If you've ever played a psychological horror video game, you've probably felt changes in your heart rate, particularly when the game gets really scary. What if a game like that could track your pulse and heart rate while you play and use that information to affect gameplay?
Introducing Nevermind: a horror game that uses biofeedback sensors to track your physiological responses while you play, making the game harder or easier based on how fast your heart beats. If you get frightened during gameplay, the game gets a lot more difficult.
The brainchild of gaming studio Flying Mollusk, Nevermind uses Intel's RealSense technology for its sensors, which measure a player's pulse in real-time, specifically how that pulse changes during times of stress and anxiety.
Instead of strapping yourself into a chest strap, though, Intel's technology allows a 3D camera to measure heart rate.
"What happens when a horror game can see how scared or tense you are?" wrote Intel on its blog after Nevermind's initial announcement earlier this year. "What happens when that complicated tutorial realizes you're confused? What happens when you're in that perfect 'zen' moment with your game, and your game recognizes it?"
Nevermind doesn't use buttons or choices to understand how you're feeling during a game, it uses technology to judge your more honest reactions to horror gameplay.
Although Nevermind has been part of Steam's Early Access program, as well as the product of a successful Kickstarter campaign, the game officially launches in October to the public, having been improved upon since it first went up on Steam's Early Access program in March.
Flying Mollusk hopes to eventually "expand the game" beyond gaming, though, and offer it as a solution for helping people manage stress and anxiety. The company is also working toward eventually supporting the game for both VR and the Xbox One.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
