Summary
When I was growing up in the ‘90s, the idea of teeny tiny people living in the world around us was a popular thought. We spent evenings watching the BBC’s adaptation of The Borrowers, Roald Dahl’s The Minpins was a common sight in school libraries and bookstores, and even Hollywood was getting involved with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and the 1997 adaptation of The Borrowers.
Perhaps this early fascination with a miniature civilisation contributed to my love of city building and god sim games. I haven’t thought of The Borrowers for years, yet it was the first thing that sprung to mind when playingWall Town Wondersand discovering the little digital people living in my walls.
This mixed-reality VR game turns any room in your house into a fledgling metropolis as you help these little people to build a thriving settlement. You start with a single doorway in a wall, and from there, you expand out, adding a mine, a town hall, a restaurant, a farm, work areas, a harbour, and lots more, all while newcomers flock to your growing town via hot air balloon and plane. My room now has a sprawling population across multiple walls, as well as the lake on the floor, and I still have new upgrades to unlock and plenty of space to grow my town further.
I was quickly captivated by the world living in my wall. Everything about Wall Town Wonders is so highly detailed that I found myself stopping to peer into buildings and look at the little furnishings and items, or marvel at the quirky little characters speaking to me. It would have been nice to see a greater range of NPCs interacting with each other and moving around to different places, but I was impressed by how natural their movement is. These don’t seem like stiff video game characters, they’re emotive. They slump their shoulders, each one holds themselves differently, they walk with purpose, and overall it makes it feel just that little bit more real.
Like most sim games, it’s a bit of a slow start, but the more you expand, the more mechanics you have to juggle and play around with. Different buildings will have different roles. Some you’ll have to collect resources from periodically, others open up specific minigames for you to enjoy, 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 purchase new cosmetics for buildings, characters, and vehicles.
I underestimated the gameplay at first, thinking I just had to find the perfect wall to build a town upon, but Wall Town Wonders is not just about being in front of a wall. It’ll have you exploring all over your room and using the space to its fullest. You scan your room during the initial setup (separate from your usual Meta boundary settings) and while there will come a point where it tells you it’s scanned enough, I recommend scanning everythingfullyas you will be using the space fully. Scan every last centimeter.
For the minigames, you’ll be hunting down mushrooms or flowers, or guiding lizard-riding characters to find berries and resources all over your room. At times you’ll be down on the floor catching fish, at other times you’ll be firing arrows at bugs climbing over the walls, or even chasing butterflies, or slapping bloated floating people in the air and trying to dunk them in a giant basketball net. No, really.
There was only one thing that was frustrating about Wall Town Wonders, and that was the lack of guidance for the minigames. Once you know what you’re doing, you’re fine, but you can get stumped on a minigame for a hot minute initially as you cycle through every button to work 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 picking mushrooms, you’re instructed to find spores for the farm, but I looked all over the room and found nothing. It turns out you need to press the trigger to spray a green mist to get the mushrooms to appear on the floor, but even after discovering this, I was lost as to how to collect them. It took me some time to realise there are specific larger mushrooms hidden amongst the crop that you are prompted to collect. Some extra signposting for the first time you take on a minigame would solve this issue.
Developer Cyborn has already taken feedback on board from the review period and has added more hints for the initial finding mushrooms quest.
I ended up moving rooms to somewhere better suited for me to roam all over without bothering my family watching TV, but thankfully you don’t have to start from scratch. Upon moving to a new room, the game will prompt you to place your buildings again, so it’s easy to relocate to a new gaming space at any time. Additionally, you can move any of the buildings too, so if you realise you need to interact with one more than anticipated after popping it up high on your wall, you can simply move it somewhere more accessible.
Some minigames are more fun than others, and some are more difficult, but despite snagging on a few, the range of gameplay available from them was far more than I expected. I really did think I’d just be building a town on a wall, but I was happily surprised to find I was flying a plane (which I may have crashed a few times), painting butterflies, and steering boats around the harbour, to name just a few.
The gameplay loop requires you to farm resources to grow your town. While you can play more idly and simply check back in every day to gather what your workshops have naturally produced, 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 favour the cargo ship minigame.
Your mine replenishes once a day, but you can choose to spend a chunk of food to use your lizard to hunt down a fresh mine. It’s all about balancing your resources and working out which you want to save up or invest in, and picking the minigames you enjoy the most to earn those 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 you add as part of your scan does block your view of things. If the lizard is behind a book shelf, you can’t see it through the furniture. Again, it adds to that whole feeling of a 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 it has quickly become one of my favourite VR games. It’s easy to slip into for a few minutes to check on your town, or you can play for hours as you delve through your favourite minigames to grow your little civilisation more quickly. The detailed world you’ll find living in your walls is utterly charming and you certainly won’t forget it in a hurry.
