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Have trouble staying awake? Night Terrors can help you with that

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 4 May 2015, 11:11am

Have trouble staying awake? Night Terrors can help you with that

 There's something strange in your neighbourhood, but the Ghostbusters are busy.

If there's one thing that would scare the living daylights out of somebody, it's a safe bet that thing would be a ghost. The supernatural has been both a source of inspiration and intimidation, with tales of friendly ghosts helping out the lost and helpless, and vengeful ghosts devastating the living. Guess which type is in Night Terrors.

With Konami's Silent Hills cancelled, Night Terrors seems to be one of the few quality horror games on the foreseeable horizon, along with the Wii U exclusive Fatal Frame. Since not everybody has a Wii U, Night Terrors is the default choice for a horror fan hungry to be scared witless. From what we've seen, Night Terrors will deliver that. Of course, the flipside is that you'll never want to be alone again.

Navigating solely by your mobile device, the aim of the game has you trying to find a missing girl. Details are sparse about how the game mechanics will work though it looks thus far like a combination of Outlast and Fatal Frame.

Night Terrors is unique in a couple of ways. You can only play it at night and it's an augmented reality game, which means it uses real life locations. Playing it at home might not exactly the best thing, as you'll probably never want to be alone in your home ever again.

While the premise is what drew us to the game in the first place, it's the techniques and tech behind it that's intriguing us.

It's interesting to note the techniques the developers are using aren't the tried and tested methods. Using live actors and composite images instead of polygons to craft the ghosts and demons might seem a little old school, but it seems to work pretty well if the screenshots and demo video are anything to go by. The ghosts look decidedly creepy without looking fake, at least if viewed head on. Since they're using composites, we're wondering how they'll handle being viewed from different angles. If the composites are 2D, depth could be an issue, especially if you're looking at it from an angle. All the shots of the ghosts seem to be from a head-on view. Still, that's just us nitpicking on a game that's still in development, so we'll hold off being too critical of it.

Here's a look at what we mean when we said that the tech intrigued us.

It seems as if the app will map your surroundings as you play, creating an accurate in-game representation of your immediate area. It's intriguing in theory, though we have no idea how accurate it could be, especially given the wide range of cameras mobile devices are equipped with. Will camera resolution make any difference in the detection process? How about phones without lights at the back?

Night Terrors is in the funding stage now on Indiegogo. There's a minimum pledge of US$5 which will net you the game on a mobile platform of your choice, with higher tiers giving you access to creative input as well as starring roles. The game will initially launch on Apple devices, though Android and Windows mobile versions are also in the works and will launch when the iOS version is out the door. It's unknown when the game will be ready for release, though with the beta currently planned for September and recording sessions for the higher tier pledges scheduled for next year, it's definitely not any time soon.

Source: Indiegogo

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