Floor Plan 2 [Quest 2] | REVIEW

I REALLY enjoyed the original Floor Plan when it launched on PlayStation VR back in 2018, with its clever elevator-puzzling premise making for a unique experience that felt perfect for virtual reality. Now, three years on, developer Turbo Button are back with Floor Plan 2, bringing with it the same style of kooky conundrums from the original but on a larger and more impressive scale.

Floor Plan 2 is a puzzler that mostly takes place from the confines of an elevator, with each floor you visit bringing with it a unique (and often outright zany) environment to observe that’s full of quirky little puzzles to solve. Clever idea, right? Well, whilst the first game restricted players to just the elevator, the sequel also allows you to teleport around each floor itself and even allows you to access a second elevator. It’s clear that the scale has increased between releases, with the larger environments and emphasis on manoeuvrability allowing for more involving puzzling. With all sorts of wonderful sights to behold across the floors and a cast of weird little characters to meet, there’s plenty of charm packed into the adventure.

I’m going to try and hold back on giving away too many details about the game in this review, because honestly, you’re better off going in knowing very little. Whilst there’s no deep narrative to follow or spoilers to be found, there’s something about the element of surprise with its puzzling and the floors you get to visit that’s better to discover yourself.

Floor Plan 2’s greatest strength lies in its puzzles, with each enigma not only proving to be very clever in design but also defying what players would consider ‘typical’ logic – you know, in that classic ‘point and click adventure’ kind of way. Sometimes, solutions can be pretty obvious and quickly worked out based upon what you can see in front of you and the items you have in in your inventory, but other times you will REALLY have to think outside of the box to solve them. It’s never in an overly perplexing way that’ll frustrate you with its obscurity, but rather a somewhat baffling way that is easy to appreciate when you understand the absurdity of the solution. I mean, Floor Plan 2 is clearly a game that embraces the zany and bizarre, so you’ve just got to put yourself in that sort of mindset if you hope to progress.

And hey, if you DO find yourself a little stumped, you can always use the hint system to give yourself a nudge in the right direction. Whilst there is a method to the game’s madness, there will still be times where a hint will give you enough information to figure things out without being too obvious. I’ll admit, I had to use it a handful of times during my time playing, so it was definitely appreciated on my end.

Still, there’s nothing more satisfying than solving a puzzle with no help, with Floor Plan 2 offering plenty of fun brain teasers across its multiple floors that feel rewarding to figure out. You never quite know what you’re going to come across next as you move between floors, whilst the neat way in which they tie together with their puzzle-solving means there’ll be a bit of backtracking between floors in order to progress. It never feels frustrating though, but adds a sense of ingenuity to the game’s level design where something that seemed redundant the first time around will actually have its uses.

It all comes together to make for a super fun puzzler and one that embraces the immersive nature of virtual reality perfectly. Whilst you are isolated to each of the two elevators and a few areas that you can teleport to within each floor, there’s a neat sense of manoeuvrability in place thanks to some of the game’s room-scaling features. If you’ve got the space around you, you can move around a bit to grab items or interact with objects; those who don’t have much space aren’t left out though, with Floor Plan 2 giving you plenty of stretchy options when it comes to using things that are out of reach. Some virtual reality elements are cleverly implemented within the design of the puzzles themselves too, though I’ll leave those for the player to discover… I don’t want to spoil anything in this review!

The original game only took around an hour to beat, so I’m happy to report that Floor Plan 2 is a meatier experience with my first playthrough taking just over three-hours. The experience isn’t over when you beat the game though, with the new ‘Overtime’ mode allowing you to re-tread old territory and try to find little hidden creatures in the world. You’ll have to solve additional remixed puzzles to grab them all, so the brain-teasing can carry on a little bit longer.

Developer: Turbo Button
Publisher: Turbo Button
Platform(s): Oculus Quest 2 (Reviewed), Oculus Quest
Click here to visit the official website.