14 DAY TRIAL // Some of the talented developers from Irrational Games, the makers of the BioShock series, are busily working on something new, an interesting video game titled Perception.
Perception is a first-person horror game in which you play the role of a blind woman on a personal quest to investigate a haunted mansion, and employs several intriguing mechanics such as echolocation.
The game comes from Bill Gardner, who worked at Irrational for 12 years, and whose most notable creations are the Welcome to Rapture, Medical Pavilion and Fort Frolic levels, in the first BioShock title.
Those levels had a profound horror influence, and relied on pacing and tension more than on brute force, and the developer wanted to convey that same sense of dread in Perception.
The video game puts you in the shoes of Cassie, a young blind woman suffering from mysterious visions. Plagued by them, she investigates their source, and locates a strange abandoned mansion somewhere in New England.
Cassie uses a special interpretation of echolocation in order to see, and gamers will be able to navigate through the game by way of visualizing sound. It's a pretty neat trick that also powers the relentless vigilante superhero known as Daredevil, and you can see it at work in the gameplay video below.
Now, with it being a horror game, there are bound to be some darker elements to the story.
Less fighting villains, more sneaking around and investigating
While Cassie, much like Matt Murdock, can thump her cane in order to see a brief, detailed visualization of her immediate surroundings, a more refined version of the way she already sees the world, that noise can also attract the mysterious presence that inhabits the abandoned mansion.
Cassie is on the run, trying to uncover the secrets of the place, while eluding the incorporeal enemy, and players will be able to cause aural distractions that get the presence off their tail, just like in Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation.
The entire experience is narrative driven, and Cassie can also use her phone to call the help of a friend who can describe certain objects or environmental pieces in more detail. The journey will see you going through various points in time, investigating the evil presence in each generation of former inhabitants, and then trying to right the wrong that has been done there.
Perception is slated for a 2016 release on Steam, and is currently undergoing a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.
