Jump to content

Red Matter

From VR & AR Wiki
Red Matter
Information
VR/AR Virtual Reality
Developer Vertical Robot
Publisher Vertical Robot
Platform Oculus Rift, SteamVR, PlayStation VR, Meta Quest, PICO, PlayStation VR2
Device Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Pico 4, PlayStation VR2
Type Game
Genre Puzzle, Adventure
Input Device Tracked motion controllers
Play Area Standing, Seated
Game Mode Single-player
Release Date May 24, 2018 (Oculus Rift)
Price US $24.99 (Meta Quest, Steam); US $19.99 (PlayStation)
App Store Meta Horizon Store, Steam, PlayStation Store, PICO Store
Website https://redmattergame.com/
See also: VR Apps and VR Games

Red Matter is a single-player virtual reality puzzle adventure game developed and published by Vertical Robot, an independent studio in Madrid, Spain. It is set during a fictional, dystopian version of the Cold War in which the player, an astronaut called Agent Epsilon of the Atlantic Union, investigates an abandoned research base of the rival state of Volgravia on Rhea, one of Saturn's moons.[1][2] The game was first released for the Oculus Rift on May 24, 2018, and later reached Steam (November 10, 2018), PlayStation VR (December 2018), the Oculus Quest (August 15, 2019), the PICO store (2022) and PlayStation VR2 (October 5, 2023).[1][3][4]

Red Matter is built in Unreal Engine and is known mainly for its visual quality on standalone headsets. Its Quest port, made by a two-person team over about eight months, was described by UploadVR as setting a new standard for mobile VR visuals, and the studio later shipped graphics upgrades for the Meta Quest 2 (2020), PlayStation VR2 and PC (2023) and Meta Quest 3 (2024).[5][6][7][8] The PlayStation 4 version holds a Metacritic score of 84 out of 100.[9] A sequel, Red Matter 2, was released on August 18, 2022.[10]

Reviewed 20 September 2026. Release dates, prices, platform list, development facts, review scores, quotes and every citation were checked against the cited sources. About review dates.

Gameplay

Red Matter is a first-person puzzle adventure. The player moves through the rooms of the Volgravian base, which the studio describes as high-detail brutalist environments that become more surreal as the game progresses, and solves environmental puzzles that are tied to the story rather than presented as standalone challenges.[1] The player's motion controllers appear in the game as the tools of the spacesuit: mechanical claws for grabbing and manipulating objects, plus devices for scanning, translating and illuminating the surroundings. Dials are turned and switches pulled directly with the hands.[1][11] Vertical Robot's design director Tatiana Delgado said the studio wanted to "turn [controllers] into actual tools you utilize to interact with the virtual world".[12]

The base's documents and signage are written in an invented Volgravian language with its own alphabet. Delgado said it may look reminiscent of Russian or Cyrillic but is unrelated to them, so that Russian-speaking players would not be able to read it without the in-game scanner. A scanning device translates this text for the player, and reading the translations is part of solving puzzles and following the plot.[1][12] In its review of the PlayStation VR version, Eurogamer's Ian Higton described the game as an escape room at its core, with each area being a small set of puzzles wrapped in a narrative that makes the work feel like detective work.[13]

Locomotion was designed around motion-sickness tolerance. At launch the game offered teleportation with snap turning, an on-rails point-to-point boost, and a slow forward-only smooth movement option, plus a seated mode; a jetpack-style arc jump lets the player cross gaps in low gravity.[14][12] The October 2023 PC patch (version 1.0.010) revamped the controls and added what the studio called "proper smooth locomotion".[15] On PlayStation VR the game is controlled only with two PlayStation Move controllers.[13]

The campaign is short. Road to VR finished it in just over three hours and gave a range of three to four hours; Eurogamer put the run time at two to three hours.[14][13]

Story

The game takes place in an alternate Cold War between two fictional powers, the Atlantic Union and Volgravia. The player is Agent Epsilon, an Atlantic Union astronaut sent to a Volgravian base on Rhea to investigate a secret research project.[1][2] Vertical Robot drew on Soviet space-race propaganda posters and Cold War stories for the setting but deliberately invented its own nations so that the story would not track real history. Delgado said: "There is some basis on the real Cold War but we really wanted to distance ourselves from actual history and invent a dystopian fantasy."[12][1] Road to VR summarized the premise as "What if the Space Race never stopped?", with 1970s and 1980s technology and Soviet-style brutalist architecture spread across the Solar System.[16] The protagonist is silent and receives voice guidance from a commander over the radio.[14] The soundtrack is by Eduardo de la Iglesia.[1]

Development

Vertical Robot was founded on April 1, 2016, in Madrid by Iñaki Hernández Gastañaga (game director and programmer) and Norman Schaar (game and art director, technical artist); Tatiana Delgado, the design director, describes herself as a co-founder who was in charge of game and narrative design on Red Matter. The team had previously worked on console titles including the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow series and Spec Ops: The Line.[17][18][12]

Red Matter was planned as the studio's first project, but its scope required funding. While the studio looked for backing it turned a locomotion prototype for Red Matter into a smaller game, Daedalus, which shipped on mobile VR headsets (Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream, later rebuilt for Oculus Go and Meta Quest) and let the team test Unreal Engine 4's VR tools.[12][19] Red Matter itself was made by a team of eight people. Delgado said the studio found UE4 "very intuitive" for VR work and used the engine's Proxy LOD system (introduced in version 4.19) and static-mesh polygon reduction tools to keep performance up.[12]

The Rift release was announced on May 9, 2018, with a launch date of May 24, 2018, at US $34.99 and a pre-order price of US $29.99.[2] The Steam version followed on November 10, 2018, and the PlayStation VR version in December 2018 (December 6 in Europe and December 11 in the Americas, according to the studio's press kit).[1][11]

Oculus Quest port

The port to the standalone Oculus Quest was made by two people in about eight months, starting after the PlayStation VR release. The team hand-reduced the polygon count of every mesh, precompiled all shaders at first launch to avoid frame-rate hitches, and modified Unreal's merge tool to combine draw calls and build texture atlases. To preserve the look of the PC version on mobile hardware they wrote modified mobile VR shaders with parallax-corrected reflections, reflections from multiple point lights, ray-traced laser reflections and glass refraction.[5][16] Schaar's advice to other developers was to "optimize from the start, keep your framerate in check at all times".[5] The Quest version released on August 15, 2019. According to Vertical Robot, its Quest sales passed the game's lifetime Rift sales within one week; at the time the Rift listing had 172 ratings after fifteen months on sale and the Quest listing 231 ratings while sitting at number one on the store's top-selling list.[20]

Later upgrades

Red Matter was among the titles updated for the Quest 2 at that headset's launch in October 2020; UploadVR listed better textures and a longer level-of-detail distance for the game.[6][21]

The PlayStation VR2 version launched on October 5, 2023, at US $19.99, as a free cross-buy upgrade for owners of the PlayStation VR version. Vertical Robot stated that it runs at 90 frames per second without reprojection, uses foveated rendering, has 4K textures and revamped controls, and renders at the same internal resolution as Red Matter 2 with supersampling applied. Screen-text support was expanded to nine languages.[7][22][3] The equivalent PC patch, version 1.0.010 on October 26, 2023, brought the revamped controls, 4K textures and the new localizations (Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese) to the Steam version.[15]

A Quest 3 graphics update arrived in October 2024. MIXED reported 4K textures matching the PlayStation VR2 version (up to a 16x increase in pixel count), 8x anisotropic filtering, dynamic shadows and higher-detail meshes, and wrote that the update closed much of the visual gap to Red Matter 2. At that point the Horizon Store listing supported the Quest 2, Quest 3, Quest 3S and Quest Pro.[8]

Release

Platform Release date Notes
Oculus Rift May 24, 2018 Launch platform; US $34.99 at launch, US $29.99 pre-order[2]
Steam (SteamVR and Oculus PC) November 10, 2018 US $24.99 list price as of September 2026[11]
PlayStation VR (PlayStation 4) December 6, 2018 (Europe); December 11, 2018 (Americas) Physical edition by Limited Run Games (run 282), pre-orders opened July 17, 2019, 2,000 copies at US $34.99[1][23][24]
Oculus Quest August 15, 2019 Quest 2 enhancements in October 2020; Quest 3 graphics update in October 2024; US $24.99 on the Meta Horizon Store[5][8][25]
PICO (Pico Neo 3, Pico 4) 2022 Listed for PICO Neo3 Pro, Neo3 Eye, Neo3 Link, PICO 4 and PICO 4 Ultra[4]
PlayStation VR2 (PlayStation 5) October 5, 2023 US $19.99; free upgrade for PlayStation VR owners; physical edition by Limited Run Games announced April 2025 at US $34.99[7][3][26]

The Limited Run Games PlayStation 5 disc was offered as an open pre-order until May 25, 2025, with shipping estimated for late September 2025; it contains only the game, with no special edition.[26] As of September 2026 the game remains on sale on the Meta Horizon Store, Steam, the PlayStation Store and the PICO Store.[25][11][3][4]

Reception

Outlet Platform Score
Metacritic (aggregate, 5 reviews) PlayStation 4 84/100[9]
Road to VR Oculus Rift 8.3/10[14]
UploadVR Rift, Vive, Windows VR, PlayStation VR 8/10 (recorded as 80 by Metacritic)[27][9]
PlayStation Universe PlayStation 4 90/100[9]
DarkStation PlayStation 4 90/100[9]
Vandal PlayStation 4 82/100[9]
TheSixthAxis PlayStation 4 80/100[9]

Reviews were positive and centered on the game's environments and object interaction. Road to VR's Scott Hayden gave the Rift version 8.3 out of 10 (gameplay 8, immersion 8, comfort 9), calling it "a stunning showcase of the team's expertise in Unreal Engine" whose environments ranked among the best he had seen since Lone Echo. He found the commander's constant radio guidance annoying and felt the story slid into "B movie" science fiction toward the end.[14] UploadVR's Jamie Feltham called the game "nothing short of a textbook example of how to do VR adventure games right", praised the claw controls as among the most natural interactions he had had with a VR controller, and criticized some later puzzles for giving too few clues.[27] Eurogamer's Ian Higton called it the best escape-room game on PlayStation VR, singled out the force feedback that gives objects weight, and noted that the two-to-three-hour run time might feel short at the £25 price.[13]

The Quest version was reviewed separately. Feltham wrote for UploadVR that Vertical Robot did "an outstanding job" keeping the graphics intact on the standalone headset, while the short campaign and some of the harder puzzles remained.[28] User ratings are high across stores: on Steam the game is rated "Very Positive" (90 percent of 995 reviews), on the Meta Horizon Store it averages 4.6 out of 5 from about 5,100 reviews, and on the PlayStation Store 4.68 out of 5 from 1,835 ratings.[11][25][3]

Vertical Robot lists the game as a finalist at the 2018 Auggie Awards, the 2018 TIGA Games Industry Awards and the 2018 VR Awards (VR Game of the Year), and a nominee for Best National Development at the 2018 Fun & Serious Game Festival.[29]

Sequel

Red Matter 2 was released on August 18, 2022, for the Quest 2 and PC VR via Steam. It keeps the two-claw interaction system of the first game and adds free jetpack flight, gun sections and stealth encounters with drones.[10][30] The sequel won two awards at the 26th D.I.C.E. Awards (Immersive Reality Game of the Year and Immersive Reality Technical Achievement), and UploadVR named Vertical Robot its Best VR Developer of 2022.[17]

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 "Red Matter". Vertical Robot press kit. Vertical Robot. https://verticalrobot.com/presskit/sheet.php?p=Red+Matter. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Jamie Feltham (2018-05-09). "Sci-Fi Cold War Adventure Red Matter Gets Rift Release Date". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/sci-fi-cold-war-adventure-red-matter-gets-rift-release-date/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Red Matter". PlayStation Store. Sony Interactive Entertainment. https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/233114. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Red Matter". PICO Store. PICO. https://store-global.picoxr.com/global/detail/1/2039. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Jamie Feltham (2019-08-09). "How Red Matter Devs Pulled Off A Near-Perfect Quest Port". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/red-matter-quest-port/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Jamie Feltham (2020-10-16). "Oculus Quest 2 Games: Every New Update And Enhanced Title Confirmed". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/oculus-quest-2-games-list/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Henry Stockdale (2023-09-25). "Red Matter Gets A Free Enhancement On PSVR 2 Next Week". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/red-matter-psvr-2/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Tomislav Bezmalinovic (2024-10-24). "The original Red Matter gets an impressive visual overhaul on Quest 3". MIXED. https://mixed-news.com/en/quest-3-red-matter-graphics-update-hands-on/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 "Red Matter critic reviews (PlayStation 4)". Metacritic. https://www.metacritic.com/game/red-matter/critic-reviews/?platform=playstation-4. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Harry Baker (2022-07-11). "Red Matter 2 Coming August 18 To Quest 2 & PC VR". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/red-matter-2-release-date-pc-vr/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 "Red Matter on Steam". Steam. Valve. https://store.steampowered.com/app/966680/Red_Matter/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 "Futuristic Cold War Virtual Reality Comes Alive in Vertical Robot's Red Matter". Unreal Engine. Epic Games. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/developer-interviews/futuristic-cold-war-virtual-reality-comes-alive-in-vertical-robot-s-red-matter. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Ian Higton (2019-02-03). "Red Matter is PSVR's best 'escape room' game to date". Eurogamer. https://www.eurogamer.net/red-matter-is-psvrs-best-escape-room-game-to-date. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Scott Hayden (2018-05-24). "'Red Matter' Review - Adventure, Intrigue & a Retrofuture Cold War in Space". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/red-matter-review/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "1.0.010 patch". Steam. Vertical Robot. 2023-10-26. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/966680/view/5229301621576227390. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Scott Hayden (2019-08-02). "Sci-fi Adventure 'Red Matter' Coming to Oculus Quest in August". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/red-matter-quest-launch-date/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Vertical Robot press kit". Vertical Robot. https://verticalrobot.com/presskit/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  18. ↑ "Tatiana Delgado". Immersive Tech Week. https://www.immersivetechweek.co/person/tatiana-delgado/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  19. ↑ "Daedalus - Surreal VR Platformer". Vertical Robot. https://verticalrobot.com/daedalus/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  20. ↑ David Heaney (2019-08-23). "Red Matter's Oculus Quest Sales Surpass Rift After Just One Week". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/red-matter-quest-sales/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  21. ↑ Scott Hayden (2020-10-12). "10 Games Getting Quest 2 Enhancements at Launch". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-2-games-graphics-update/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  22. ↑ Tomislav Bezmalinovic (2023-10-05). "'Red Matter' launches on PSVR 2 with cutting-edge visuals". MIXED. https://mixed-news.com/en/red-matter-psvr-2-enhancement/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  23. ↑ "Limited Run #282: Red Matter (PS4)". Limited Run Games. https://limitedrungames.com/products/limited-run-282-red-matter-ps4. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  24. ↑ "Red Matter for PlayStation 4 (PSVR)". Limited Game News. 2019-07-16. https://limitedgamenews.com/2019/07/16/red-matter-playstation-4-psvr/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 "Red Matter on Meta Quest". Meta Horizon Store. Meta Platforms. https://www.meta.com/experiences/red-matter/2180753588712484/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Henry Stockdale (2025-04-16). "Both Red Matter Games Are Getting Physical Releases For PlayStation VR2". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/red-matter-2-physical-release-playstation-vr2/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Jamie Feltham (2018-12-20). "Red Matter Review: A Sumptuous Sci-Fi Treat With A True Grasp On VR". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/red-matter-review-a-sumptuous-sci-fi-treat-with-a-true-grasp-on-vr/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  28. ↑ Jamie Feltham (2019-08-14). "Red Matter Quest Review: Setting A New Standard For Mobile VR Visuals". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/red-matter-quest-review/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  29. ↑ "Red Matter". Red Matter official site. Vertical Robot. https://redmattergame.com/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
  30. ↑ Harry Baker (2022-08-18). "Red Matter 2 Review: Stunning Visuals Drive An Engaging Sci-Fi Sequel". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/red-matter-2-review/. Retrieved 2026-09-20.
Retrieved from "https://vrarwiki.com/index.php?title=Red_Matter&oldid=42192"