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Five years ago, we wrote about how the visual effects in Returnal came to life, including the real-time voxeliser that dissolved Phrike into volumetric fog. If you haven’t read it, that post is a good companion to this one. This is how that story continues. With Saros, we didn’t just extend what we’d built for Returnal. We stepped back, looked at thirty years of accumulated engine development, and rebuilt it as a unified framework: Graphite. What we had, and why we changed it Our proprietary particle engine, NGP (Next-Gen Particles), started as a prototype for Resogun in 2013 and grew with every game since, all the way to Returnal. By SAROS, NGP was mature, but it was also a product of twelve years of incremental decisions, each one made in the context of a specific, isolated game. Then something else changed: us. Joining PlayStation Studios meant delivering experiences at the level our players expect, and our tools, and the names we’d given them, no longer matched the studio we were becoming. Enter Graphite. It brings GPU simulation, rendering, tooling, and DCC integration under one architecture, built directly for PlayStation hardware. NGP didn’t disappear, it became part of Graphite, evolved and more capable than ever. Every Housemarque game has a visual identity players recognise immediately. Graphite is what makes that possible. And what it actually does, frame by frame, is best explained by the incredible people who built it: Housemarque Graphics Architect Sharman Jagadeesan and Senior Graphics Programmer Konsta Toivanen will walk you through the volumetric fog in Saros: how it evolved from Returnal, and the two systems we built to make Carcosa’s atmosphere feel alive. Risto Jankkila (VFX Architect) will explain how we extended Graphite with data from Houdini, including a full breakdown of the player spawn sequence. Volumetric fog Fog in games is often an afterthought, something that fills empty space and hides draw distances. In Saros, we wanted it to be a living part of the world, reacting to everything happening in it. In Returnal, our volumetric fog was already reactive, but too low frequency, and heavy temporal filtering kept it from showing fine detail. For Saros we built two complementary solutions: low frequency fog for ambient atmosphere, and high frequency fog for the character effects seen in special story rooms in Carcosa. Low frequency fog We took Unreal Engine’s froxel fog, a frustum-aligned voxel grid, as a starting point and rebuilt significant parts of it to meet our vision. The first challenge was temporal stability. The hysteresis coefficient controls how much of the previous frame’s data the fog holds onto: Unreal’s default of 90% keeps the image stable but makes the fog sluggish on fast-moving cameras and lights. We pushed it down to 50%, using blue noise jitter and depth clamping to keep the resulting aliasing under control. Saros also needed fog that could represent everything from low density ambient mist to high density ground fog. To render these faithfully we used: A dual Henyey-Greenstein phase function, modelling how light scatters forward and backward through the fog depending on viewing angle. A coloured absorption coefficient, determining how much light is absorbed as it travels through a medium, for a far wider range of colours than traditional monochromatic solutions. A self shadowing system that aggregates incoming light sources into a dominant shadowing direction and ray-marches toward it. A physically based sky lighting integral, for accurate distant lighting without sacrificing performance. Together these gave Carcosa’s atmosphere a grounded, physical quality. Finally, the low frequency fog is fully interactive. Advection from our player-following fluid simulation feeds directly into the density hysteresis step, making every player movement, projectile, explosion, and enemy readable in the fog in real time. High frequency fog For the high-frequency fog we built a custom ray marcher. To keep performance in check while preserving fidelity, we cluster the scatter data into 8x8x8 voxel groups before marching, drawing only the clusters that contain data, with a user-defined threshold keeping their number in check. While marching, empty regions between clusters get skipped, letting the marcher take larger steps where it can. For lighting, we evaluated a light volume per scatter volume, containing irradiance from all light sources, with pre-marched self-shadowing for every light voxel. We exposed parameters for albedo, absorbance, density, and shadowing, letting artists balance visuals against performance for each volume. The two fog systems are then merged: we sample the low frequency fog’s scatter data during the high frequency march, and feed results back so both stay consistent with each other. Use cases We used the high frequency volumetric fog in a few scenarios. One use case was in the Prologue in the form of a smoky skull with cables attached to it. Another use case was with what we call Mirages. In four of our biomes there are specific narrative rooms where Arjun is faced with smoke creatures. 1/2Now showing slide 1 of 2Show all View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Fog skull at the beginning of the Prologue View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Four story rooms with Mirages Reactivity is key to all the VFX we make, and these effects were no exception. Since impact data doesn’t need high resolution, we store it in a separate, low resolution volume, which for the skull also holds its low frequency velocity field. The videos below show that volume on the left, and combined with the skull on the right. Impacts are evaluated as a Signed Distance Field that closes back up over time, while velocity is shown in colour, you can see both the impact holes and the turbulence they create. 1/2Now showing slide 1 of 2Show all Here’s the final skull effect without the cables and other secondaries and in a different environment. The mirage effect is similar to the skull effect. The difference is that there are so called mirage “scenes” that rotate. We also used our real-time skeletal mesh voxelizer to bring existing meshes into the scenes. The video below shows a sweep between the voxelized result and the final result with advecting data from the previous frame. Here’s the final effect with rotating two mirage scenes in a test environment. For reactivity, we used the same method described for the skull effect. Extending Graphite with data from Houdini In addition to improving the rendering quality of our volumetric effects we wanted to introduce new ways for our artists to author them. Previously, volumetric effects were created by writing per-voxel expressions for density emission, combined with fluid simulations driving the advection (the directional movement) of the density field. Because this grid-and-voxel approach is the industry standard for film VFX, it was our natural first step as well. From Returnal days: voxelising Phrike into a grid for density emission During Returnal’s development, we realized we needed tighter control over exactly where density is generated. Per-voxel logic let us emit density on nearby surfaces or voxelised meshes, but anything more complex came with severe runtime overhead. Emitting density from just a character’s arm, rather than their whole voxelised body, was very difficult to do efficiently in real time. Also from Returnal: full body density emission from the voxelised mesh To solve this, we turned to particles to drive volumetric density emission. Graphite’s fully programmable particle system gave us a solid foundation for tightly controlled volumes, resulting in two new tools: An Offline Houdini Data Pipeline: lets artists pre-compute complex, high-fidelity data in Houdini that would be too expensive to generate at runtime. A Runtime Point Cloud Rasterizer: a high-performance component that takes simulated points and rasterizes them directly into a volume in real time. Together, these freed us from stateless per-voxel expressions and rigid fluid simulations. Particles can now precisely follow a character’s animated mesh, giving artists full control over an effect’s behavior and lifecycle. In practice, an artist imports an animated Saros character into Houdini and uses its tools to compute starting positions and attributes for an effect. That baked data feeds into the game engine, where real-time simulation takes over. In the video below, points generated in Houdini closely match the in-game character, and custom runtime logic detaches them from the enemy on bullet impact, so initial positions come from Houdini, but the behavior reacts dynamically to the player in real time. Creating point data in Houdini Using point data from Houdini in engine Since artists can export any kind of data from Houdini to Graphite, it’s easy to go beyond static particles attached to characters. Below, particles flow across the surface of an animated mesh: the surface was unfolded in Houdini into a 2D simulation space, then exported and mapped back onto the animated mesh in real time. Particle flow on Arjun’s body on the left. In the middle we extract an ISO surface from the particles. On the right we have volumetric fog emitted from the particle flow. A prime in-game example of this technology in action is the player spawn sequence in Saros. This complex effect is built in multiple layers, starting offline in Houdini, where we generate splines directly onto the player’s skeletal mesh. When exporting these splines into Graphite, we treat each control point along the spline as an individual particle. Simulating particle positions in Houdini. These are only used as target positions in the engine and the growth motion will be re-simulated dynamically during runtime. At runtime, our programmable particle system controls how these elements behave over time. At first, the splines drift freely in space, then gradually guide back toward their target positions on the character mesh. We wanted the player to look like they’re physically reforming from a pool of shifting “goo.” Marching Cubes gave us that viscous, solid-surface look, and controlling it with particles let us build a sequence where the player forms from separate strands into a character. Marching cubes constructed from particle splines Much like the splines that generated the goo surface, we can also emit volumetric density as well. In the spawn sequence we placed a number of particle splines near the player location and spawn volumetric fog from them to simulate rising steam or smoke. Volumetric fog emitted from particle splines As a final touch, we added spark particles that collide with the player character, using a signed distance field computed from the player’s collision capsules. The programmable particle system again gave us flexibility here: the player attracts particles, but once they get too close, the player mesh repels them, helping sell the look of emerging from hot, lava-like liquid. Particles colliding with player capsule SDFs Here’s everything combined. Every element is simulated at runtime, at 60 fps on base PS5, with no baked simulation assets. This lets us ship multiple spawn animations, each with slight randomization so it looks a little different every time the player wakes up. Final player spawn sequence An ever-evolving development journey Reading through what Risto, Sharman, and Konsta broke down here, the goal for us and our technology has always been the same: every simulation, every effect, every rendering decision exists to make you feel something when you play. Making games means believing in something you can’t yet prove, and the only people who can ever confirm it are the players themselves. Saros players told us, in their own words, that what we built mattered. And that means everything to us. Our games will keep informing the technology we develop for Graphite, always showcasing what PlayStation as a platform can do. We can’t wait to share that future with you. View the full article

Hello! I’m Amélie from Miju Games. We’re so excited for you to finally get to try our survival game The Planet Crafter when it launches on PS5 next month. Play Video The Planet Crafter is unlike many of the survival games you’ve played in the past. When we were designing it, we sought to make a chill, non-violent survival experience. The Planet Crafter will still challenge you. The player has to carefully manage needs like oxygen, food, and water; especially early in the game, you can push your limits too far and discover that there’s a fatal result to that. But this isn’t a game with jump scares and monsters. There’s nothing to dread behind that boulder or in the depths of that cave. But there is wonder. We’ve made some big worlds for you to explore, and secrets to uncover. The planets and moons you will find are evolving as you start the long journey to terraform them. When you build heat pumps and drill into a planet’s core to raise the atmospheric pressure and temperature, you’ll find that the changes are more than just cosmetic. Maybe a glacier has melted, revealing a new valley you couldn’t access before. When life starts to take root in your world, perhaps you’ll notice trees growing that provide a bridge to a new location. The Planet Crafter is not a violent game, but we promise that it is full of adventure. One point of inspiration for us when creating The Planet Crafter surprises people when we tell them. We’ve always appreciated idle games, and you’ll find some of that DNA in our game. When you build terraforming machines they keep operating as long as your grid has power. You’re always making progress towards that next terraforming milestone. We think that’s a great way of encouraging you to explore. Let the machines do their thing while you go hunt for relics from a lost previous expedition, prospect for rare minerals in the shards of a fallen meteorite, or get acquainted with the new life forms that you’ve introduced into the world. In The Planet Crafter, things are always getting a little better. We can’t wait to see the bases that you and your friends create in single-player or co-op in The Planet Crafter on PlayStation 5. The worlds we’ve created for you to terraform may be stark and desolate when you first arrive. But with a little effort, we hope you will find that they’re warm and inviting places for you to hang out. Good luck out there, and we hope to see you soon in-game. View the full article

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will launch its final update on June 16, featuring a final story quest which sees Naoe and Yasuke face off against a mysterious pair of Templars and includes a few narrative connections to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. Plus, a whole new endgame feature called Domains will bring new ways for players to test their skills and builds in the ultimate arena. We sat down with Associate Game Director Simon Lemay-Comtois to dig into what Domains is and how it’s designed to break your beloved gear builds. Play Video What is Domains? Simon: Domains is a new Animus-bending activity that remixes some parts of Shadows and puts them into a very different, more fantastical context. It’s basically the final exam for Shadows players who love the RPG elements of the game. It features five maps, known as Domains, and each time you play there will be different modifiers thrown in. You’ll need to switch up your build to suit the map, the challenges, and the modifiers. What kinds of challenges can players expect? Simon: Killing the Daishos in each map will unlock the final boss arena where you will take on one of three corrupted, Animus-altered boss fights, all while dealing with the modifiers. The harder the difficulty, the more modifiers you’ll have to deal with at once, and the more negative modifiers you are likely to get. For example, in the easier challenges maybe you’ll get a health boost, but as you progress the deck becomes stacked against you. We also have Animus Exploits which you can use to nullify some of those modifiers, but if your build and skills aren’t on point, then you’re still going to have a rough time. Are builds unique to Domains? Simon: Builds carry over from the main game and anything you create in Domains will be usable there too, since it uses the same interface. The Animus Exploits can’t be used anywhere else, but equipment that you already have will be accessible in Domains and rewards you get will be accessible in the main game. Although, you might find your existing builds need some tweaking, especially as you get to the higher difficulties. Which modifier is your favorite? Simon: So, there’s one called “Like a Prayer” that creates a circle around you. That circle does damage over time, and breakable objects that end up inside the circle get destroyed: doors, barrels, everything just tearing itself to shreds as you advance through the world. It’s super cool. What rewards can players earn in Domains? Simon: There are a bunch of weapons and equipment that are completely unique to Domains, and you can’t get them any other way than completing the challenges. They’re not for purchase and they’re really a badge of honor for players who meet the challenges. And you won’t want to miss them, especially if you’re a fan of the Assassin’s Creed series. This isn’t a narrative-driven feature, but it does fit within the context of the modern-day, real-world Animus setting. In Domains, you are dealing with a human rather than the AIs you interact with in the main game. MOD is a hacker who breaches the Animus and creates Domains, and if you dig around, ask some questions, and find a few little clues, you will get more context and lore about her and what the future might hold. There’s second-degree knowledge to gain from Domains, even though it’s not a narrative-heavy feature. Is there any map that you think is more challenging than the others? Simon: Oh, they’re all very challenging in different ways. For example, if you’re anxious about limited visual distance, the Whiteout Domain is inspired by the harsh winters of Canada, and it can be somewhat tricky to find your way around. I know Quebec City like the back of my hand, but in a blizzard that all goes out the window. But as you kill more and more Daishos, the weather should react and clear up which is a nice feature I wish I had during those Quebec blizzards. Do you have any advice to help players master Domains? Simon: Don’t sleep on Yasuke – a lot of players have put a ton of time into Naoe, but not so much into Yasuke builds. Sometimes he’s the only valid answer to certain modifiers. The power fantasy of Yasuke maxed out, being able to do everything with all his weapons, is definitely a good strategy for some of those domain runs. Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ final update launches completely free on June 16 on PS5. Make sure to download the latest content to dive into the final chapter of Naoe and Yasuke’s tale and challenge yourself to unlock the exclusive rewards (and associated bragging rights) from Domains. View the full article

Last week, we asked players to share Duality using reflections, opposites, or anything that comes in pairs using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here’s are this week’s highlights: Crimsonashtree shares two different Conor’s in Detroit: Become Human ContinuousGojo shares Cal Kestis undercover in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Mur4dQ shares Mio and Zoe escaping a city in Split Fiction Rorottino shares Sam in a climactic battle in Death Stranding Call_me_xavii shares Atsu and her mother in Ghost of Yōtei Parmindernangla shares Miles and Peter in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme, or be inspired by other great games featuring Photo Mode. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? THEME: Saros SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on June 17, 2026 Next week, Saros takes the spotlight. With the new photo mode update share your favorite moments from exploring Carcosa using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. View the full article

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is a fresh, reimagined take on Lara Croft’s first adventure. I recently played about an hour of Legacy of Atlantis at Summer Game Fest 2026, and saw first-hand how developers Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog are bringing elements from the original game and its first remake, 2008’s Tomb Raider Anniversary, into the modern era. The preview took me to the Lost Valley area in Peru, where I was tasked with solving a new version of Tomb Raider’s iconic cog puzzle. Here, two cogs are needed to reconnect a mechanism that can stop the flow of a nearby waterfall, revealing the door that will let her deeper into the hidden jungle. The mechanism sits in a small pond, and while the first cog is easy to come by, you’ll have to discover the second on your own. Play Video This first portion of the Lost Valley contains no combat, instead putting an emphasis on finding your way through an area full of side paths that can lead you to collectibles and hidden items. Pointedly, Legacy of Atlantis provides little guidance on where to find your missing cog. Instead, you have to use clues in the environment to figure out where to go for yourself. It’s an intentional choice that plays into Lara’s character as an archaeologist and explorer — and finding the right path through the area was, at times, pretty difficult. “If we put you in the boots of Lara Croft, and then hand you a map, or give you Waze directions on where to go, you’re going to feel like, ‘Where’s the challenge in that? Where’s the connection to the character and the headspace that she’s at?'” said Jeff Hays, Experience Director at Crystal Dynamics, during an interview after my session. But Game Director Raul Siqueira at Crystal Dynamics also noted that the team didn’t want to give the impression that Legacy of Atlantis is meant to be a difficult game. Instead, he said, it’s meant to give players the tools they need to create the experience they enjoy, including the ability to increase guidance, and to set the difficulty of puzzles and combat independent from one another. Exploring is its own reward, too. You can find caves by diving down into the pool by hitting Circle while you’re swimming, or discover handholds in walls that lead into ruined buildings, and more. Many of the items to be found yielded rare materials that suggested crafting will be a big part of Lara’s experience, too, although it wasn’t part of the demo. As in the past, Lara is an acrobatic explorer, hanging off and leaping between ledges with X and using a grappling hook to cross large gaps with Triangle. You’ll even sometimes swing between horizontal poles, timing when to hit X to let go at just the right moment. Though it took a while of searching, I eventually found my way to the last gear, stuck to an ancient wooden contraption. I found a path to climb up and swing across to the gear so Lara could kick it loose, knocking it down into the stream so it would flow down to the mechanism below. After aligning the cogs, the ancient machine started working, the waterfall closed off, and Lara made her way through the doors. Moments later, I stepped back into the jungle — only for velociraptors to leap from the foliage and attack. Here, I finally got to fire away with Lara’s classic dual pistols, which unload as you hold down R2. You can either fire the guns one at a time while on the run, or tighten your aim and go full bore by holding L2 while you shoot. The raptors are quick, fearsome predators, heaving themselves at Lara with vicious attacks, and it quickly became clear that the key to combat in Legacy of Atlantis is to stay mobile and aggressive yourself. When you press Circle, Lara will dive, roll, and cartwheel to deftly escape incoming attacks. Between the exploration elements like swinging from poles, Lara’s long jumps, and the acrobatic dodges and dives in combat, Legacy of Atlantis takes on a bit of a throwback feel. Lara has a slight floatiness that gives the impression of how she felt to control in older Tomb Raider games. It’s a fun melding of modern game design and old-school game feel. Verify your age to view this content. Verify your age to view this content. “We did look at combat from the lenses of, like, what did we do during the Survivor era [during the last three games] that made sense for Laura at that time in her life, that may not make sense for Lara at the top of her game, which is where we find her in Legacy of Atlantis?” Siqueira told me. “So we were very conscious of, Lara in combat needs to move the same way that she moves in traversal, she needs to move the same way that she does with her puzzles, it needs to be distinctively hers, it needs to have like all the flourishes that you expect, the acrobatics — everything that you want that power fantasy of Lara Croft to be needs to be present.” Verify your age to view this content. Verify your age to view this content. As you attack enemies, you’ll earn Focus, which you can then spend by hitting R1. Doing so lets Lara do a gymnastic flip while time briefly slows, allowing you to fire your guns while dodging. Siqueira said the developers used Focus to help give players an advantage over enemies, so they wouldn’t feel like Lara’s distinct, acrobatic movements were leaving them vulnerable. After pushing down the path and fighting off a few more groups of dinosaurs, things really took a turn. A massive tyrannosaurus rex burst through the trees, triggering a chase scene as Lara and the raptors both went sprinting away from its snapping jaws. While this was a set piece moment, it was still challenging, requiring me to make a careful leap as Lara went sliding down a muddy hill, or to quickly climb a wall, to avoid becoming a snack. The demo ended soon after on a heart-pumping cliffhanger as the T-rex closed in. During my brief time with it, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis did a lot to capture the old-school feeling of the Tomb Raider series, but with a lot of modern sensibilities. You can leap into Lara Croft’s first adventure yourself when Legacy of Atlantis launches on February 12, 2027. 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