there are only a few ways to get this wrong.
1) you didn't power it on.
2) you did not power up pin 4 - GPIO0/CE Digital I/O Power-up default is chip enable(CE). It should be pulled high with a 47 ohm resistor.
3) I2C address confusion. 0x29 is the base address. That makes the write address 0x52 (0x29<<1) and the read address 0x53 (0x29<<1 | 1).
(this last is a product of the I2C specification, and I cannot do anything about that.)
Oddly I just brought up a new board with a VL53 sensor on it, and even I got the CE pin wrong to start with. Check that first.
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