A desert stretches before you, vast and mysterious. You’re a black bird, perched on a branch, swaying in the gentle breeze. The lands before you roll outward, and here and there old ruins jut out from the sand, signs of some previous habitation. You take wing, and soar across the land in search of the hidden keys that turn this world…

This is the beginning to Vane, a game built on the conviction that players should find their own way in this mysterious world. You take the role of a black bird, alone in a desert, but there’s a secret depth to this windswept wasteland. A mysterious golden dust can cause you to transform into a child, and the same substance causes further changes to the world around you. Finding the secrets of this place will require the use of both perspectives.

Find Your Way

In Vane, you’ll be navigating open deserts, mysterious caves, and stormy, dark places full of mystery. You’ll use the golden material to transform, going from bird form to survey the area, changing into a child to affect a change, and back again. As you move through the world in this way, a strange momentum accumulates, and the world begins to transform as well. It’s in this transformation of the world itself that the story of Vane shows through, and it might take some unexpected turns.

Vane is an exploration game where you, the player, decide where to go. The game offers little explicit guidance. There’s no HUD. Text is at a bare minimum. The game has no spoken dialogue. We present this world to you bare, and invite you to explore it at your own pace, using your own intuition and perceptions. It’s your will to move forward, your desire to see what’s next, that will propel the story of Vane.

A Labor of Love

Four years in the making, Vane comes from a veteran team with stints at companies like Guerilla, Sony Japan Studio, and EA. We started Friend & Foe with other worlds on our mind, and our goal has been to preserve these strange visions through the rigors of the development process to ensure players can experience them. Vane is our first work together under our own banner, and we’re so excited that it’s seeing the light of day. In a sense we’re setting out into our own desert exploration, and this is the first step.

With Vane we want to make a surreal audio-visual experience that doesn’t lead you by the hand. It’s a little bit different. We hope it leaves an impression, one that you remember for a long while.

Vane will be available at PlayStation Store starting January 15.