In his weekly column, Android Central Senior Content Producer Nick Sutrich delves into all things VR, from new hardware to new games, upcoming technologies, and so much more.
As a self-proclaimed
It’s better to head out to the living room and play some games on my Steam Deck or Meta Quest 3, but I don’t like to play active games right away. Instead, I’d rather have a cup of tea and relax on the couch, which means the games I’m playing are all pretty chill. While people often think of VR games as being more active—many of the best Meta Quest games are, after all—plenty of games are designed to be played seated or even at a table.
Morning VR Rituals
I strap on my Bobo M3 Pro headstrap in the morning and remove the facial interface for the Quest 3 entirely. That leaves things open so it’s easier to drink my tea and play without worrying about sloshing it on my headset. Some of the other best Meta Quest 3 accessories might also help, but I think it’s best to keep things simple for the morning.
Wordomi has been my new favorite morning game recently, combining everyone’s favorite word game, Wordle, with a little bit of Scrabble or crossword-type puzzles thrown in. Each level begins by giving you a handful of letters and a word to solve. Easier levels are usually just three letters to solve a three-letter word—so you can take some time to wake up without immediately feeling super challenged—while the harder levels will present you with more complex words and leftover letters, making you think a bit more.
As you progress, the game starts to take on a Scrabble flavor with words building off each other in different directions. Wordomi takes great advantage of mixed reality and the spatial nature of VR by letting you grab and move around the
Shape Puzzles for a Calm Start
But if you’re not a big fan of word games, I’ve got two shape puzzles that you might enjoy more. First up is Cubism, which made waves way back in March 2021 when it became one of the first hand tracking games on Quest. Cubism is a clever, super casual play-at-your-own-pace puzzler that tasks you with building large shapes out of smaller ones. Each level gives you the outline of the large final shape, plus pieces that closely resemble Tetrominoes from the classic game Tetris. Unlike Tetris, however, you won’t be sweating bullets to get shapes in by a certain time.
Not only is Cubism the perfect pace for an early morning game, but it also gives you the freedom of playing it on a table like Wordomi. Cubism actually pioneered this design, and it feels just as magical now as it did when it launched alongside the Meta Quest 3 a year ago.
And if you enjoy even more complex puzzle shapes, Puzzling Places takes the concept of those expensive 3D puzzles and brings them into VR, complete with realistic rendering of 3D scanned buildings. Puzzling Places lets you choose not only different real-life places and buildings to piece back together but also gives you the option of changing the difficulty for each level to suit your tastes.
The game received a fantastic hand tracking and multiplayer update at the end of 2023, making it perfect for the category of casual morning games. If you’re fortunate enough to have multiple Meta Quest 3 headsets (or a Meta Quest Pro) around the house, you can even join up with housemates and solve puzzles together!
