New technologies have been prolific in the entertainment world. With games increasingly oriented toward immersive and realistic experiences, new releases invite their enthusiasts to dive ever deeper into their narratives, becoming an integral and important part of a story's fantasy universe, as seen in current RPGs or action games.
With each passing year, entertainment improves its ability to reach people in the most varied ways. The horror of Bring to Light, a new game in which fear is at the center of everything, is a good example.
Using technology created by its studio, Bring to Light is a game that raises or lowers its intensity levels based on the player's heart rate and thus responds to their fears to create an immersive horror universe, according to its creators.
From Leisure to the Creation of Realistic Experiences
The game created by Keith Makse, the mind behind Bring to Light, and his team was born at Red Meat Games in Canada and aims to offer players an experience of fear without real danger. Through biometric features, the creators believe they can also provide players with psychological benefits, specifically regarding stress and anxiety management. They say the game benefits people in this regard because its immersion incorporates the player's heart-rate data, introducing new scares when it knows the player is frightened... Does it really?
Creating a narrative that is not one-directional, in which the player and their stress level partly determine the game's events, is also a step toward the future of games, which increasingly attempt to captivate the public by placing the player in a new era of technological reality.
Even so, since this is something under development, the creators themselves admit that biometric tools still have weaknesses and do not work for everyone. There are even questions about whether the relationship between bodily responses and the effective measurement of emotions is linear.
The Narrative of Bring to Light
Entering a world of terror guided by each player's particular fears is not Bring to Light's only "strength," however. Driven by a darkly tense narrative, the player enters a world filled with tunnels after a subway-line disaster. The underground exploration is accompanied by bizarre discoveries in which every shadow could become a new psychological enemy.
Playable in several ways, including with Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, mouse and keyboard, or even a touchscreen, Bring to Light supports both virtual-reality and non-VR mechanisms.
The biometric mechanisms that track the player's heart rate are one of the innovations that helped the release stand out. They may not impress someone watching the experience as much, but for the person living the moment, they place it among the most bizarrely realistic games to date. Curious readers can check the purchase details on Steam.
