Ex-Bioshock Devs Introduce A New Horror Game

If there’s one thing lacking from today’s major video game releases, it’s a solid and terrifying survival horror title. Ex-Bioshock developers have banded together to create the studio, The Deep End Games, and they’ve developed a unique horror game that utilizes echolocation. You can view the terrifying gameplay trailer below.

The project was successfully funded on Kickstarter in November with $168,041 funded of the $150,000 goal. The team is comprised of developer-veterans who have worked on titles like Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite and Dead Space, which all had strong horror elements. So it’s only fair to say these guys know what they’re talking about when it comes to crafting fear in a video game.

In the 90’s and early 2000’s, survival horror was obsessed with a third-person adventure pitted against the most vile, nightmarish creatures of hell, and this can be evident in the Silent Hill, Parasite Eve and Resident Evil series. But today in 2016, survival horror has embraced a new kind of fear, the fear of what you can’t see. The fear of the unknown. The Deep End Games’ new horror title, Perception, centers around a young, blind woman who is plagued by nightmares that lead her into the mysterious, possibly-abandoned Estate at Echo Bluff. What makes this game so unique is that the gameplay is focused on sound. Sound waves act as a means of seeing inside the dark house with the player using echolocation to get around. The player creates sound by beating the young woman’s support cane on the ground, and wherever the sound waves hit is where you can “see”.

You’ll also come to find that environment sounds can create a means of seeing, like the ringing of a clock, which shows your surroundings in spurts like flashes of lightning. You can definitely expect things to appear out of the darkness in your brief moments of sight. The Deep End Games also created a trailer for their retro-inspired version of Perception. From the nostalgic arcade blips and bleeps to the 8-bit graphics and cheesy soundtrack, it’s a truly entertaining approach to a seemingly modern horror story. You can check it out below.

The Deep End Games haven’t announced a specific release date, but did mention on their Kickstarter it was slated for a June 2016 release window.