FuturLab revealed their new PS VR game Tiny Trax a couple weeks ago, and at E3 this year, they provided a live-demo with PlayStation of the upcoming VR slot-car racing game, resulting in around ten minutes of brand new gameplay footage.
The video features James Marsden and Dave Gabriel, who pitch the game as giving “the feeling of if you were an eight-year-old with a slot car set and a Hollywood budget.” The gameplay video begins in a child’s bedroom, which functions like a garage in most racing games; here, players can pick which slot car they want to use and what color it will be. The video then moves on to showcase a variety of crazy courses that players can race on. The game also supports up to four players online.
When asked how they got the idea for Tiny Trax and why they started to develop for PS VR, James Marsden said Sony Interactive Entertainment, who FuturLab is a longtime partner of, approached them to do so, and that the Dave Gabriel played a big part in coming up with the game’s concept.
“We’ve been working with PlayStation as a partner for a number of years now, supporting all their new platforms, so when Sony came to us and said “We’ve got a window of importunity for you to pitch a VR game. What do you want to make?” we tried a few ideas, but the design team is very busy on another project. Dave [Gabriel] was a QA and Production Assistant at that time, so we loaded him up with hardware and gave him limitless kind of funds to buy all the VR games to try and work out what VR was. He figured out that the stuff that works the best in these early days is to sit the player still and bring the action to them.”
This thought process eventually brought the developers to the idea of developing a VR game around slot cars, as it was a big part of many of the developers’ childhoods, and Tiny Trax production began.
You can watch the video below. James Marsden stated that Tiny Trax will be coming out for PlayStation VR “in a matter of weeks, not months,” though no specific date was provided.