Blind Man's Walk (game idea)

Most games in this day and age rely extensively on sight. And while many games require attention to the sounds around you or an appreciation of the music created, few if none require you to play the entire game blind, with only sound cues. As such, I thought it would be interesting to come up with a game that required you to entirely use you hearing ability. This post will be filled with 4 sections: Story and setting, objectives, gameplay, art and sound design.

Story, setting:

The story of Blind Mans Walk takes place in the old city of Venice during 1912. The main character would be an old begger who needs to make his way across town in order to see his son who has returned from the Italio-Turkish war. Across the way the character will have to interact with shop owners and pedestrians for directions to the docks, gangs who wish to rob him blind, and difficult terrain.

Objectives:

The game would effectively take place in an linear world where the player would have to deal with multipul obstacles in the same manner as an roll playing game. Essentially the game would be a mostly linear game where areas you enters entrances would be blocked off by a crowd, so as to make sure the player would remain going forward and focused on the objective. The objectives would consist of stealth interactions, verbal interactions, pathfinding interactions, and physical interactions. Stealth interactions would have you entering an area you weren't supposed to by accident or being chased by gang members and essentially ending up way over your head. Verbal interactions would have you discussing one thing or another with shop owners, either buying food, asking for directions, or trying to beg for money.

Pathfinding interactions would be your bread and butter, using audio cues around you in order to find your way through the streets of Venice. Physical interactions would be a way of interacting with your environment, locking or opening door, pushing boxes in paths, climbing ladders, or more passive events like avoiding the waters edge on the docks or making sure not to stumble into a musical actor causing a scene.

Gameplay:

In terms of the gameplay sound orientation and sound effects would be key. Crowds would have to be placed in almost every area to provide a major sound for the player to orient themselves. A surround system would have to be very carefully detailed so that the player could tell where everything is. The player would also have to make dicisions when talking, instead of on screen prompts telling the player what he could say like in mass effect, the buttons on the computer keyboard or the console controller could give generalisations as to what you could respond with: threat, beg, reason, joke. The stealth sections would have an audible cue to tell you that someone was looking for you and the people looking would exclaim that they thought they saw/heard something in order to clue in the player. Stealth sections would only start after the player has explored for a decent amount of time in order to aclimate them with the environment. A tutorial would have to teach the player what each of these buttons do. It would be a tutorial with no visuals, just someone telling you what each one did and a little example for you to complete, the tutorial would also help you with stealth. however most of the game play such as pathfinding would have to be learnt in game through trial and error. The seaside or water would lap against the stone your walking next to, shop owners or important characters would talk very loud against the rest of the noise to give you somewhere to go.

Art and sound design:

In terms of art there would actually have to be some of it, minimalistic but it would be necessary for the title screen and options menus unless we wanted to player to fumble around for an hour to voice responses. Place holder character models and wall would have to be put in place so that the programers could see where everything was when testing the game. In terms of music there would be almost none, maybe a little would be added as if there were a band playing in your area. But music that floated everywhere without direction in a game where sound effect direction makes up all of the input. Hundreds if not thousands of voice and sound effect clips would have to be recorded for this game, from the old man crying as he greets his son at the docks to the thud as you walk him face first into a wall.

Anyway, for a rough draft concept this was pretty interesting to write. I would love to write about it more if given the time but for now that is all I have. Thanks for reading.