Toy Trains VR Meta Quest 3 Review

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Fast Facts

Toy Trains VR takes your childhood memories of putting together elaborate train tracks all while building a cozy world around you and the various pieces. From my first moments with Toy Trains VR, it was apparent that the attic space and table where your train sets were placed were telling a story beyond the simple puzzle game. When you first sit down or stand, as both play options are available in VR you will notice a colorful game with many interactive elements all around you.

The colorful world of Toy Trains VR starts with you uncovering a set of Toy Trains and some letters and postcards from your parents. Reading through each of these notes tells a little bit of the story of your parents’ adventures and the world they were traveling. Each level in Toy Trains VR uncovers a new track piece for you to use, like curves, inclines, bridges, and platforms. 

As you unlock each piece you have a tutorial level which introduces the mechanic and then a puzzle level which sees you connecting various citizens and their homes to a central hub for each map. The early levels of Toy Trains VR were simple and didn’t have me worrying too much about the placement of the pieces, as they were more straightforward.

Around the halfway point of the game I found that with each new citizen added to the world, I had to rework and rethink my strategy on how to get each train to the hub and back to their home. There were a few moments where I had to scratch my head and plan out each section of the build. Luckily, with this being a VR game, anytime you wanted to scrap a bit of your work you could just fling the track pieces to the side and they would disappear on the floor.

The way you build in Toy Trains VR feels pretty intuitive. You have a journal that floats around you where you can pull pieces from. Setting them on the ground and connecting them is snappy. Each piece clicks into place, so long as the ground below it will support the piece itself in the allotted space. Grabbing the pieces and changing their location is easy too, as nothing is set in stone and can be easily pulled up and repositioned.

Match trains with homes to navigate to and from the city hub, completing each section of the levels. Every citizen plays a vital role, in transporting essential resources between homes and a centrally located hub, contributing to world-building. Once you are satisfied with your layout you can drop a train and its car on the track and it will zip ahead completing the circuit. If you complete all of the connections the level moves on adding more houses and requiring more connections. Finish levels for a rewarding experience, interacting with characters and the mayor in a hot air balloon and enjoying dialogue snippets.

The world of Toy Trains VR is colorful and vibrant. While you build out each level, you will notice clouds, birds, and a bustling town begin to form under you. You can pop clouds with your hands and interact with the trees and water in the world. While these moments were fun and inspired a childlike feeling in me, there were only limited interactions.

Once you complete a level and move on a small toy item gets added to your toybox. The toy box can be found back in Toy Trains VR’s main hub. You can pick up the duck, robot, airplane, and other items within the hub space.

Toy Trains VR has a subtle and relaxing soundtrack helping to make the game feel cozy. The world around you has ambient audio as well, with the trains chugging along the tracks, birds squawking, and waterfalls gurgling passed you.

The hardest thing to ‘sell you’ on with Toy Trains VR is its asking price. At $20 (£14.99) and maybe four hours of gameplay, there is not much to return to. The price for Toy Trains VR is just slightly higher than I would expect to pay for something like this. Developers could enhance replayability by introducing community challenges with custom tracks or adding more puzzling areas for variety. There are around 10 levels within the game which go by quickly.

As a final verdict for the game, I would say keep an eye on this one for a sale. Toy Trains VR is a polished game with a few hours of things to do. The devs did a great job of capturing the essence of a kid and their train gameplay. Toy Trains VR could use a few more levels and options to extend the idea of playing with your trains.

4 out of 5

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You can buy Toy Trains VR for the Meta Quest 2, 3 and Pro in the Meta Store here