The Room screen in Sozo: what DEFEND, NEXT and RESCAN mean

When you start Sozo – Tower Defense, you don’t see the game straight away. First a floating window appears with the heading “Your Room”. Many newcomers don’t know what to press here. That’s understandable. The buttons are in English and sound technical.

In this article we’ll go through the window together, part by part. All the details come from the studio’s game instructions.

Why this screen exists

Sozo is a mixed reality game (mixed reality: you see your real room, and the game places characters into it). The game builds the playing field from your room. Monsters come out of your real walls. The path runs across your real floor.

For that, the game needs to know which room you’re standing in. Your headset (the goggles you put on) knows your room from the room scan. During the room scan, the headset took a one-off reading of walls, floor and furniture. On the room screen you confirm that this room is the right one.

What you need

• A Meta Quest 3 or Meta Quest 3S.
• Sozo, installed on the headset.
• Ideally a finished room scan. Without a scan, the game offers a substitute room. More on that below.

What it costs

The screen itself costs nothing extra. The price of Sozo is not yet known.

Where the window appears

The window floats about 1.45 metres in front of you. If you turn your head, it slides back in front of your face after about two seconds. It only stays put while you’re pointing at it. So you don’t have to go looking for it.

You hear music in the background. A glowing line moves across your real floor and walls. That’s just an effect. It shows that the game recognises your room.

The left side: details about your room

On the left you see these details:

• A small map (mini map) of your room. A dot shows where you’re standing.
• The name of the room. While the room is still loading, it says “Scanning…” with jumping dots.
• A small label. It can show four things:
• YOU ARE HERE: you’re currently standing in this room.
• LAST USED: this is the room you confirmed last time.
• PREVIEW: you’re just looking at another room.
• SIMULATED: a test room. Normal players on the headset generally don’t see this.
• AREA in square metres.
• HEIGHT in metres. That’s the room height.

The right side: the room list

On the right is the heading Rooms. There you see up to 4 rooms that your headset knows. Each has a small picture, a name and the area. A label shows HERE or LAST.

If you tap a room, you see a preview of it.

The three buttons, step by step

Here’s how to use the screen:

1. Check the name and the label. Does it say “YOU ARE HERE”? Then it’s the right room.
2. Check the area. Does the number roughly match your room? If it’s far too small, the scan was incomplete.
3. Point at DEFEND and press. With the controller, press the trigger (the button under your index finger). With bare hands, briefly pinch your index finger and thumb together. DEFEND means “defend”. It’s the big gold button.
4. If the wrong room is selected: Press NEXT. The game jumps to the next known room.
5. If the room has changed: Press RESCAN. That starts Meta’s own room setup (“Space Setup”). Afterwards you return to the game.

If you’ve only scanned one room, NEXT reports “Only one room - RESCAN” or “No other rooms”. That’s not an error.

What happens when you press DEFEND

After pressing DEFEND, the following happens for about 2.3 seconds:

• A deep tone sounds, and the controller vibrates briefly.
• The window contracts into a line and breaks apart into small points of light.
• A wave of light rolls across the floor from your feet.
• Columns of light rise in the corners of the room. Small flashes crackle along the tops of the walls.

That’s just a greeting. You don’t have to do anything. After that, it carries on. On the very first start, a short intro follows. On later starts, you land straight in the main menu.

Good to know

• The screen appears on every start. That’s intentional. One press of DEFEND is enough.
• The last confirmed room is preselected. So most of the time you just need to press DEFEND.
• Same room, same playing field. According to the studio, a level looks the same every time in the same room. If you choose a different room, the layout changes.
• Back to this screen: In the game, open Settings and press ROOM.
• Safety: Before DEFEND, take a quick look around your real room. Is there anything on the floor you could trip over?

If something doesn’t work

• Instead of DEFEND it says PLAY DUMMY ROOM: your headset has no usable scan. The window then also shows “No room found” and a reason. Read our article about the error messages for that.
• RESCAN reports “Rescan failed”: start the room setup directly in the headset’s settings. Then restart Sozo.
• The name stays on “Scanning…”: wait a few seconds. If that doesn’t help, close the game and open it again.
• The window is too close or too far away: take a step forward or back. It slides in front of you by itself.

Terms like room scan and mixed reality are also explained in our glossary.