The origin story behind the VR game Puzzling Places is a fun one. Realities.io, the game’s creators, experienced a bug that jumbled the various parts of a 3D photogrammetry scan like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Looking at the results, one team member joked it could be a game.
That epiphany was just the start of a larger puzzle for the team. Even by the standards of modern game development, Puzzling Places charted an unusual path to its finished release on Quest on Sept. 2 (with a PlayStation VR version still to come). On top of being one of the first games to go from being a harder-to-find App Lab title to a hit on the proper Quest Store, Puzzling Places was not made by a typical game studio.