Beyond Infinity

After a remarkable 2016, what’s next for Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi?

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Tetsuya Mizuguchi had a busy time of it in 2016. In its first full calendar year in business, his studio Enhance Games released Lumines: Puzzle & Music, a touch screen-powered spin on his PSP puzzler. And in October, Enhance delivered the defining game of the PlayStation VR launch. Rez Infinite – and in particular Area X, an all-new level that abandoned Rez’s on-rails action in favour of free movement – was, like the original game, an instant classic.

After all that, you’d forgive Mizuguchi and team for putting their feet up a bit. But work has already begun on Enhance’s next project – inevitably, he’s giving little away about that – while the man himself has continued to travel extensively. Yet while last year Mizuguchi and Enhance toured Rez Infinite around the videogame convention circuit, this year the remit has been broader: it says much about the power of Rez Infinite in VR that the game has now been showcased at events such as SXSW and Sundance Film Festival.

A big part of that is the Synaesthesia Suit, the ludicrous, full-body costume with 26 points of vibration that was designed by Mizuguchi and a team of his former students at Keio University. Getting it and the game in front of people with no particular interest in videogames has, Mizuguchi tells us, been inspiring.