Most mixed reality games oversell what they can do, but seeing a shadow monster slide through living room walls while a dragon settles on top of a TV creates genuine excitement. This weird mix of everyday spaces and fantasy adventure lies at the heart of Mythic Realms, a new game coming to Meta’s Quest headsets in early 2025. While other games have tried using real rooms for gaming before, Petricore Games takes things further by making the actual space around players a key part of how everything works.
The game works in two main parts that fit together like puzzle pieces. During adventures, regular rooms transform into fantasy dungeons packed with creatures and treasure. Between these action-packed sessions, players hang out in a virtual kingdom that works as both a safe zone and a place to get stronger. “We’ve been calling it hybrid reality,” explains Petricore CEO Ryan Canuel. “It’s a mix of mixed reality and virtual reality.” Those simple words don’t really show just how many moving parts work together to make this happen.
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Turning Rooms Into Mythic Realms
Each adventure drops players into one of three different worlds – spooky forests, dark caves, or freezing ice landscapes. Every room they walk into offers something different: sometimes it’s monsters ready for a fight, other times there’s wood and minerals to collect, or maybe even hidden treasure waiting to be found. The cave areas show off some of the game’s coolest tricks, with shadow creatures that hide inside real walls before jumping out to attack.
The fighting in Mythic Realms turns regular furniture into part of the battle strategy. Since players can always see the real room around them during fights, they can move around naturally without worrying about crashing into things. As Canuel points out, “Players can jump up on a couch and use the bow to rain arrows down on the enemies, and that couldn’t happen in VR. Someone would trip and break their arm, or worse.”
Players get their hands on nine different weapons throughout the game. Beyond the usual swords and magic staffs, there are throwing stars for ninjas at heart, paired claws for getting up close, and a massive battle axe that needs both hands just to lift. These weapons match up with three different fighting styles – knights for close combat, rangers for shooting from far away, and mages for spellcasting. When boss fights kick in, they take over the entire room, with giant monsters like dragons that interact with the actual space around them.
Building A Kingdom
Back at the virtual kingdom, players turn their hard-earned resources into better gear. Like many similar games, dying means losing some stuff, weapons and materials might not make it back home. But players always keep their overall progress, so nothing feels like a waste of time. The kingdom lets players craft better weapons at the blacksmith’s shop, pick up quests from the locals, and slowly uncover a story about two different realities smashing together.
Most folks finish the main story in six to nine hours, though it really depends on how well they move around in real life as much as how good they are at games. While the game works in different sized rooms, there are some limits. For instance, trying to play in a tiny closet isn’t going to cut it. Working together with Meta means Petricore has the right tools to make all this work, especially when it comes to scanning and mapping out rooms. The game’s ready for players around the world too, with text and voice support in English, Japanese, Korean, German, Spanish, Italian, and French right from the start.
Instead of trying to do everything possible with mixed reality, Mythic Realms focuses on getting three things right: fighting monsters, collecting resources, and building up a kingdom. The team’s already thinking about adding endless mode challenges after launch, but right now they’re laser-focused on making sure these core parts of the game work perfectly together.
When Mythic Realms hits Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Quest 3 in early 2025, it’s bringing a fresh take on mixed reality that makes regular rooms feel like fantasy worlds. Players interested in turning their living space into a dragon’s den can add it to their Quest store wishlist right now.
- Platform(s)
- Meta Quest 3S , Meta Quest 2 , Meta Quest 3 , Meta Quest Pro
- Developer(s)
- Petricore
- Publisher(s)
- Petricore
- Number of Players
- 1