Format PC, PS4, PS5, PSVR, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Developer/publisher Firesprite Origin UK Release 2018
When development began on The Persistence back in 2016, there were few VR games in existence, and even fewer that went beyond the kind of short experience to which Firesprite had contributed in The Playroom VR, the Nintendo-style minigame collection that accompanied PSVR’s launch. As Firesprite took its first solo foray into VR, co-founder and game director Stuart Tilley and his colleagues were determined to leverage their initial experience in order to create something considerably more intense – and ambitious.
“Stu and [Firesprite co-founder Chris Roberts] had this crazy idea for an intense horror experience in a procedurally generated playspace,” art director and fellow co-founder Lee Carus recalls. “It gathered lots of momentum from there. Little did we know as an art team what sort of challenges would come from creating such a game.” As the studio faced down this fresh challenge, encompassing multiple concepts that hadn’t really been addressed in VR before, it “drew inspiration from different parts of our lives”, according to Tilley.
He cites the Expanse novels, which at the time had just made their way to television, as well as a stack of videogame influences. Perhaps most obvious among them are and, of course, – “an all-time favourite,” Tilley says. While the decks of The Persistence (the colony starship setting that gives
