Crystal Commanders

Written by Eric Hauter on 4/10/2025 for QW3  

One of my all-time favorite VR games is Korix, the Tron-laser-themed RTS that released on the original PSVR. Try as I might, I could never get others to lock in on Korix, but my son and I happily played it for dozens of hours, hooting and hollering at each other, reveling in the smart design and gorgeous futuristic aesthetic. I think that Korix is the game that sold me on VR, more than any first-person shooter or dungeon crawler. The idea of battling it out with tiny units in a shared space was just too delicious, and I’ve been jonesing for another game to come along and scratch that itch. VR is perfect for this type of thing. I've just been waiting for the industry to catch up to that idea.

Enter Crystal Commander, a new RTS on Meta Quest 3 developed by DB Creations. Crystal Commanders is a VR RTS with a pretty cool twist – it uses Mixed Reality to allow you to play in your own space. Using a room scanner (which somehow seems a bit more advanced than the standard Quest scan), Crystal Commanders converts your bedroom, garage, or – in my case – office into a sprawling, obstacle-ridden battleground. This allows you to build your base next to your bookshelf, assemble your units behind the sofa, and send a brigade storming behind your desk to invade enemy territory.

I know that I’m constantly yammering in my reviews about how cool Mixed Reality is, but that’s because it is cool. Crystal Commanders is a great example of what makes augmented reality such an entrancing and unique experience. Exploring the far reaches of your own floor to look for resources is neat. Sending bombers soaring through the air between your work monitors is some amazing science fiction stuff. Even tipping your desktop computer tower to try to find that one unit that somehow got stuck inside it is amusing.

What makes Crystal Commanders even cooler is that you can play the game in multiplayer. Yes, there is a campaign (and we’ll get there), but multiplayer is where it’s at. If you and your buddy aren’t in the same physical space, the game will drop you both into a futuristic simulated living room space – the decor is sparce, but it gets the job done. But if you are local, you can both hop into the garage or the backyard with your headsets on and battle it out for dominance in the same real-life space. Yes, this is dorky. But it is also awesome.

I jumped into a multiplayer session with a GN coworker for a few hours yesterday, and had an absolute blast. I had armies of tanks and artillery lurking in every corner of the room, just waiting for his hapless ass to wander into my forces. I surrounded every crystal outside his base with artillery and anti-air towers. I had four enormous battalions staged right outside his base behind sofas and tables, and when the time was right, I pincher-attacked him into oblivion. It was amazing. You suck, Joe.

The act of playing Crystal Commanders is great fun. But how is the game itself? Well, the VR/AR aspect - and the fact that the devs got this thing to work at all - is definitely the hook here. Underneath the sheen of techno-impressive implementation, you'll find a very standard by-the-numbers RTS. I don’t want to give the impression that Crystal Commanders is bad – it is not – but it isn’t going to be winning any awards for original gameplay, either. Warcraft 2 was far more complex than this bad boy. 

Anyone that has played an RTS in the last 20 years is going to instantly know the drill here; the tutorial missions are great for learning the controls, but you already know what to do. Plop down a base. Plop down a crystal refinery. Start harvesting crystals. Plop down a factory. Maybe build a few more units to harvest other, more distant crystals. Alternate between spending crystals building up your army and adding defenses to your base. Overwhelm the other player and laugh at their misfortune.

This isn’t a terrible gameplay loop. It is tried and true, familiar for a good reason – because it works and it is fun. What makes it extra fun in the case of Crystal Commanders is the way you are deploying strategies in a 3D space across the floor of the living room.

Outside of the standard 1v1 battles, the game also offers a few variations. There is a point capture mode, and another cool mode that gives each player one special unit to protect while simultaneously trying to hunt down and destroy the opponent. These battles can go on for quite some time, depending on the type of player you are, and the urge to launch into a rematch is ever present. In our session, we played until both of our headsets died.

The campaign itself is slight, but a fun way to get accustomed to the game’s controls and mechanics. A little story plays out via floating comic-panel dialogue, which is fully voiced. The first several missions are deadly simple, but things do escalate in complexity as the 15 missions progress. Overall, it’s worth playing through just to get comfortable enough to jump into multiplayer.

As usual with VR games, the controls can be a bit fiddly. There is a patch launching on April 21 that promises to deal with some of these issues, but at release the game is playable but glitchy. It is tough to get the pointer to zero in on the unit or structure you are attempting to activate, especially if there are a lot of things clustered close together. And the usual RTS problem persists – you try to grab a group of units, and 1/3 of them just sit there like dummies while the rest roar off to battle. It’s manageable, but not ideal.

There are currently two factions in the game, each with some slightly varied basic units that seem to be balanced against each other nicely. My opponent kept shooting flamethrower units at me, and I kept wondering where he was getting them before it dawned on me that he had a few different options. I would love to see Crystal Commanders pick up enough of an audience that the developers introduce additional factions to the game; there is a lot of room for growth here.

If you have any inclination to play an RTS in VR/AR, then don't hesitate to snag Crystal Commanders. Make sure you have a buddy to play with, and you'll have a good time. Just don't go in expecting a gameplay revolution, as Crystal Commanders manages to be both serviceable and amazing at the same time.