Puzzling Places makes me want to dust off my PlayStation VR

A jigsaw puzzle game about building 3D models

Don’t pack up your PlayStation VR for good just yet – there are a handful of new games coming to the platform in 2021, and one of them, Puzzling Places, is a 3D jigsaw puzzle game. Some might scoff, but I genuinely love that idea, I can already picture myself getting cozy with the PS4 version this winter.

Instead of grabbing flat puzzle pieces, inspecting them up close, and finding their rightful home on a board, in Puzzling Places, you get to construct “3D scans of interesting places from around the globe.”

If I were allowed to upload audio recordings in my articles, you’d hear a distinct gulp. Assembling detailed photogrammetry models, one chunk at a time – in VR – sounds tricky. But watching the gameplay footage in the trailer and clips on the PlayStation Blog, it seems surprisingly doable.

“Each puzzle will also have multiple difficulty variants, so you have the choice if you just want to jump in for a quick 50-piece session or want to dive deep into the puzzle flow, challenging yourself with hundreds of pieces that could take a few days to finish,” said Realities.io co-founder Daniel Sproll.

Better yet, you can try the beta now if you have an Oculus Quest or Quest 2. Imagine if this had co-op!