Perception Review

Perception is an experimental horror game whose ideas work better conceptually than they do mechanically. Playing as blind girl Cassie, you explore a mansion from your dreams, use your Super Blind Girl powers, and attempt to avoid a hostile ghostly threat.

The game’s unique hook is that as a blind person, Cassie and therefore the player can only see via echolocation. Whacking your cane against a surface provides a temporary aura of vision and other sounds such as wind or radio static also provide an aura of vision around them. The echolocation mechanic is unique to my knowledge and in theory seemed like it would be a great mechanic that not only functions as an intriguing aesthetic but also has gameplay implications and can lead to great moments of horror. In theory, this should have happened. In reality, it did not.

Perception unfortunately was not a particularly scary experience, but what is worse is that it was just tedious. I don’t know if it was a brilliant commentary on the difficulty of living without vision or just a side effect of an unfortunate mechanic. Regardless, moving around that house in the game was monotonous. You couldn’t see, the house was a maze of doors and rooms, and the echolocation barely provided enough to facilitate your travels. If it wasn’t for Cassie’s second Super Blind Girl power, the ability to intuitively know where her next goal was, the game would have literally been a “shambling around the dark” simulator.

Frustration and tedium aside, the game looked great and I’ll give it credit for its creativity in design and style. The blue hues and pulsating aura of vision, the way objects weren’t fully visualised with small details unseeable by Cassie – it was pretty impressive. I also still like the idea of the echolocation mechanic and really hope this game inspires others to work harder to make the concept work better.

The house at times also shifted and the same rooms you had previously visited had now changed to more closely resemble a war zone or a carnival, for instance. These were often great moments in the game with the shift in style not only functioning as a great way to break up the sameness of the house, but also facilitate storytelling sequences and replicate the surroundings certain ghostly characters inhabited.