An echolocation thriller using Bioshock tactics
Horror hides best in darkness. Nightmares lurk in the shadows under our beds, or inside wardrobes, where the glow of a light bulb just doesn’t reach. But now, imagine a world only of darkness – a world without sight. This is what Perception’s blind heroine Cassie is faced with, but she sees in another way, through incredible hearing and an echolocation technique that fills in the world with shifting, glowing outlines. Sound like something special? It is.
Those pesky ex-Bioshock devs get everywhere – this Kickstarter success is from ex-Irrational Games design director Bill Gardner. It stars young teen Cassie, as she explores a haunted estate that she’s previously only seen in her dreams. From a first person perspective that is, from what we’ve seen, already frankly terrifying, she must investigate the mysteries inside the house, armed only with her cane and her wits. It’s no mean feat, but actually not outside the realms of real-life possibility.
Echo lark
“After deciding to move ahead with the idea, I found a lot of hugely inspirational stories,” explains Gardner. “Daniel Kish, for example, has been blind since he was about a year old. He uses echolocation and is able to mountain bike! I had the pleasure of having dinner with him during the Kickstarter campaign, and he was a big help. He runs an organization called World Access For The Blind, which teaches blind people how to echolocate, among other things. So, I learned a ton from our research.”
In Perception, sounds become visuals that ripple across the the screen like water when Cassie taps her cane. The rest of the world is lit with eerie blue outlines. “One of the tricky parts of echolocation was finding the right balance between what’s going to feel right for a game, and how echolocation actually works,” ponders Gardner. “Obviously, we’re taking liberties. Our goal is to capture what using echolocation might feel like. Part of that was deciding how much of the world we show. We found that if we denied too much information, people started to become frustrated. As for the aesthetic, that was also tricky to get right. I wasn’t really able to find a resource that detailed what echolocation ‘looked’ like. I researched various ways to visualize sound. I found things like Schlieren physics, which visualizes heat and sound in amazing ways, and was a big inspiration for the actual tap effect.”
As we experience everything through Cassie, alone in a haunted house of nasties, it was vital for the team that her character was written just right. And our favourite vampire slayer might have had a part to play in her witty chatter. “Buffy is probably my main inspiration, and that’s across all my work. I am a Whedonite and a half, and I just really love his writing style and his ability to balance strength, humor, weakness, and quirk in all his most memorable characters,” confirms writer Amanda Gardner. “I’ve tried to imbue Cassie with all of these traits from the get-go, so that she could be as human as I could make her. She’s flawed, but strong. She’s insecure, but amazingly brave. I love Cassie, and I love what Angela Morris, our voice actress, brings to her character. I’d also say that a very close second for Cassie’s inspiration would be Starbuck from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Starbuck doesn’t give a fig, she’s bold and brash, but she has such heart and such depth. I want Cassie to be as complex, and I want her to be the type of character you’d want to have a drink with, much like Starbuck.”
Inside the estate of Echo Bluff, Cassie gradually uncovers a mystery that transports her through time and the various eras of the house. It means that the whole game can take place in one location, but we’ll constantly be exploring new areas – all the while being hunted by a mysterious, cloaked figure known as the Presence. “We have this hundreds of years old house, and you’re going to get to see a lot of it,” teases BIll. “You’re going to build this relationship with the mansion, and see it change as the house changes. As for which eras you’ll visit, that’s spoiler-ville, so you’ll have to pardon the inelegant dodge. I will say that New England has a very rich history, and it’s been tremendous fun to explore various aspects of it.”
Cane saw
Even exploring the house is packed with jump scares, as pipes blast, floors creak underfoot, and clocks tick menacingly in the background. Add in the floating monster and it’s a new kind of exercise in fear, as sound takes precedent. As with all good horror, Gardner has many classic inspirations. “The Shining and The Thing were the two biggest influences for me, both for the project and for my love of horror in general,” he says. “As you explore Echo Bluff, I hope you’ll feel a lot of the history of the mansion, the same way you felt it in the Overlook Hotel. Similarly, Perception plays with the same themes of isolation as both films. As for games, the Fatal Frame series has always been a favorite of mine, for the feelings of vulnerability it creates in you. And narratively, the depth of Silent Hill 2 has always stuck with me.”
And, once again, we’re going to be high and dry without any kind of weaponry to take on the creatures of the night? Buffy always at least had a stake! “That’s a good observation – the odds are definitely stacked against you, but it’s important for that to never bleed over into frustration,” considers Bill. “My goal is to make it feel like Cassie and the player are being clever, and finding a way to narrowly avoid death.” Get ready for a whole new way of seeing – or not seeing – the world, next summer.