Hands On: Arca's Path Brings Marble Madness to PSVR

Virtual reality allows us to interact with video games in ways that simply wouldn't be possible with a controller, and Arca's Path, from British developer Dream Reality Interactive, is about to introduce yet another take on control and movement within the PlayStation VR space. Without any sort of DualShock 4 or PlayStation Move controllers in your hands, any and every interaction is performed by the movement of your head.

You control a sort of marble, and moving about is dictated by the gestures you make with your noggin. Looking up will move the sphere forward, down will cause it to roll backwards, and of course left or right for turning. It's a simple mechanic, but it works well and builds some depth via allowing you to effect the ball's momentum as it travels along a path. Of course there are obstacles to manoeuvre around and drops in the track to avoid, so the speed you're moving at comes into play often, and allowing you to slam on the brakes via your head is fast and intuitive.

You'll be playing as a girl named Arca, who interacts with the new colourful world via a headset she finds. This other reality blooms and blossoms around her as the marble progresses, which makes for some visually spectacular scenes. The game's art style uses texture pop-in as a mechanic to allow the world to grow, and it works wonders. Witnessing a tree and shrubbery is a sight to behold in virtual reality, and it makes for a much more interesting environment to explore.

A cursor on-screen conveys which direction you're headed in at any given time, which is fine for navigation, but due to it being mapped to your head, we're not entirely sure the pointer needs to be there at all. If Arca's Path were to be entirely HUD-less in that sense, the title may be even better for it. The game is due for release on 4th December, so there's still time for the possibility of that happening.

Has Arca's Path caught your eye? What do you think about mapping navigation and control to your head in virtual reality? Let us know in the comments below.