Jeff Minter’s back, everyone. The llama loving indie developer behind classics like Tempest 2000 and more recently TXK on the PlayStation Vita has released a new title for the PlayStation 4 named Polybius – and first impressions are good. While you don’t necessarily need PlayStation VR to enjoy it – it’ll run in 4K on the PS4 Pro – that’s where we’ve invested most of our playtime thus far. Everything’s better in virtual reality, right?

According to urban legend, Polybius is an arcade game released in 1981 that was so intense it caused psychological distress – or something. This real-world version of the supposed myth certainly lives up to that story, tasking you with shepherding a small ship through horn-like gates in order to increase your speed while blasting all sorts of coloured paraphernalia on the horizon. It’s a little bit like Space Harrier without the y-axis.

What the video doesn’t successfully illustrate is how intense this experience is in PlayStation VR, though. Stereoscopic 3D means that objects come at you with alarming speed, and the psychedelic colours and strobe-like lighting mean that it’s a real sensory overload. It works, though: we played for a good 30 minutes and didn’t find the experience sickening in any way really – it’s just totally overwhelming in an entertaining way. Your mileage may vary, of course.

The game does come with a dozen or so warnings before you start playing, so that should give you a general idea of what you’re getting yourself in for. We did capture more gameplay footage but, er, it got corrupted somewhere during rendering, so there’s just the first two levels embedded above. Imagine more of that, though – only faster and more insane. We’ll have a review of the full game in the coming days.

Have you picked up Polybius yet? What are your thoughts on the game so far? Are you playing it in virtual reality or just on a standard television screen? Try not to have a seizure in the comments section below.

[source bit.ly]