Cone of Confusion V1
An Independent Study Project
Cone of Confusion is a game demo about listening. I was originally planning on making a sound based horror game, but I decided to shift my focus to something that more closely resembled the meditative act of field recording.
The game demo is very specific in what it allows the player to do. There is no movement, no enemies, no story, no "objective". The game provides you with a single tool. The audio probe. The probe is aimed using your right hand, and a pink line shows where you are aiming.
The pink sphere at the end of the line shows where you are listening to. I wanted the game to recreate the feeling of focus achieved from directional audio recording. The ability to cut out the rest of the world and listen to a single object. The game takes this to the next level, by removing the restrictions of the physical world from the ability to listen. Anywhere the probe goes, you will be able to listen to what is close to it. This allows the player to listen very closely to things they would not be physically able to reach in the real world.
I decided to take the abstract theme of the listening and apply it to the world as well. The game takes place in a twilight forest with square trees and an eerie pink sky. By creating an abstract world for the game to take place in, I was also able to bring together much more creative interpretations of animals and their sounds. This helps to negate the creative restrictions I would have if I were to create a more realistically based environment. Having the world be abstract allows the animals and their sounds to be much more abstract as well.
The forest is also quite purposefully bare. with barren floors and simple shapes, it stands in stark contrast to the animals that inhabit it. It was important to strike the correct balance of otherworldly, and yet familiar, whilst also making sure that it was not the main focus of the player. The creatures are the main focus of the game, and so they are made from vibrant colours. There are six creatures in the game.
The Jelly
The Spider
The elephant
The Emu
Birds
and a giant flying snake
The creatures were created by taking animated 3D models of animals, removing their rendering component, and putting trail renderers on their bones. This creates shapes that only exist when the creature moves. Having the shape of the creatures change slightly over time adds to the abstract composition of the game environment.
My game demo enters into the space of games using sound as a main mechanic for interacting with the world. There are not many games in this genre, but two that stand out are "Stifled" and "Blind". Although my main mechanic changed to better represent my artistic desires, these two games and the way their main mechanic relates to gameplay is what led me to creating a sound based game.
Both Stifled and Blind use sound as a way to visualise their environments, they rely on the player making noise to light up their surroundings and show them the way. I found this a very limited and trivial response to the question of making a sound based game, so the game I have made specifically demonstrates what can be done with very little interaction from the player. The player should not make noise at all, in my game the player's job is to listen.
This also contrasts with a level from "Half Life: Alyx" where the player is making their way through an abandoned distillery avoiding a monster that follows sound. The player has to be mindful of the noise they create as well as throwing bottles to distract the monster. This game also uses sound as a way of interacting with the world, but it does not recreate the same type of active listening that I made the main focus of my game demo.
From my research I was not able to find a game that uses player interaction with audio in the same way as I have. There may be an indie game or game demo out there, but I was unable to find it. There is however the genre of walking simulators. Games like "Firewatch" and "Dear Esther". These are both narrative games, but offer long sections for the player to wander around the world taking in the environment. They offer a similar experience to my game demo but in a different context. Both games are heavily focused on their environment and how that reinforces their stories. Firewatch in particular uses its geographic location, the wilderness of Wyoming, to isolate the player, forcing them to taking in the world around them. This is similar to what I was trying to achieve with my demo. Whilst I was not trying to isolate the player, I made a choice to reduce one part of the environment to increase the interaction with a different bit. Further development could definitely be used to explore whether or not audio environments could be used to create a similar narrative experience.
On a technical level I have not seen any other game creating a system where the audio listener is detached from the player. But there are very successful games that take an approach similar to mine but with visuals. This leads me to conclude that there is a definite space in the industry for more games with sound as their leading mechanic, as well as a clear artistic space for games built around meditative processes like active listening.