[PAX East 2016] Blind preview: Seeing with sound

Echolocation is an intriguing concept. The ability to “see” your surroundings by bouncing sound waves around and interpreting size and shape is something that many animals (bats, dolphins) have evolved to master for millions of years. Some humans utilize the trait as well, usually developed because of childhood sight issues and created by clicking their mouths or stomping their feet. The result is astounding, effectively giving a new sense to those without vision.

Blind, the latest virtual reality game from developer Tiny Bull Studios, uses this construct as its central mechanism. And while it bends the idea of what echolocation is, it’s at least successful in one aspect of its premise: I was definitely blind, it was definitely dark, and at times I was definitely unnerved.

Oh, and it was definitely one of the better implementations of VR I had yet experienced.

Blind throws us into the shoes of a young woman, awakened in a strange mansion after being run off of the road in her car. She’s blind now, unable to see anything and with no recollection of how she got to where she is, and with a daunting present situation: make it out of the mansion alive.

In order to do so, the game mixes horror with puzzle solving, much like a modern escape room at an amusement park or the Room series of iOS games. Solve problems within an area and move on to the next. And while that premise isn’t necessarily the newest in video gaming, the utilization of VR is what sets this apart. Everything is dark; it’s pitch black so that we lose our sense of motion. Look to the left and it’s dark, look to the right, still dark. Hopelessness is a predominant cloud hovering over us.

It could lead to a very unnerving, anxiety-inducing feel — if it wasn’t for the actual echolocation aspect.

Almost instantly after we awake we’re given a cane, controlled by one of the triggers of the Xbox gamepad that controls our motion. Tapping the ground engulfs the room in a blaze of light, settling on the flat-shaded outlines of objects to give us the lay of the room. Eventually those outlines fade away and the room returns to darkness. This helps us make our way through the area, find keys and unlock doors, traverse dark, sometimes terrifying hallways, and even solving brain-bending puzzles in rooms that require multiple solutions.

And while the concept is genuinely interesting, it doesn’t quite capture the reality of echolocation. For all intents and purposes, the cane tap lights up the room completely, returning sight to us even though devoid of color. We can see everything, every detail of every object and every sheet of paper, every bit of text etched into a wall. Tapping the cane is the equivalent of activating a black & white flare. Echolocation doesn’t do that. Echolocation will only give us semblances of objects, with us required to interpret those shapes for ourselves. That helpless feeling that I was expecting isn’t really there. And so the effect is a bit jarring and unrealistic.

However, this *is* a video game. We don’t know anything about our protagonist’s situation and her seemingly instant ability to echolocate and make her way through her surroundings without fumbling around through the dark. We know as little as she does, having only recently awoken for who knows how long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgu8iGEcrjU

When I wasn’t blinded by cane-created light, I was engulfed in darkness, unsure of where I was or how I was going to make my way around. This, combined with the genuine trickery of the audio to make me turn my head in real space and hope there wasn’t someone there, was a smart use of the technology. I was afraid, yet fully engulfed in the fear around me and even looking forward to it.

Blind is a compelling usage of virtual technology. I’m curious to see (no pun intended!) how the plot unfolds and how the enjoyable puzzles continue to become more challenging. It releases later this year for PC and Oculus Rift.