hope the devs address it in some way. The sound design, while somewhat minimal, effectively supports the experience with appropriate effects for various activities and ambient town sounds.
Having said all that, Wall Town Wonders represents one of the most creative and well-executed uses of mixed reality gaming to date. While it may not satisfy you if you are seeking deep strategy or intense gameplay, it succeeds brilliantly at its core goal: creating a charming, engaging experience that transforms your living space into a whimsical miniature world.
The joy of watching tiny citizens go about their lives in your walls, participating in creative mixed reality activities, and gradually growing your pocket-sized kingdom makes this a unique and memorable experience. It's the kind of game that demonstrates the potential of mixed reality to create new forms of entertainment that simply weren't possible before. I do recommend this game. Thanks for reading!
The game was previewed on a Quest 3 via a promo copy provided by the publisher. Wall Town Wonders is available on Meta Quest.
