Guardian of Realms Shifts to Free-to-Play on Quest 3

A Combat Game Built for Your Living Room

Guardian of Realms isn’t trying to be a traditional VR game. It leans fully into mixed reality, turning your actual room into a battlefield where enemies break through walls and magic reshapes your surroundings. Built specifically for Meta Quest 3, the game uses passthrough and room mapping to let players fight inside their own physical spaces.

What sets it apart is how much it relies on movement. There’s no artificial locomotion or teleporting — it’s all roomscale. Players swing swords, cast spells, and dodge enemies by moving naturally. That makes it closer to a live-action game than a sit-down VR experience.

Free to Play, Not Abandoned

The game launched as a paid early access title in 2024, but as of May 2025, it’s completely free. The studio behind it, Sinn Studio, had banked on growing interest in mixed reality after Meta’s hardware refresh. That growth hasn’t really taken off yet, so the move to free access is a strategic shift — more about keeping the project alive than monetizing it.

Rather than walking away from the game, the devs have continued adding new content: seasonal maps, smarter enemies, new weapons, and even destructible environments. There’s a clear effort to turn it into a deeper sandbox, especially for players who enjoy experimenting with physics-driven combat.

Focused on Experimentation and Modding

Guardian of Realms has two core modes: a survival-style wave defense and a more flexible sandbox mode where players can tweak enemy spawns, AI, and combat difficulty. The second mode is where most of the game’s personality shows up. It’s less about structure and more about testing mechanics in a space that feels personal — because it literally is.

What’s more interesting is that modding is encouraged. Players can mess with the setup, introduce their own tweaks, and generally shape the game however they want. It’s still early-stage in terms of tools and content, but the openness is unusual for a Quest title.

Built Specifically for Quest 3 Hardware

The game only runs on Meta Quest 3 and 3S — not older Quest models. That’s a hardware limitation but also a creative choice. The team built it from the ground up to use the newer headset’s passthrough, depth sensing, and room mapping. In theory, this makes for cleaner, more convincing MR interactions.

That focus also limits the audience, at least for now. Quest 3’s install base isn’t massive, and MR games are still a niche inside a niche. But for those who already own the headset, Guardian of Realms is one of the few experiences trying to seriously push the boundaries of home-scale MR combat.

Not Just Another VR Game

Mixed reality still feels like an experiment more than a market, and Guardian of Realms fits into that space. It’s not polished to the level of a major VR title, and it doesn’t try to be. Instead, it’s a live testbed for how roomscale combat might actually work when the walls around you are part of the game.

Whether that vision holds up long term is unclear. But the move to free-to-play opens the doors wider, and it gives the developers more feedback to work with. For now, Guardian of Realms stands out mostly because it’s doing something different — and it’s doing it in your living room.