No video game genre demands the same attention to sound as the Horror genre does. In horror games, sound is crucial, not just as gameplay cues for the player, but to create an immersive atmosphere. Sure, the same could technically be said of any video game genre. After all, nothing cues you into an enemy Genji ult in Overwatch than a “Ryuujin no ken wo kurae!” In horror games however, every single sound, not just the big ones, matter. So much so that even silence can be terrifying.

The one thing that probably kept horror players going was the fact that you could at least scream at each jumpscare. Or scream at every single thing. After all, it’s not like screaming in real life will bring the in-game enemies down on you, right?

Gattai Games’ Stifled takes that very comforting premise, and throws it right out the window.

You can hear them, but you can’t scream

A “sound-based stealth-thriller” game, Stifled takes the sounds you make in real life, and recreates them in the game. And no, you can’t just mute the mic to stay safe either. Sound in Stifled becomes more than just atmospheric, it becomes an invaluable tool for survival, but also your potential downfall.

Gattai Games’ Andre described the game as “1 part mystery, 1/2 tablespoon “less-than-acrobatic” Daredevil simulator, and a sprinkle of nightmare fuel for good measure.” If you asked us, that “sprinkle” of nightmare fuel is more like an entire bucket.

From Lurking to Stifled

Stifled is the spiritual successor to Lurking, a game that was developed over a course of 6 months in Singapore’s Digipen Institute of Technology. Lurking won the Best Student Game and Excellence in Technology awards at IGF China in 2014, was a SOWN nominee at the 2014 Tokyo Game Show, and Gamer’s Voice Nominee at SXSW 2015.

Spiritual successor though it is, don’t expect Stifled to be just an expanded version of Lurking. Andre explained that Lurking was a short, mechanics-driven proof of concept/experience. While Stifled kept some of the basic ideas, it’s fundamentally a full narrative experience. He admitted that the narrative aspects weren’t something the Gattai Games team was very experienced with, but that they wanted to challenge themselves.

Gameplay

In Stifled, sounds made by your character and you the player (through microphone input) are what reveals the otherwise hidden world you have to navigate. It functions somewhat like a bat’s echolocation, or Matt Murdock’s powers in Daredevil. Undue noise, however, will attract the attention of creatures lurking in the darkness. To survive, you will have to tread the very, very fine line between making sounds to see, and staying quiet and therefore hidden.

After all, in Stifled, they hear your fear.

When asked about the potential sadism of the developers in coming up with a concept like this, Andre admitted, “We might have a teensy bit of a mean streak in us. We like to watch our players squirm while trying not to scream, and tend to cackle and trade high fives when they fail horribly.”

It does seem like Stifled was meant to purposely vex horror game players who sing or make jokes to distract themselves. If you think this sounds deliberate, it was. Gattai Games wanted to turn players’ voices into both a boon and a curse, clearly.

Perception?

You might be thinking, wait this sounds familiar. Perception, which comes out later this month, is similar to Stifled on a superficial level. Both games use echolocation in place of traditional sight. However, the horror in Perception looks to be more supernatural, while Stifled is more visceral. Stifled’s inclusion of microphone support also takes the sound-driven horror up to a whole new (real-life) level.

It’s one thing to hear your character breathe heavily through their terror, and another thing entirely to see how your own shallow breathing affect the gameplay.

And a whole different thing altogether to see how your own shrieks of terror in real life bring the monsters down on you.

Dedication to the gaming experience

One of the things that those who followed the development of Stifled might have noticed was the delayed release date. For those wondering about the reasons behind it, the original update post on Steam mentioned that they wanted to make the game more than just “good enough.” When asked for more detail, they explained that “you can’t really argue against ensuring that players’ experience is as good as you can reasonably make it.”

So over the past few months, the Stifled team has been working on ironing out the small details and making the game feel as polished as possible. For example, Stifled will also be available on the PlayStation VR. With the transition to VR, one of the biggest challenges that Gattai Games faced was adapting the first-person control scheme for VR without any of the accompanying nausea.

Two of our writers went down to try the game, and didn’t come back green-faced and throwing up, so we can probably assume that most of the nausea issues were worked out.

Casual Connect – Best Game Design & Most Innovative Game

The game was nominated for and won several awards at Casual Connect Asia last week.

Nominations

• Best Game Audio
• Best Game Design
• Most Innovative Game

Wins

• Best Game Design
• Most Innovative Gaming

What next?

Stifled doesn’t have a release date fixed yet. However, a small part of the team is already working on prototypes for their next project. As Andre put it, “We at Gattai Games are always focused on developing novel and quality experiences that are genre-agnostic”. So keep an eye out for Stifled, and on whatever Gattai Games has to offer in the future!

Stifled will be available on the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One, and on Steam, with support for the PlayStation VR, Oculus, and Vive VR headsets.

The post Stifled – They Can Hear Your Fear appeared first on Reboot Reload.