The Wordle influence is obvious: A word jumble solving game, a daily puzzle, even the green shade on “correct” letters feels familiar. Wordle itself is actually available in VR for free - well, sort of - so shouldn’t you just get that, or just play that in its original 2D format? Or should you spring for Wordomi, the game that’s headset-native?Definitely the latter.Wordomi has innovations, and a few flaws - we’ll cover both. Most importantly, it asks questions and invites curiosity for headset enthusiasts: What’ll it take to help make headset use more habitual? What’ll it take to appeal to casual gamers? How far are we from getting there?The FactsWhat is it?: A casual mixed reality puzzle game for all ages.Platforms: Quest (played on Quest 3)Release Date: Out nowDeveloper: Field Of VisionPrice: $9.99Core GameplayThe main premise of Wordomi presents you with numerous letters; unjumble them to produce words. Easy puzzles are short words; hard puzzles are long words or include superfluous letters. There’s 200+ challenges; plenty to keep busy. Wordomi insists upon hand tracking, and it's certainly best suited to playing in passthrough. Surely, this’ll facilitate cross-platform expansion & interoperability down the road.Expanding on the main premise are four derivative game modes:Classic: words with increasing difficulty.Theme: the letters are different, but the unjumbled words have a consistent theme (like “pirate” or “sports”).Subgram: the letters are the same, see if you can use them to produce 10 different words.Word of the Day: one word, fresh puzzles daily.Gameplay is casual and pleasant. The controls work well - I like using hand tracking here, and I’m glad it’s the exclusive way to manipulate game blocks. I like the 3D proliferation of puzzles; it’s simple fun to twist the array of words around to attack the next prompt, which creates shapes that wouldn’t be possible on a flat screen:Puzzles come with challenges: timers, lives, extra points for completing quickly or without using clues. I’m partial to the Subgram flavor of puzzle, but that preference is personal, not functional: You might just as well be drawn to any of the other derivatives. I don’t need to sell you on a word jumble puzzle any more than this.Nailing a long word feels great.I could quibble. I lost a life here (and voided the opportunity to complete a challenge):The game evidently wanted “USE” instead of “DUE,” and was unforgiving about my submission of a word that any 2nd grader would deem valid — we’re not even digging into the quirks and dredges of the Scrabble dictionary.I lost a life here too: Wordomi defines MINAE as an ancient Greek monetary unit; the official Scrabble dictionary says MINAE is “playable”, but only offers “a pl. of mina” as a definition. Maybe you’d argue I haven’t read up enough on the classics, but this was in the very first Subgram pack - losing this early on a word this arcane feels decidedly un-fun.Oddly, I couldn't get “physics” mode working. I'd have loved to establish a real-world surface (like below) as my gaming area to really embrace mixed reality, but I was plenty satisfied using the midair “snap” mode (as seen above) to make my puzzles dance.I lament that the main way I improved my ability to beat the game’s timer wasn’t really “earned” the way you’re rewarded for learning new skills or discovering clever combos in games like RPGs — I just switched from using one hand to two. Perhaps that’s unfair - perhaps, as we adapt to our new mixed reality (erm…) reality, going one-handed to two really is an “earned” skill.The Meta-GameWordle didn’t invent, or really even innovate on, the word jumble. Its real innovation is in the scaffolding around the game — especially, the utterly delectably formatted shareable texts:And where I was thrilled to land a tricky Wordomi WOTD…… I had nowhere to put it.Wordomi’s 3D puzzles are delightful…But it’s difficult to justify reentering my VR rig daily for this payoff:Power up & put on your headset,Browse your library to open Wordomi,Navigate Wordomi landing page to WOTD game,Puzzle!Then… ?? Tell some friends? 1 & 2 are far from Wordomi’s direct sphere of control, and it’d be accordingly unfair to penalize that in a review. I prefer the opposite tack: As a VR enthusiast, Wordomi presents a uniquely great vantage to consider the massive upside possible. Meta has its work cut out to make headsets as easy to fire up as smartphones. What else might Wordomi hack in the meantime? Should it take a cue from Wordle and launch straight into its WOTD format? Could it produce Wordle-like shareables for me to easily paste into Horizon Chat, or easily access from my phone to text to my VR-enthused friends?Certainly nobody wants to dwell too deeply on what an outsized fraction of Wordlers play while in the restroom — or, maybe, while they should be focused on the Zoom meeting in front of them, or just while riding the subway. How might Wordomi expand into all the nooks & crannies of day-to-day life where casual gaming takes place?I’ve enjoyed opening Wordomi daily — once I’m already headset-committed, its demands on my time & attention are sufficiently low and there’s plenty for me to do. It’s a gentle and easy invitation to return to your VR headset, and we need more of this! Returning from the real world to your workspace in ImmersedVR or Horizon Workrooms is a big cognitive ordeal, but one that might be reduced by bargaining with your brain that you’ll just play a quick Wordomi round to start. (…don’t @ me when you’re 25 minutes into what you thought would be a 5-minute puzzle, and now you’re late to start your job.)Wordomi — Final VerdictWordomi is breezy fun, and it’s fine value. Your parents could play it — add this to your library so you’ve got a way to help them “get it.” Or add it to your library for the usual reason: it’s a good time! Sanding off the rough edges (“DUE” really ought to be a solution whenever presented the letters D-U-E) and it'll be a great time. Zooming out, it fits the essential niche of a quick, casual game.It's not mind-blowing, but Wordomi doesn't aspire to be or need to be. If we want headset technology to appeal to the mainstream, we need polished, low-stakes games like this one as much as we need innovative masterpieces. Smartphones didn't come to exist because of casual games, but those casual titles made gamers out of people who were otherwise way outside the stereotypical “gamer” demographic. Here's hoping Wordomi can help usher in the same for VR.UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.