'Night Terrors' could be the best augmented reality survival horror game yet

Shawn Knight

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Night Terrors is an augmented reality survival horror game built on top of a scenario that’s already creepy enough for many – walking around your house in the dead of night with the lights off.

The game promises an ultra immersive experience, something that augmented reality has thus far failed to deliver. Armed with just your mobile device and its rear camera LED, gamers are instructed to plug in a set of headphones, wait until it’s dark outside, turn off all the lights and hold the device up to their face as they slowly traverse their home.

night terrors aims cool augmented reality gaming indiegogo

That may not sound all that frightening or technologically advanced but the game’s Indiegogo pitch may change your mind.

As developer Bryan Mitchell explains (without giving away all of their secrets), the game is built on four major algorithms that are collectively able to understand where the walls, ceilings and floors of a room exist. The system also uses point-source modeling, environmental filtering, gyroscope sensor data and intensity scanning to further sharpen the map.

night terrors aims cool augmented reality gaming indiegogo

Audio is spatialized and mixed with your device’s microphone feed then fed to your headphones to help make the experience all the more believable.

The goal of the game is simple. Save a little girl and survive.

If you’re the type that likes a good horror flick or haunted house / maze, this could be right up your alley. A pledge of just $5 is all that’s needed to guarantee you get a copy of Night Terrors when it’s released. Those looking to donate a bit more can score some pretty cool reward tiers as well.

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Sure... and the little girl turns out to be the resident evil. Look, blood and gore, cheap scares like ghouls jumping out in full view while screaming at the top of their fetted lungs - that's not the kind of horror I'm interestest in. The top shelf stuff is the stuff that gives me goosebumps. That's the real litmus test for a horror: Goosebump coverage, longevity and frequency. This is where visual and audio subtlety is everything.
 
Definitely interesting idea and can lead to greater stuff. But I do see a few issues:
1. Battery Life, with all that equipment requiring juice (especially the lights) the user better have a really good battery in their phone.
2. Phone calls and messages, unless the game disables those while you're playing, it can completely interrupt the experience.
3. Not home alone, if I need to explain this...
4. Environment, I live in a small house and would make this very lame. I do wonder if this would work in the woods.
5. Running into stuff, I don't know if the ghosts chase you or not but if you feel like you have to run and you have a cat, a wall or object x,y, or z in the way...ouch and possible cuss words.
6. Cheap scares, as @@Axle Grease said this game seems to use cheap scares. You don't need blood and gore and crap being loud as possible. It is simple has the fear of the unknown and sleight play with your senses to make you wonder, what was that? and etc...
7. Map building, does it build as you go or do you have to walk around first? I didn't feel like that was explained.
 
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