It’s not uncommon for horror games to make use of darkness to instill a sense of dread and discomfort in the players, but no game pushes it in a manner that Perception does. You play as a young woman, Cassie, who is blind, and your only means of seeing anything is by tapping a cane on the ground and then being able to form a rough image of your surroundings via echolocation.
Led by a series of nightmares, Cassie decides to go to New England to investigate a mansion with some mystery to it. Once she arrives at the mansion and starts prodding around, she discovers supernatural forces at play that are clearly hostile to her. With her only means of seeing being translating sounds to images, you are always wary of every single sound playing around. Tapping your cane creates a hazy view of your vicinity that fades away quickly after the sounds stop. You’ll find yourself tapping away frequently in order to keep seeing and exploring. However, making noise also attracts the wrath of the hostile ‘presence’ in the mansion, and this mechanic can get annoying while having to navigate while trying to avoid making any noise, and thus being not able to see much.
It’s not just the tapping of your cane that enables you to see, but other noises as well, like the sound of you running, or the sounds of a television, etc. This form of echolocation is probably Perception’s biggest strength, specially when it comes to scaring the player. Turning a corner in pitch darkness and tapping the cane to have some freakish imagery in front of you feels genuinely scary, unlike the usual jump scare.
However, horror is not the main focus of the game, with the ‘presence’ only making an appearance around 7-10 times during my 6 hour long playthrough. And the game is not too difficult either, with a major focus on exploration. Perception is made by Deep End Games, a development studio consisting of some folks from Irrational Games, ie., Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite. Their intent of telling an intriguing story, fueled by narrative-driven exploration is clear from the early moments of the game. For the most part you’ll be piecing together clues by interacting with objects, with occasional puzzles adding to the gameplay.
It’s clear that a fair bit of research has gone into understanding the nuances of being blind, and it’s shown by the fact that Cassie has a text-to-speech app that helps her read letters she finds, can take pictures and send it over the phone to an operator who then describes it to her, and even the echo location mechanism is based on real experiences. All of this leads to a believable presentation of what it might feel like to be blind.
The story is told across four chapters, taking you across four time periods from the house’s past. While they are not strongly connected to each other, they stand well on their own, and often surprised me with unexpected outcomes and endings. They do finally all tie together as a cohesive whole. Some gameplay elements introduced later in the game do clash with how the game portrays Cassie’s persona, but none of that holds back Perception from being a really interesting game, with a unique take on first person exploration and horror.
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