Echolocation horror Perception coming in May
BOO!
Perception [official site], the first-person spookhouse horror starring a woman who sees with Daredevil-style echolocation, now has a release date: May 30th. We'll get to explore an abandoned mansion, investigating something spooky which has lurked for generations, by making noises which send out soundwaves we can magically convert to eerie images. Oh, and of course the horrors haunting the mansion are attracted to sound. Great. Good. Lovely. See in this trailer:
Cassie will be tripping across history as she investigates too. Because it's not bad enough being trapped in the present with awful hooded figures who are surrounded by swarms of moths, no, we'll end up in the past with awful puppets too. This looks good and terrible.
As for how it actually plays, that GameSpot mob last month whacked up a 25-minute gameplay video for people who don't mind spoilers. I'd guess that's at the start of the game, hence all the prompts and hints:
I do like the look of that nonsensical magical echolocation. Tapping Cassie's stick sends out waves which build into fleeting images, and of course some things in the world make noise too (and other things seem to show up simply cos video games). It's a neat stylistic touch dovetailing nicely with noise attracting monsters. One of the Kickstarter stretch goals Perception hit was for a mode where Cassie doesn't have a stick, only her footsteps to make sound, which sounds great/awful.
May 30th it is. That's just under two years after The Deep End Games, a gang of (mostly) former BioShock folks, successfully crowdfunded it - later than initially planned, but not a bad turnaround as Kickstarter games go.