System: Valve Index, HTC Vive & Oculus Rift
Price at Time Of Review: £1.99
Comfort Rating: Yellow (Mild Movement)
Genre: Puzzle
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers, Keyboard & Mouse
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
Description: ThrounnelVR is a tetris-like puzzler with a first-person view. The goal of ThrounnelVR is to fit the shape of blocks into a distant hole. You control the movement of the blocks by your HMD and the rotation by game controller or keyboard.
Review: ThrounnelVR is an odd combination of game genres. It’s a puzzle game of sorts, mixed with action. The idea sounds pretty simple on paper. You have a shape in front of you made up from a number of cubes. That shape must then fit through a hole in the wall that approaches you are a rapid rate of knots. Using head movement you must line up the shape with the hole so it goes through it. But before you can even think about doing that, you need to rotate the block shape so it matches the hole in the first place!
This is a fast-paced game that doesn’t really hold your hand and is often frustratingly hard even at early levels. But it is easy to get used to and after just a few minutes gameplay I was getting higher and higher scores. You don’t get fancy 360° environments to look at in this game because to put it simply you just don’t have the time to look at them. But you do get the odd shooting star zoom by the space-themed view which is nice.
This “Hole in the Wall” puzzler is nothing amazing to look at, but it has pizazz it where it counts and that is in its gameplay. While it could have done with an easier learning curve (and maybe a tutorial) I found myself soon getting used to it. This is a fun little game that would be perfect to passed between friends and do score challenges. Or maybe just played on your own to give your brain a little workout.
