In Stifled, Screaming Only Makes It Worse

If you blinked at PAX, you might have missed Stifled, which had a quick two days at the YSBRYD booth, unaccompanied by any gaudy signs or uniformed staff. And it’s a shame if you missed it, because Stifled introduces horror to the most effective gimmick in years that the developers accidentally stumbled upon.

In Stifled, you play a character who, for reasons unknown (and perhaps no real reason other than to terrify us, but whatever), sees the world around him by making noise and waiting for the sound to bounce back. This quasi-echolocation is done by speaking, grunting, or in my case, whistling into the microphone. So you use sound to see, but sound will also attract enemies bent on murdering you.

Stifled also uses sounds of the environment to create vision, such as dripping water, and you can also throw objects to create noise to reveal the environment (or distract foes). If you can suspend your disbelief enough to accept the premise of a human using echolocation, you’re going to find a whole new, terrifying world of possibilities.

Surprisingly enough, this sinister mechanic was inspired by a completely innocent video that one Gattai Games developer accidentally stumbled upon. In it, a young blind girl’s seeing-eye dog runs away from her, and she has to walk through the streets of a busy town using her other senses to construct the world around her. This video will undoubtedly help you get the concept.

Gattai Games also considers this a spiritual successor to a game they created back in college called “Lurking.” After graduation, they wanted to give the game a full treatment, and they’ve successfully been Greenlit on Steam.

While Stifled may sound gimmicky, the demo at PAX shows that Gattai can successfully toe the line and deliver a genuinely terrifying experience that doesn’t feel cheap or hokey. Sound is the main attraction, so to speak, but Stifled also displays impressive design choices that add to the horror, such as a red pulse coming from enemies that creates a striking image and sound design that sends chills up your spine whenever one of them screams. But none of this means the microphone takes a backseat.

“In other horror games, you can talk yourself out of being scared,” game designer Justin Ng said. “Not in Stifled.”

Indeed, my experience with Stifled was one of silent reflection, but my own fear betrayed me, in the form of audible yelps that gave away my position. I was lucky enough not to die in my playthrough of the demo, but that wasn’t for a lack of luck and not without a few close encounters with one of the enemy types, which I can only describe as a baby Clicker.

It is indeed a hard life for indie horror games, as well as their developers. The genre is a dime a dozen, and the market is inundated with so many of them. But in an age where developers' only aspiration is to tap into the aftertaste of PT, Gattai Games has shown truly remarkable flair with Stifled. Justin Ng has said this will be Gattai Games’ last horror game, so if you blink, you might miss it indeed.