Narcosis

We took a look at Honor Code's deep-sea horror game, Narcosis, when it was first revealed last year. Today at GDC 2015 Jeff Cork and I had a chance to strap on the latest version of the Oculus Rift VR kit and explore a flooded, derelict underwater research station. We discuss our impressions of the game's scariness and the use of VR.

Tim: Jeff, had you ever tried out the Oculus Rift before our hands-on demo with Narcosis at GDC?

Jeff: Nope. For whatever reason, I've never had any demos for games that used the device, and I never got around to trying out the one we had in the office. I'm not anti VR or anything, but I'm not frothing at the mouth to stick my face in one of those things, either.

Tim: Eager or not, you slapped an Oculus Dev Kit 2 on your head today when we played Narcosis. I had my own feelings of trepidation before the demo, but most of that stemmed from the last time I tried out Narcosis with the Rift. VR horror games are making me ask myself how hardcore of a horror game fan I am, because navigating the flooded carcass of an abandoned deep-sea research facility feels nerve-wracking. During that demo I felt genuine anxiety as tattered papers seemingly floated past my face and fish erratically swam out from the darkness.

Jeff: Most of my apprehension going into the demo centered around wondering if my glasses were going to get pushed into my corneas. Fortunately, the headset was comfortable, and I didn't have to worry about that. I know this game has a reputation for being absolutely terrifying, and I was looking forward to getting spooked out. I have to say, it was unsettling and there were some portions that I won't soon forget, but it didn't get to me the way that P.T. or Alien: Isolation did. Did you find that it was as scary for you seeing the game again?

Tim: Yes! I think a lot of why Narcosis freaked me out has to do with the increased visual fidelity of the Oculus Rift DK2. The view is crisper and the headset itself if much lighter, which helped me forget there was a silly looking device strapped to my head. And yes, I think P.T. is the scariest "game" ever made, but the nature of VR helps lift up Narcosis to heights of tension for me. I remember feeling real unease when walking by the a dormant spider crab thing. If this had been a regular PC monitor, that feeling would've been 10 times weaker. The nature of VR is that you can't look away from what's being presented, and that becomes really suspenseful for me when exploring such a dark, unpredictable environment.

Jeff: One thing I loved about the demo was how much your peripheral vision can play a part in scaling up the tension. I walked into a large room, and I was looking up at something to the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I thought was a hologram flash by. It was gone before I had a chance to get a good look at it, and I wondered what exactly it was. Later, I learned that it was a fish. It's not as creepy now that I say it like that. The biggest moment, however, came in one of the smallest rooms in the game. I entered a circular room ringed with a few diving suits, and, after realizing there wasn't anything for me to do in there, turned around to leave. I don't know if it's too spoilery to say what happened next, but it played with perception (and head-tracking) in a way that I wasn't expecting. I thought I'd see a lot of jump scares and that kind of stuff, but I'm glad to see that the developers wanted to focus on being straight-up weird. Or at least, that's my sense from what I played.

Tim: That diving suit room with the hallucination really creeped me out. Yeah, I expected a big jump scare, but the Honor Code's more subtle route really impressed me and helped sustain the tension moving forward. I also like the idea of the supposed survivor of this deep sea incident recounting his tale as narrator while you play. It's just mysterious enough to keep me wondering about what happened, and whether there's anything... supernatural going on down there. Or maybe it's just that 86 percent of the Earth's species that remain undiscovered?

Jeff: I'm glad that Narcosis was my inaugural new-VR experience. I can only imagine that it's a more satisfying way to check it out than those gimmicky demos people messed around with when the first Oculus Rift dev kits came out.

Tim: Definitely. There was some cool proof-of-concept horror stuff that made me hopeful for the tech when the Oculus Rift first came out, and Narcosis is right kind of game to help take the genre in a more refined direction. It's difficult to overstate how effective this hardware is at delivering the atmosphere and scares, and I'm just looking forward to more players getting a chance to try it out for themselves.

Narcosis will release on PC this winter. The consumer version of the Oculus Rift does not have a specified release date.