What you need to know
- Townsmen VR is now available on the Meta Quest 3 for $29.99.
- It's a built-for-VR version of the classic medieval-themed city building game featuring "god game" elements and fully-interactive environments.
- The game was previously available on PC VR and PSVR 2 but is not compatible with the Oculus Quest or Meta Quest 2.
Townsmen VR has the honor of being the first Meta Quest game exclusively available for the Meta Quest 3 headset and is available now on the Meta Quest store for $29.99. As you might guess, the game isn't compatible with the original Oculus Quest or the Meta Quest 2.
Townsmen VR brings medieval city building to the Meta Quest for the first time, putting players in the perspective of an all-powerful god and tasking them with creating beautiful island villages.
As you might expect from the god game genre on PC, Townsmen VR players can pick up any unit they'd like — including villagers, animals, resources, and more — helping to assist in the construction of buildings or completion of jobs.
In the above screenshots, I compare the PSVR 2 and Meta Quest 3 versions of the game. You'll note that both feature a similar amount of detail, but the PSVR 2 version features self-shadowing, better shaders, and higher-resolution textures.
While the PSVR 2 version sports better haptics, developer Handy Games was able to fix some of the wonky interaction issues that made that version of the game less pleasant to play. From my play experience, the best improvement is that your hand no longer knocks or moves everything you touch, making it far easier to interact with your townsfolk and resources in the game.
No matter which version you get, you'll embark on a fully-narrated single player experience that provides 13 different islands to build on, including a sandbox experience that lets players build to their heart's content.
Townsmen VR's appearance as an exclusive Meta Quest 3 title is a bit of a surprise because it happened so soon after the Quest 3's launch. Back in September, Meta told us that developers could decide if they wanted a game to be Quest 3 exclusive. At the time, we figured this wouldn't happen for a while since there are over 20 million Quest 2's in the wild and the Quest 2 continues to sell better than the Quest 3 because of the low price.
The first Meta Quest 2-exclusive game — that's Resident Evil 4 VR — didn't debut until nine months after the headset came out. Townsmen VR is available less than three months after the Meta Quest 3 launched, for comparison.
Townsmen VR developer Handy Games said, "we cannot offer TownsmenVR in the quality we want for the Quest 2 so yes we are Quest 3 exclusive for now." That could mean we may see a Quest 2 version sometime in the future but it's certainly not guaranteed.
