Puzzling Places - Changelog

The big update - v1.31

New Features (Quest-only)

• Hand tracking

• 2-player online multiplayer

• Local mixed reality multiplayer

• Eye-tracking selectiong (Quest Pro)

• Quality vs FPS mode (Quest 3)

Tweaks & Improvements:

• For first time players, after completing three 25-piece puzzles, the default piece count when selecting a new puzzle will be 50 pieces.

oCtober 2022 Release - v1.14.1

Tweaks & Improvements:

• Improved “puzzle status” filters: added a new “completed all” selection to view puzzles which all piece counts are completed.

The Blue TEmple Update - v1.12

New Features

• New FREE puzzle - the Blue Temple!

Tweaks & Improvements:

• Improved puzzles menu sorting: new puzzles will always be listed on the top.

Bug fixes

• updated and cleaned-up puzzle tags.

• fixed a few Store UI issues,

August 2022 Release - v1.11.1

Tweaks & Improvements:

• fixed incorrect Premium Audio tag for the Monthly Pack #4.

July 2022 Release - v1.10

Tweaks & Improvements:

• UI improvements: new DLC's show up at the top of the list in the in-game Store.

• Under the hood changes for better multi-platform support.

Passthrough Update - v1.9

New Features

• Passthrough Mode (experimental)! Ever felt a bit isolated and disconnected from your surroundings while you played VR? Now, with the new experimental Passthrough feature, you’ll be able to see the room you’re in while playing Puzzling Places!

  • Bonus Feature: By using the “styler tool”, you can adjust the colors and contrast of the monochromatic Quest cameras - adding color into the Passthrough scene!

  • To activate the Passthrough mode in Puzzling Places, follow these simple steps:

    1. Launch Puzzling Places,

    2. select "Settings",

    3. scroll down to "Experimental" and check the “Passthrough mode” box.

June 2022 release - v1.8

New Features

• Puzzle Time-tracking! We’ve added a time tracking feature with with each puzzle! Each puzzle now has a "Time in Puzzle" in the details panel for every selected puzzle and piece count.

  • Note: for this feature to work, players need to opt-in for analytics to be collected. On Quest, this turned-on is selected by default but on PSVR, players need to manually Opt-in in the Settings menu.

Tweaks & Improvements:

• Pointing Ray Accessibility Settings: added settings to make the pointing ray thicker + ability to have it always turned on.

  • We’ve also improved the automatic fading of pointing ray.

• Adjusted the puzzle thumbnails to more accurately represent the colors of the puzzle.

May 2022 release - v1.7

New Features

• Achievements on Oculus - We’re finally bringing the Puzzling Places PlayStation Trophies to Oculus/Meta Quest! See the full list of Achievements here.

Tweaks & Improvements:

• Menu UI

  • When loading back into the Menu, the previous scroll position in the Library is remembered (so it’s easy to jump right back into an in-progress puzzle).

  • You can now scroll horizontally the Store Menu using the thumbstick or select-and-drag.

  • Adjusted the scrollbar color & size.

Bug fixes

• Squashed a few bugs in the puzzle filters.

• Fixed a few smaller Menu UI bugs.

Monthly Pack #1 - v1.6

New Features

• Store - Puzzle Feature icons

  • To accommodate the upcoming Monthly and Premium puzzle packs, we’ve added new icons in the Store to indicate the features for each puzzle including:

    • Maximum puzzle piece count

    • Standard Audio vs Premium Audio

• New Difficulty Modifier - Randomize Puzzle Piece Rotations Setting

  • If activated, the starting rotation of all puzzle pieces will be random instead of upright.

Tweaks & Improvements:

• New loading system resulting in much improved start-up time (Quest only - PSVR startup time was improved in v1.5).

• Oculus Menu loads much more quickly when pressing the Oculus Home button (Quest only).

• You can now click and drag in the menu to scroll instead of having to us the scroll bar or the thumbstick (Quest only, PSVR already has this feature).

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue with memory limits being reached by having too many puzzles installed (Quest 1 only).

Hotfix - v1.5.2

Bug fixes:

• For some Quest 1 players, having too many puzzles installed would crash the game on startup.

  • The game will now only load a safe number of puzzles (randomly selected) and display a warning. This is an intermediary solution to ensure the game is not crashing on start up, we are working on a proper fix which should come soon!

The Variety Pack Update - v1.5

New Features

• New setting: vertical locomotion

  • Move yourself up and down in the puzzling space using the locomotion buttons! It’s toggled off by default, so enable it from the Settings menu.

• New Trophies: Variety Pack: Vol. 2 DLC (PSVR Only)

• added in game Puzzle Pack Store (PSVR Only)

Tweaks & Improvements:

• new loading system resulting in much improved start-up time (PSVR only)

• updated loading screen (Oculus only)

Bug fixes

• fixed bug with a trophy not being unlocked correctly (PSVR only)

The Holidays Update (2021) - V1.4

New features

• A free holiday-themed puzzle named “Holiday Special 2021” puzzle to celebrate the winter holidays!

  • Puzzle includes a new custom holiday-themed environment

• A Tutorial for new players

  • A new tab has been added to the menu that showcases all the puzzling tools and features in Puzzling Places.

• New Difficulty Modifier: Puzzle Noir

  • Want to make puzzling even more challenging? Turn on the “Puzzle Noir” option in the Settings to turn the colors of the puzzles into Black & White!

• Low Battery Warning

  • We’ve added a custom “low battery warning” popup when your headset battery drops below 10% for those long puzzling sessions!

• Updated splash screen when launching Puzzling Places.

The localization Update - V1.3

New features

• Puzzling Places now supports 5 more languages natively!

  • Japanese

  • Spanish

  • Korean

  • German

  • French

• To switch languages, player can switch their Quest system language (from the Oculus mobile app) and re-launch Puzzling Places.

The Store Update - V1.2

New features

• Introduced the “Store” option in the menu to easily purchase and download new DLC puzzles!

Bug fixes

• On rare occasion, when continuing a puzzle, players would spawn outside of the central puzzling area.

Bug Hotfix - v1.1.5

Bug fixes:

• In rare occasions, the puzzle pieces would be stuck in a low resolution setting. Thanks for reporting the bug @LaFemmeLoca and @Hazelsworld!

The Repacker Update - v1.1

We just launched the first ever update for Puzzling Places - version 1.1! This update includes a new puzzling tool, improvements to existing features, as well as a few important bug fixes. 

New Features:

1. A Repacker Tool - a tool which consolidates and repacks the puzzle pieces in the Shelf which can be super helpful for playing puzzles with lots of puzzle pieces!

Tweaks & Improvements:

• Marker for scaled-down connected pieces in the Shelf - this helps you visually differentiate between individual puzzle pieces and connected pieces in the Shelf.

• New sound effects (SFX): 

  • Color Picker Tool

  • Home button

• New animation

  • Switching between Shelf pages

Bug fixes:

• Compatibility with Patreon Puzzles - the Shelf issue and the Reference Photo scale issues are now fixed! Instructions to transfer Patreon puzzles to the full game are on the Transfer Instructions page. 

• Out-of-reach puzzle pieces that appeared at the top right corner of the puzzling world. In this bug, you could see the puzzle pieces in the far distance (top right) but couldn't interact with them. 

• Hands turned opaque after accessing the Oculus menu in game and resuming the game.

• The chorus audio in the Geghard Monastery puzzle is now tied to puzzle progression rather than playing from the start.

• Invisible ray when holding a piece and attempting to aim to push a piece back to the Shelf. Now, the tip of the aiming ray is visible while holding a piece to assist you with pushing the piece back. 

• See-through Tool bug when pushing a connected piece back to the Shelf where the tool would detach but wouldn’t stop hiding the pieces.

• Quitting the game could be indefinitely delayed in the Menu by pressing the Exit button repeatedly before the game exits.

Puzzling Places V1.0 - Full Game launch

Puzzling Places comes out of Beta and is launching the full game on the Oculus Store for Quest and Quest 2!

New Features

• New Puzzling Environment

  • We’ve created a new puzzling environment that’s designed to be serene and relaxing to be within. It also now contains grass, rocks, and reeds that mark the edge of the puzzle piece shelf as well as concentric rings on the floor to help you center yourself. 

• More Puzzle Difficulty Variants

  • Every puzzle can now be played as 25, 50, 100, 200, & 400 pieces puzzles! 

• New Puzzle Piece Shapes

  • The new puzzle pieces are much more “puzzley”, meaning, they have those all-too-familiar puzzle piece tabs and indentations. More information about it can be found in our blog post. 

• New Puzzling Tools

  • See-Through Tool

    • This tool is a godsend for puzzles which contain interiors. Grab and place the See-Through tool sphere onto the puzzle, and all the pieces within the sphere will become see-through!

  • Color-Picker Tool

    • You now can customize all the colors in the puzzling environment! Pick from 6 pre-selected color schemes or make your own!

• New Puzzle Piece Shelf

  • The Shelf is what we call the grid of puzzle pieces. 

  • Tabs

    • When a puzzle contains more than 100 pieces, the pieces are displayed in tab pages that you can switch to either by flicking the thumbstick left or right or selecting the desired tab page on the bottom of the Shelf. 

• New Menu UI

  • We’ve completely redesigned the menu! Changes include

    • Downloading or uninstalling puzzles in-app! 

    • New grid layout for displaying puzzles and their thumbnails

    • New way of selecting puzzle piece variants 

      • No longer will you have multiple piece variants of a puzzle show up twice in the menu. Now, they all are stacked within a single puzzle with a submenu to select the puzzle piece variation.

    • New Settings menu

    • New Controls explanation screen

• New Settings

  • Audio Settings

    • You have sliders for Interaction Sounds, Ambient Sounds, Master, and an option to mute any musical content That way you have the choice to listen to your own music.

  • Environment Settings

    • You can change your environment to a more minimalistic environment (which removes the grass, rocks, and reeds) and you can change the color scheme with the Color-Picker tool. 

  • Locomotion Settings

    • Rotation Settings

  • “360 Puzzle Piece Shelf mode” (aka, swivel chair / roomscale mode)

    • With 360 mode enabled, the puzzle pieces spawn in a circular shape around you allowing you to rotate and search through all the puzzle pieces at once, without any pieces being hidden in Tabs! 

Tweaks and Improvements

• Puzzle Finale

  • We’ve made some changes to make the puzzle finale 

• Puzzle Piece sizes/scale

  • We’ve tuned each puzzle difficulty variant to be scaled to a size that’s comfortable to hold, comfortable to look at, and comfortable to puzzle with.

• Puzzle Shelf shape

  • We’ve made the shape of the Shelf (the grid of puzzle pieces) more oval to be more comfortable to puzzle at while facing forward. 

  • We’ve also adjusted the the height of the Shelf and distances between the pieces for more clarity and comfort

• Home button

  • We’ve added a Home UI Button at the top right of the Puzzle Shelf to go back to the Menu. 

Beta V4.1.1 - minor TWEAKS

Tweaks and Improvements

• Added “Go back to menu” button in the “Controls'“ tab

• Fixed an issue with the puzzle click sound not playing.

Beta V4.1.0 - One App to Rule them all! 

Groups, New Sound Effects, New Settings Menu, and New Freebie Puzzle, and More! 

This is our largest update yet!

New Features

• Groups (Adaptable, dynamic, grabbable Grids)

  • What is it? 

    • A tool for grouping multiple pieces together that allows you to move them together

  • How does it work? 

    • Pull a Group icon from the top of the Grid

    • Put pieces within the icon & let go to add them to the group

    • Pull pieces out of the group to separate them

    • Re-orient the 

    • Bonus: Push the Group back to the Grid for extra tidiness 

• Audio

  • All-New Sound FX

    • Puzzle pieces interaction sounds

    • Reference photos interaction sounds

    • Group interaction sounds

    • New Puzzle loading sound

      • Special puzzles have their own special loading sound

    • Menu UI

  • New Regional Audio SFX

    • Tatev Monastery - 200 pieces

    • Ice Cream Stairs - 20 pieces

  • New Menu world ambient audio

  • Ambient soundscapes follow more closely puzzle progression

  • Improvements

    • All SFX are 3D, attached to objects, and spatially correct

    • Sounds now have in-game reverb

• New Puzzle Finale Event

  • When grabbing the final puzzle piece, there’s an audio-visual tingling effect (environment dimming, lots of little sound effects) to build anticipation for finishing the puzzle

  • When the puzzle is finished, the halo ring ascends from beneath the player and brightens the environment back to its original setting. 

• Settings Menu

  • New

    • Toggle Reference Photos on/off

    • Toggle Locomotion sliding from B/Y face buttons to the Grip buttons

    • Toggle puzzle piece automatic orientation in groups on/off

Tweaks and Improvements

• Updated Puzzles

  • Tatev Monastery #00 - 200 Pieces

    • More regional audio locations throughout the puzzle!

    • Puzzle pieces have been re-cut into smooth cuts 

      • This is something we did for this puzzle to match the rest of our puzzles (freebies/patreon puzzles). We will continue working on our puzzle cutting algorithm to make the puzzle pieces edges more “puzzle-y” in the near future

      • Puzzle border pieces now have a clear, smooth edge

  • Ice Cream Stairs - 20 Pieces

    • This puzzle is now rich with beautiful regional audios and soundscapes. Take the time to listen to everything as you puzzle it together!

    • The puzzle pieces

  • Updated Audio Soundscapes

    • Devil’s Slide Bunker

    • Boat Josefa

    • Tsuruga Castle

    • Market Square Gliwice

    • Ice Cream Stairs (20 pieces)

  • All puzzle pieces are now much bigger!

• The Grid 

  • Updated the position, height, and scale of the puzzle pieces’ Grid. 

  • Connected puzzles pieces can now be pushed back to the grid

  • Puzzle pieces in groups can also be pushed back to the grid

• “Unable to Save Puzzle Progress” Notification

  • For users who don’t accept the initial permissions prompt for Puzzling Places to have access to read/write to your Quest, there is now a notification in the Menu letting you know.

  • Tapping on the notification opens the permission prompt again to allow you to easily change the setting to “allow”

Bug Fixes

• Spooky bugs in the “Halloween Special - #22” introduced from our v3.1 update have now been squashed and banished from this realm. 

• Weird puzzle-pulling and grabbing bugs found only in the “Castle Divin - #28” have been squashed as well. 

• Fixed “Christmas Special - #XX” Patreon ZIP attachment not installing for some players. 

Prototype V3.1.2 - Tiny changes for an upcoming puzzle

• Back-end changes for an upcoming special puzzle :)

Prototype V3.1.0 - The Patreon App + Menu Update

• New Features

  • Download individual puzzles as .pak files - no more unpacking .RAR files & separate .apks for every puzzle!
    => for detailed install instructions see the Patreon Post

  • NEW Puzzle Selection Menu - Browse and select from all downloaded puzzles, see the progress of all puzzles within the menu

  • Return to Puzzle Selection Menu - press and hold the “Oculus menu button” on the left controller to get back into the menu

  • Start, Continue and Restart Buttons - to avoid accidentally overwriting your puzzle progress, we’ve renamed the buttons to “Continue” and “Restart” when selecting a previously played puzzle. 

  • Locomotion is back - Translate through the puzzle world by hold Y + B buttons on your controllers simultaneously and move your hands to move around (similar to the v1.0, except using the face buttons instead of the grip buttons)

  • Overhauled selection ray & cursor - we added an adaptive cursor & a little pointing add animation to better highlight which puzzle piece you are pointing at. The cursor is shown whenever you can interact with something. The ray automatically fades out whenever you are moving your hands quickly.

• Tweaks and Improvements

  • Much improved visual clarity of the menu & text elements

  • Improved scene visuals (colors, buttons, etc)

  • Puzzle pieces are now 10% bigger 

  • Improved pulling of large connected pieces (pull where you point, not the center)

• Fixes

  • No automatic release of both pieces when joining two grabbed pieces

  • Fixed two bugs that resulted in pieces getting stuck to the controller

  • Increased reliability of grabbing pieces when pulling them

Known Bugs & Issues

• The “Start” and “Restart” buttons have some texture issues.

Prototype v2.3

• New Features

  • Pushing pieces back to Grid

    • Push forward on thumbstick while holding a puzzle piece

  • Pushing reference images back to their original location

    • push forward on thumbstick while holding a reference photo

• Improvements

  • Grid: New puzzle grid size and height (optimized for seated / standing gameplay)

  • Hands: They are now see-through, to be able to see the piece you’re holding better 

  • With the Grid being closer and the pieces being more visible, we’ve removed the locomotion functionality for simpler controls. 

• Other

  • New refactored architecture (unnoticeable changes)

Prototype V2.1

• Improvements

  • Trigger is back to pull puzzle pieces

  • Grip button to grab puzzle pieces

  • A / X button to Bound-back puzzle pieces

  • Multiselect is disabled for now until it’s ready to be tested again.

Prototype V2.0

• New Features

  • Multi-select 

    • Using the A/X button, you can now selectively choose which pieces to pull from the Grid.

  • Push Back Pieces 

    • After grabbing/multi-selecting pieces, push forward on the thumbstick to send them back to the Grid.

  • Bounce-Back Button

    • Too many puzzle pieces around you? Hold down the trigger and bounce pieces back to the Grid

  • Controller Haptics

    • Feel the puzzle pieces!

• Other

  • Steady World

    • We realized that the locomotion was being used as a way to get away from puzzle piece clutter. Now that we have a way of organizing puzzle pieces with the multi-select, we’ve removed the locomotion function for a more comfortable puzzling experience.

Prototype V1.0 (Puzzling Places Prototype)

• Features

  • Trigger to pull puzzle pieces

  • Trigger to grab puzzle pieces

• Locomotion

  • Press both Grip buttons to move through the world