Developed by The Deep End Games

Published by Feardemic

Available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One

Rated M for Mature

So riddle me this: when does a game stop being “indie?” The term indie hasn’t actually meant “independant” since ever, connoting more of an amateur status, lack of budget, and reliance on ideas over sheer graphical prowess. Perception raised over $150,000 with its Kickstarter. Not Call of Duty money to be sure, but certainly not a passion project cobbled together in their parent’s basement. The Deep End Games is also staffed with ex-Irrational Games employees, veterans of the Bioshock series. Far from inexperienced. And yet, from its reliance on a single central mechanic to the three hour run time, this game feels like it was made by amature devs for a quarter of the price.

In Perception, you play as Matt Murdock, lawyer by day and crime fighting Devil of Hell’s Kitchen by night. Blind from a young age, you are trained by Master Stick to hone your remaining senses to a superhuman level. Together with the rest of the Defenders, you’ll fight The Ha… whoops, wrong superpowered blind person. In Perception, you play as Cassie. Blind from birth, you are trained in the powers of echolocation. Far more realistic!

I kid, as the game does away with the whole “realism” thing pretty quickly. You see, not only is Cassie a bat, she is a psychic bat. Long plagued by dreams of a mysterious mansion named Echo Point (ugh), Cassie embarks to Gloucester, Massachusetts, on a quest to find out just what the heck is going on. Upon arrival, she insists upon going it alone rather than wait for her boyfriend and his functional eyeballs to come help. Upon entering the mansion, it takes about 5 minutes for things to get super ghosty. Upon encountering the first of these spectral visions, Cassie exclaims, “Zoinks! A real life ghost!” Or you know, something equally representative of her genuine shock and terror.

From here, the game swaps between long treks through narrow hallways and more open explorative segments until the credits roll. Even during the open segments, the game still leads you along using Cassies magic psychic objective spotting powers. As Cassie explores around, she’ll learn more about the house’s history and the tragic fate of the inhabitants in four different time periods. This is how the game structures its four chapters. While the location stays the same, the house shifts backwards through time as it tells you its history. To the game’s credit, the four different main ghosts we meet are all very diverse. This is going to be a spoiler free review, but I’ll say that with the exception of Chapter 3 I genuinely enjoyed the variety. They try for some twists and turns, with each story ending up in a very different place than initially hinted.

Cassie herself is the bright point of Perception. Stubborn, a bit sarcastic, driven, and ultimately flawed, she feels like a real character. You can even check the messages on her phone just to find out more about what she’s like in her normal life. There’s a nice little subplot with her boyfriend, but it ultimately never goes anywhere. That being said, the overall story is still incredibly predictable. It never reaches the storytelling depth of other indie narrative games like Gone Home. The ending is also, in the words of the bard, super stupid.

The gameplay is ultimately self-defeating. Having to use sound to echolocate things around you is a unique way to interact with the world, especially from a visual standpoint. Everything in Cassie’s view is just an outline, lacking the detail and color that a sighted person could see. At several points, Cassie has to use apps on her phone to either turn text to speech or send pictures of her surroundings to an interpreter named Nick (another bright point of the game). This works especially well when incorporated with the horror elements. The point where you send Nick a photo, unaware of its disturbing nature, was genuinely tense.

Sounds like praise, doesn’t it? Well, in practice it’s all just made so annoying by the persistently looming threat of “The Presence.” A wraith with menacing claws that sounds like a bunch of locusts voiced by a text-to-speech device, he will hunt you down if you make too much noise. Outside of a few scripted moments, he doesn’t show up if you don’t sprint or tap your cane too much. If he does show up, you can hide in one of the various safe spaces until he departs. Or you can just stand still. He literally never got me in the entire game. When he shows up your whole screen turns red, and if he’s going away it turns yellow. It’s like Don’t Wake Daddy mixed with Red Light, Green Light mixed with crap.

Now I’m all for using the game’s mechanics to limit how you can deal with enemies. This is a staple of the horror genre. Turn off your flashlight so things don’t find you, crouch to sneak, utilize your limited ammo, all examples of constraining the mechanics to make things more tense. What sucks about Perception is that tapping my cane is literally all I do. There’s no creative way I can work around it. I just tap, wait, tap again, wait, and if I tap too many times wait even longer for the spooky wasp monster to go away. It was never fun and constantly frustrating.

Ultimately, Perception is a good idea that they just didn’t do enough with. There aren’t any puzzles beyond fetching keys, and the hide-and-seek mechanics are entirely unnecessary. You’re really only buying this game for the plot. At $23, it really just isn’t worth it. I really hate bashing on horror games that try something new, but I just didn’t have fun. Pick it up when it’s on sale for $10. If you really want to try an echolocation game, just go check out the Stifled demo. It’s free.