Perception had an interesting premise—you controlled a blind woman navigating a haunted house using echolocation—but failed to impress thanks to its cut-and-paste environments and lack of inventive scares. Developer The Deep End Games this week attempted to address some of the horror game’s big issues with an update that adds two new difficulty modes, boosts the frame rate, streamlines the plot and reworks the checkpoint system.
In floats a ‘Story’ mode in which the main character can’t die, so you can explore freely. On the other end of the spectrum is the ‘Scary’ mode, which makes the game’s main enemy more dangerous and gives you less health. The original version of the game is remastered as a ‘Spooky’ mode that sits somewhere in the middle.
A new warning system means the house changes colour as enemies get closer to you, which should mean you’re better prepared for what’s about to come (and could ramp up the tension).
The developer has added new dialogue, too, and moved some of the story beats around to clarify the plot, including at the end of the game. The haunted house has more checkpoints now, so if you die you’ll respawn closer to the action—that should mean you’re spending less time trekking through rooms you’ve already seen.
It sounds like it might not address the game’s main problem—that its ideas get old fast—but I suppose if you were on the fence then this could tip you into a purchase. There’s a 35% discount until November 15, and it costs £11.69/$14.94 on Steam.
Read the full notes from the update here.