Night Terrors Turns Your House Into a Spooky House
As a kid, I used to create little stories in my head when I was bored. I had a wandering mind, so I’d frequently create elaborate plans on how to escape from a horde of ninjas given my surroundings, or picture how all the players on the football field would fare against a dragon. Many a grown-up event was sat through by imagining two armies battling it out in the middle of the room. It never really left me, which probably explains a lot about me.
The downside is that I frequently became convinced that the place I inhabited was haunted. I was usually fine for a few days in a new place, but as soon as my mind got used to it, I became convinced that there were monsters and ghosts around every corner. Fun Fact: I still sleep with my sheets over my head as a kind of habit. Also, it keeps the Yeerks out of my ears.
Well, good news, because the good people at Novum Analytics are turning my childhood trauma into a video game! My therapist will be thrilled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQsyr4QX-GU
Using advanced algorithm space magic that might as well be witchcraft, the developers aim to turn your house into a more haunted version of your house. Check out their Indiegogo page here for more info on their tech and design philosophy. There’s a lot of info there, and if I had the technical know-how to decipher it all for you guys, I wouldn’t be making dick jokes on the internet for a living.
It all sounds a bit too good to be true, and I’ve been burned before from the sweet promises of crowdfunded sirens, but the tech demos are pretty impressive. As of this writing, it has already gotten $1,335 of its $70,000 goal in just 10 hours, so with 40 days to go, it will probably make it. As the lead developer says early in his pitch video, “Why doesn’t a true augmented reality horror game exist yet?” The answer to this question has always been a lack of technology, but the team looks like they might actually go the distance with this one.
Now, getting into my wheelhouse of the scary bits, the game does have a great practical effects design. To be blunt, this is a game that will likely utilize a lot of jump scares, so it is nice to know that the creepy things lunging at me will look good and not like bad .JPEGs. So far, the scares look impressive, so I am eager to see how it will actually pan out as a final product.
Another cool factor is the game’s use of the properties of the phone to deliver scares. Using the microphone to track ambient sound in the room, the output from the headphones will sound like it is coming from a direction that the visual mapping indicates is a place sound could actually be coming from. Walking by a hallway might prompt a growl from your right, which when turning reveals a spooky skeleton. Think that kind of thing, and never sleep again.
What got me the most excited was the creative yet basic use of lighting. The game has to be played in the dark, using the phone’s LED as the sole light source. This allows the game to tweak the brightness as it needs to scare you, which I hope means more than just turning off and on again with Kayako all up in my grill. It’s a simple concept, but one that could have easily been overlooked.
So if this sounds like your kind of thing, which it probably does because you are reading an article on Dread Central, then go check out their Indigogo page and toss them a few bucks. For just 5 bucks you get the full game on release, so what’s the harm? Lets make this Night Terrors dream a reality!
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
