During our lifetime, many of us have put together a puzzle. Trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle in the right spot to reveal the picture. But as puzzles started to develop into more pieces of the puzzle, so did the look and over feel of them as we started to get into 3D Jigsaw puzzles. And with these new puzzles gave us the ability to hold these puzzles in our hands and get a closer look at them in new and different ways. So does developer realites.io allow us to take the love of puzzles and elevate it to a new level? Let’s find out with Puzzling Places for PlayStation VR.
Puzzling Places is a modern take on an age-old pastime of putting together puzzles while allowing you to enter a meditative flow, the ease of the controls, and the wholesome 3D jigsaw puzzling to VR. So before we begin, there are just a few things that you will want to make sure of. First, find your favorite spot to sit. Second, make sure your controllers are fully charged. And finally, just set some time aside, relax, and enjoy.
In Puzzling Places, the idea is as simple as it is familiar. Put the different pieces of the puzzle together and complete the object. It really is that easy. It’s just you and with a controller in each hand, trying to figure out where the pieces need to go. But it’s also not as easy as it sounds depending on the number of pieces you select to be part of the puzzle. So it’s really up to you how long you might want to spend on each puzzle. So you could jump right into solving each puzzle as you would like or I suggest, go with the tutorial so you can get familiar with each of the different options of the toolset you can select from. Options such as grouping different pieces together to even changing the world around you.
You are given a wall of puzzles to select from which you can even filter by tags such as nature to industrial to even sorting by the scale from choices such as object to building. On the right, each of the puzzles you go over will you give you a description including the tag and scaler, but also the location of where it is in the world. But it’s when you select your puzzle and start putting the pieces together that you start to appreciate what the developer has done and then, at least for me, that I started to realize the time that I spent playing.
But even if you do as I did and just started trying to think about where the pieces needed to go and think you might need a little help, below you are different pictures from different angles of the final object from both the inside and out to give you an indication of where everything needs to go. And what I like is how you can pick up each of these pictures, place it where you would like, and then try and work on just that different section of the puzzle. It really helps if are the type that likes to have everything sort of organized. The puzzle pieces do not have to say where they are once you are first introduced to them. You can bring them closer to you and have them all in one spot or move them back. It really is up to you. And things become so satisfactory when you can make that final piece fit into the puzzle.
One of the things that you will notice as the puzzle you are working on gets closer to completion is that you can pick up the puzzle at any time and look at it from any direction just shows how impressive the different puzzles are. But what also is impressive is as you get closer to completing these puzzles you start to hear the sounds of the soundscape come to life that really helps bring uniqueness to each puzzle.
Oh, yeah, I did mention the number of pieces that could be selected for each puzzle allowing for the time you spend with each one. Before you start each puzzle, on the right-hand side, you have your selection from 25, 50, 100, 200, or 400 pieces. And as you suspect, going from 25-400 pieces can be both overwhelming and fun to be had at the same time, but also a bigger puzzle.
Let’s talk about the graphics and sound. Each of the hyper-realistic puzzles brings an incredible amount of detail that makes it very easy to make out. From trying to find out the pieces of the rooftops in the puzzle, Geghard Monastery to items on the desk in the puzzle Ram, everything was so pleasant on the eyes that it was just an enjoyable experience. But if the graphics help to make up the experience, then the sound also helps make up the experience. From the simple and relaxing sounds from when the game first starts to even the tutorial to even hearing the individual puzzles come to life as you complete piece after piece is also very enjoyable.
There are a few things that I would love to see added. For one, would be more puzzles. Granted a new puzzle, Holiday Special 2021 located in Vienna, Austria, the amount of 3D jigsaw puzzles that can be added would be unlimited. Second, I would love to see a user-based model where anyone could upload a picture, and after validation, could then be made into a 3D puzzle. That might be a lot of work, but the user base would be there. But if that is too much work, then somehow implementing Google Earth so you can search and then somehow search for a landscape, and then that would make the 3D puzzle would be an awesome option. And last, maybe having a scale where after completing the puzzle, you could walk through in VR to just enjoy the view of the puzzle that much more.
Puzzling Places takes the pastime of puzzling and elevates it to a new level all thanks to Virtual Reality. It shows that even though our lives are full of pieces, each day if we keep trying and reaching for our dreams, we are just one piece of the puzzle to having everything complete.
Puzzling Places is out now for the Oculus Quest/Quest 2 on the Oculus Store and PlayStation VR. A review code was provided.
To learn more about the game, please visit the site, like them on Facebook, like them on Twitter, and subscribe to their YouTube channel. To learn more about realaties.io, please visit their site, like them on Facebook, like them on Twitter, and subscribe to their YouTube channel.
Also, check out the Puzzling Places interview.
In case you missed the trailer, please enjoy. Until next time, I have a few more puzzles to solve.