Perception "takes information" from the player

We caught up with The Deep End Games' Amanda Gardner at PAX East to find out more about the promising horror game Perception where you play as a blind girl named Cassie.

"Perception is a first-person horror narrative about a blind woman who can use echo location like a bat," says co-founder and writer Amanda Gardner. "She's exploring a haunted mansion from her nightmares. The more noise you make, the more you can see. But the more noise you make, you're in a haunted mansion, so don't make a lot of noise!"

The Deep End Games is made up of AAA industry veterans, many coming from Irrational Games and having worked on the Bioshock series. Perception represents something different, something where there is definitely a sense of scaling things back to achieve a less is more effect of sorts.

"I'm probably going to butcher this quote, but Stephen King says something to the effect of: the enemy of horror is information," says Amanda Gardner. "So we've taken a lot of information from you. You're playing in the dark very much. And when you do make noise you are threatening yourself essentially. So it's a really fine balance of 'do I want to see what's in the next room?'. But at the same time we make it a fun gameplay mechanic so it sort of works on a couple of levels."

Perception is due out on PC, PS4, and Xbox One later this year (no firm release date as of yet).