In March Tarsier Studios announced the released date as well as opening pre-orders for its single-player puzzle title Statik for PlayStation VR. Now the studio has revealed that Static will in fact have a multiplayer option built-in allowing an additional player to join in via a tablet or smartphone.
In a PlayStation.Blog posting, Dave Mervik, senior narrative designer at Tarsier Studios has said that: “We’ve also remixed some of our single-player puzzles into cooperative challenges.” Adding: “Both of you have different parts of the same puzzle, so the only way to solve it is by talking and working together.”
Originally Statik had started out as a solely single-player experience – the players hands are trapped inside a puzzle box – but then the studio began showcasing the video game to the public at several events, coming to realise spectator interaction would work as well.
The team experimented to see what parts of Statik would work in co-op, then came to the conclusion all of it would. “So, even though the solution to each box can be taxing, there is a satisfyingly direct reaction to each of your actions – ‘A’ does ‘B’, ‘C’ does ‘D’, and so on,” says Mervik. “For co-op mode, we simply deviate from this, whereby we give the action to one of you, and the re-action to the other, meaning that while you do ‘A’, only your friend will see ‘B’.”
Statik is due to be released in just over a week’s time on Monday 24th April. In the run up to launch day, Tarsier Studios has released a brand new trailer for the video game. Narrated by the title’s in house scientist Dr Ingen, the video showcases some of the puzzle boxes on offer, from simple designs to far more complex arrangements.
The title can be pre-ordered and checkout VRFocus‘ original preview for an in depth hands-on. For further Statik updates, keep reading VRFocus.