Bermuda

[M12]

The protagonist goes on a boat trip with his best friend, Garrick. A storm suddenly strikes, sending the two unconscious.
After waking up, they find themselves in a battleship. A woman named Elpis greeted them. According to Elpis, the storm carried them into the Burmuda Triangle. They now reside in an unforeseen dimension.

A dimension filled with sea demons.

Garrick and the protagonist want out. With Elpis' guidance, they strive to fight their way back onto the surface. But can Elpis be trusted?

Gameplay:
Burmuda Triangle is a shooter, like House of the Dead, Time Crisis, etc. But there's one difference - the game is played with audio instead of visuals. Deep underwater, the demons are difficult to spot with the naked eye. Instead, you must rely on your ears to locate them. Make your way through the levels, and watch the story unfold.

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

[monele]

Charismatic characters. But uh... I have a hard time imagining how it would play ô_o...

[M12]

Thanks for commenting monele. You use headphones to judge which direction the demon is coming from. I have a basic idea, but nothing concrete as of yet. I've never done this before, that's why I wanted to make a post here. Anyone with suggestions, please do share. Thank you. Looking forward to more responses.

[DaFool]

It would be nice if you had a gameplay mechanics demonstration using placeholders or stick figures (I haven't played much of the game examples you mentioned). That way you can refine the system before embarking on graphics.

[monele]

The thing is that it means you'd have some "left-right" differences... but I don't know how easy it would be for a player to translate things into "monster is at 1/4th of the screen". Unless they're big?
Would there ever be two monsters at the same time? What would happen to the sound then? Is it still easy to hear where each of them is?

Things to consider ^^

[M12]

Re: DaFool
Actually, I created some sample graphics for uni, so I can use them. But yeah, good idea, I should create a demonstration.

Re: Monele
Yeah, they will be big monsters.
"I don't know how easy it would be for a player to translate things into "monster is at 1/4th of the screen".
If you hear a monster on the left, you keep turning left until you see the monster. Since they're big demons, hopefully it'll work.
"Would there ever be two monsters at the same time? What would happen to the sound then? Is it still easy to hear where each of them is?"
Yeah, there will be two monsters at the same time. Good point, ideas anyone?

Thanks.

[Vatina]

Maybe make two different sounds for the monsters? Would that work to help tell them apart?
*clueless*

[monele]

Good idea Vatina, it would certainly help some, as you could tell the sounds apart, hence assign a position to each... whereas two identical sounds playing on the left and right at the same time would translate into one loud sound coming from the middle.

I didn't understand that you would be able to turn around, and that you *would* see monsters after all. What happens, then, is that either you see the monster on screen and there's no wondering about anything... or the sound is on the left/right and you'll turn in that direction to see the monster as quickly as possible. Or the sound will be centered, which means, if you can't see it right in front of you, that it's behind you, so you'd turn around (left or right shouldn't matter then).

Btw, what's the danger here ? When do monsters attack?

[M12]

Good idea Vatina. Thanks. But I wonder where I can get the monster sounds from? Anyone with suggestions? Thanks heaps.

Monele - yeah, you can see the monsters. I just want to encourage the players to rely on sound quite a bit. I still don't know how I can do that successfully. Hopefully it won't turn out to be a generic shooter in the end.
When do the monsters attack? Here is the game structure:

- Story sequence, action, story sequence, action. You're trying to get to the surface. Whenever you make your way up, monsters will strike. After every level, you pause at an underwater station for a break. This is where the story unfolds.

I feel like I was a bit quiet with my previous projects. Like, for A Missing Memoir, I hardly said anything before release it. This time, I'd like to let everyone know of my progress, etc. Hopefully that will get more people interested.

Thanks.

[BellosTheMighty]

First off, you misspelled "Bermuda".

Second, I frankly don't see this idea working. For one, it assumes the player has fully-functional headphones, and can distinguish which way the sound is coming from. And there are other problems, some of which have been brought up. Like, how do you deal with multiple enemies? Whether you use different tones or not, tracking multiple noises is going to be difficult for the player- multiple different sounds tend to blend together in the ears, if you know what I mean. Another problem is figuring out how to account for left/right position as well as distance (i.e. from the player).

But the main problem here is that hearing is a very imprecise sense, as far as comprehending your surroundings- it ranks a distant third behind sight and touch. Well, no, that's not entirely true- Marco Polo isn't that hard. But that's a real-world example. With a computer you have to push all that through at most two speakers, which is going to be nigh impossible. I once played an ARG which had a sound maze- you had to navigate it in complete darkness, picking out the sounds of different songs to get to the end. I don't know anyone who was able to solve that puzzle- it may have even been still unsolved when the game shut down. And sound puzzles are frequently complained about by adventure game fans.

I'm sorry, I hate to be a killjoy, but I really think this idea is destined for the "Clever but completely unworkable" pile.

[papillon]

Something that experimental is probably better done as a small free game, not a big thing with a lot of levels.

People are generally willing to try a LOT of strange things if they're free and browser-based (so they don't have to download and run any extra programs). As an experimental game where you just keep fighting monsters based on sound until eventually you fail, with a public highscore board... it could make the rounds as an interesting thing to try.

Honestly, the *best* use for an idea like that would be if you had funding to set up an interactive exhibition... a room with many speakers placed in the right positions to ensure that people got the proper effect. With a home computer setup, you don't know that they have even two working speakers, or where they've placed them...

[M12]

It's not going to be that experimental. The monsters aren't completely invisible. Perhaps Elpis can communicate with the player, telling him/her where the enemies are located. Maybe not. I'm going to work this out. It'll probably end up being more generic. Recently, all my works are apparently not acknowledged. It's disheartening.
Anyway, I hope to draw more pictures for BErmuda.

[musical74]

It's not that your projects aren't acknowledged, it's that we aren't sure what to make of them I'll freely ackowledge the project, just not sure how well you can pull this off. The main danger with a sound-sensitive game like this is it assumes the player has good speakers AND good hearing...so long as they do, it's not really a problem. But for those who have so so speakers or have some difficulty hearing...it may not work.

It does sound interesting, and so long as you make the various sounds very noticable but not annoyingly so, it should be a good game

[monele]

I'd add that it's also very gimmicky. This means it *could* be interesting, but I think the whole game should rely on this unless, as papillon said, it's to be a short test game (and I'd actually suggest putting out a test version anyway so people can try it and see if the concept is playable).
If you're going to have a character tell you "on the right! on the left!", you could also do that with subtitles. I think I remember playing something like that once actually ô_o... But then the sound is not really the main focus anymore, which is a good thing for playability... but a bad thing since you want sound to be the main part of the game, right?

[Jake]

(As it goes, with a good speaker setup I could see something like this working really well - and having a passable one myself, I'm quite interested by the idea! I've more or less stopped playing most types of game on my PC, but I know a couple of friends have been going on recently about how great it is that they can tell which direction people are coming at them from in Bioshock 'cause it does a nice job of modelling three-dimensional sound...)