I have three shapes in front of me: a small blue pyramid, a slightly larger S-shaped brown piece, and an even larger yellow cheese-wedge-like item. A floating metallic sphere called the “Test Supervisor Drone” snarkily states, “This puzzle is extremely simple. It is only intended to make sure that you understand what puzzles are.” I have to stack these odd shapes in a way that reaches a height of 51 cm. And so the permutations of configurations of these objects start running through my head.

The game is called Tumble VR, from Supermassive Games, the developers best known for their horror title Until Dawn and its VR cousin, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. It is focused on the physics of objects, stacking them ever higher. But the game does not make things that simple.

Every object, besides having a shape and size, which influences how you grab and place them on the platform, is also made of a specific material that has a corresponding weight and friction to its surface. Stone is heavy and rough. Rubber is light and rough. Wood has a medium weight, but a smooth surface. And then there is glass, foam, plastic, etc.

The goal of stacking is to go as high as possible. But then you get other levels that change the goal, such as the aforementioned puzzle level where you have to get to a certain height with only 3 objects. Then there are destruction levels where you blow a stack, by placing mines and then setting them off, trying to send the blocks flying as far as possible. There are limbo levels with moving bars of different orientations and shapes where the goal is getting a certain of number of objects on the platform without them being knocked off from the limbo rod.

Read the full article at Upload VR.