Having first encountered virtual reality (VR) thriller Blind during Gamescom 2017, when VRFocus caught up with Matteo Lana, CEO of Tiny Bull Studios, it’s now been revealed that the title will be coming to head-mounted displays (HMDs) this Spring.
Blind is a narrative-driven psychological adventure where you are blind and must explore your surroundings using echolocation. In the story you play a young woman who wakes up in strange surroundings, finding she has lost her sight. With a sinister presence called the Warden goading you, you must explore the mansion, solving puzzles along the way whilst uncovering the mystery of what’s happened.
To do this players can create soundwaves with a cane, illuminating rooms and objects for brief moments, so while Blind isn’t designed as a horror experience it’ll still keep players on their toes.
Born out of the Global Game Jam in 2014, which was themed “we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are,” the Blind team won the Best Game award at the Turin (Italy) jam site with their entry Come to See My House. Tiny Bull Studios took this prototype to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2014 in San Francisco, catching the eye of then fledgling indie label, Surprise Attack Games.
Deciding to take the concept and develop it as a VR-only title, the teams expanded the experience to offer around four to five hours of gameplay. The Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and OSVR version of Blind are due to launch this Spring with a PlayStation VR version also in the works, expected to arrive later this year.
This isn’t the first time VRFocus has come across a VR developer experimenting with blindness and echolocation. Last year Gattai Games launched Stifled for PlayStation VR, where players could throw objects or use the headset’s built in mic to make sounds. Stifled however is a horror experience, and those sounds could be heard by others.
As VRFocus learns more about Blind including a more precise release date we’ll let you know.