PlayStation VR exclusive How We Soar puts you on the back of a giant bird

If you could simulate anything in virtual reality … well, it would probably be sex. But the second or third thing might involve flying.

How We Soar is a new, exclusive PlayStation VR game that enables players to fly across a picturesque sky and is coming the fourth quarter of this year. It is the first game from developer Penny Black Studios, which comprises talent formerly of Crysis maker Crytek and Homefront: The Revolution creator Free Radical Design. How We Soar puts you in the virtual saddle on the back of a giant phoenix. It’s your job to guide your noble, airborne steed through obstacles. This is the latest game Sony is adding to its pile of PlayStation VR exclusives, which the company is launching in October for $500. Analysts at SuperData Research predict VR could turn into a $40 billion business by 2020, and Sony is getting aggressive about pursuing that.

How We Soar is also another example of how developers are embracing visuals styles beyond photorealism for VR. Penny Black is implementing a construction-paper style that is eye-catching — although, at first glance, it looks a lot like Ubisoft’s Eagle Flight. That’s a separate game that is headed to multiple “virtual reality devices” including PSVR.

“Everything from the environment to the characters to the phoenix itself is fashioned in a unique papercraft art style, giving everything you see a very distinct and tactile appearance,” Penny Black managing director Tom Turner wrote in a PlayStation blog post. One of the coolest things about the game is how you interact with the world around you. Each level that you enter will appear strangely shredded, torn and unfolded.”

Your goal in How We Soar is to retrieve the memories of a character known as The Author by exploring and unlocking the phoenix’s fantasy environment. As you fly around, the paper world will unfold into new areas that contain bits of the story and splashes of color that will return vibrance to the setting.

We’ll look to take How We Soar for a test flight at next week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show, and we’ll let you know if it’s really the top experience you’ll want to simulate first in VR. Of course, now that I think about it, this game is making me realize that you could totally fly and enjoy VR porn at the same time. It’s the future.