PlayStation VR is on a roll this week, as its third new game has just been announced.
That game is Statik, a VR puzzle title from UK-based developer, Tarsier Studios. It’s a first-person experience that, upon first glance, appears to owe a debt to Valve’s Portal franchise. You have the pristine white labs, shopping center music and the sarcastic-sounding companion to boot. It’s all very Esper, but the concept behind the puzzles themselves is actually very intriguing.
As you can see in the reveal trailer above, you wake up with your hands locked in a box. It’s not just any old box though; a series of contraptions fitted to the side present puzzles you’ll need to solve. Sitting to one side of you is Dr Ingen, who presents you with new puzzles every day. It’s a great twist on using the gamepad, taking the idea of having your hands bound to a device and using that as a form of imprisonment within VR.
Just why Dr Ingen and his assistant Edith are testing you in this way isn’t clear, but the developer will be taking the game to E3 next week so maybe we’ll find out a bit more then. According to the team’s Dave Mervik over on the PlayStation Blog, Statik was born from “very strange late-night discussions”, and he believes it has the “potential for new approaches to gameplay and storytelling” experiences.
Tarsier itself has been one of the custodians of Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet franchise in recent years. It created the excellent handheld version of the game for the PlayStation Vita in 2012 and helped out on both LittleBigPlanet 3 and Tearaway Unfolded in the past few years.
Statik is the third game to be revealed for PSVR this week, joining Secret Sorcery’s Tethered, Penny Black Studios’ How We Soar, while we’ve also gotten a first look a Mike Bithell’s Volume: Coda. It all seems to suggest that VR will be a big week for the anticipated device, which itself launches in October. Expect more new games and announcements at Sony’s press conference starting at 5:00pm PDT on 06/13/16.
