the monsters come out of your wallpaper

Mixed reality gets sold with big words. Then you see a virtual object that roughly sits on the table.

Sozo – Tower Defense does something more concrete. It reads your room scan and builds the level out of it. How exactly, is below, without the showmanship.

the crack in the wall

The enemies start from what’s called a Ground Rift. A jagged crack in a real wall that reaches down to the floor. With a glowing edge, cracks in the plaster and a cave behind it, plus a bit of rubble in the style of the realm in question.

Where it lands follows rules:

• The wall has to be at least a metre long.
• There has to be clear floor in front of it.
• Doors, windows and pictures on the wall are avoided.
• Walls within five metres of you are preferred.

If nothing fits, the game loosens these rules step by step. So it doesn’t just give up because your room is full of shelving. It takes the best it can find.

From level 8 of a realm, a second rift appears, with its own path. Either on a different wall or at least a metre and a half further along the same one. Ground enemies then alternate between the two.

the hole for the flyers

From level 3 there’s something else. A round hole that seems to go deep into the wall, with rings rushing inwards. It sits on the same wall as the first rift, about 1.5 metres above the floor and below the ceiling.

The flyers come out of this hole. And they don’t go for the crystal, they go for your towers. But that’s a different topic.

where the crystal stands

The Core Crystal is what you defend. It stands on the floor, roughly 88 per cent of the way from the rift towards you. At least a metre from any rift, with a bit of clear space around it.

In practice: the crystal usually ends up closer to you than to the wall. The enemies run towards you.

the path around your furniture

The floor is internally split into an invisible hexagonal grid, with cells of about ten centimetres. The path runs from cell centre to cell centre and is then “inflated” into switchbacks and hairpin bends, around your furniture.

So the sofa isn’t ignored. It becomes part of the level.

A few more rules:

• Length. For the first three levels the path is at most five metres long. By global level 30 the limit grows to ten metres.
• Complexity. Within a realm the paths get tighter: levels 1 to 5 simple, 6 to 11 with more bends, 12 to 17 narrow lanes, 18 to 20 the most winding.
• Same layout. The setup is calculated from your room ID and the level number. Same room and same level give the same layout every time, wherever you happen to be standing.

The last point is more useful than it sounds. If a level goes wrong the first time, you can go into the second attempt with a plan.

the build tiles

You can only build on tiles the game shows you. Floor only, never on tables or furniture. Most sit right by the path: at chokepoints, in bends, between two lanes.

Lots of them are blocked at the start, by bushes, trees, rocks or rift crystals. Tap them, the towers in range shoot the obstacle apart, the tile frees up and you get gold.

furniture hides monsters

One more detail: on the headset, real furniture can hide game objects. An enemy running past behind the armchair briefly disappears behind it. There’s no setting for this. In VR mode it’s off.

the catch

All of this stands or falls with your room scan. An inaccurate scan means a strange level. You can rescan via the room selection at the start, which opens Meta’s Space Setup for it.

Then the usual points: Sozo is built for Quest 3 and 3S. You play standing up. Price and release date aren’t known as of today. And if you’d rather not see your room as a playing field, VR mode is an alternative, though you lose exactly the effect this is all about.

who it’s for

For people who’ve written mixed reality off as a gimmick and want to see what it looks like when a game really uses the room. And for anyone who likes knowing why something works the way it does.

the wall stays intact. so does the sofa. only the path runs around it.