Darkwood and Perspective: German Expressionism with Perspective and Sound Design

The goal of this short essay is to identify the way sound design structures the game mechanics in how a player plays the game, and the way it plays on perspectives, which ties into the notion of German Expressionism. One concept German Expressionism plays into the idea of perspectives in that there are many different "realities" or at least interpretations of it. Meanwhile Darkwood is a top-down survival thriller where the player has a limitied range of vision, which plays heavily into the game mechanics.

As shown by the edited screenshot, you have a cone of vision. This cone of vision doesn't necessarily restrict you from seeing everything, like the environment you pass by, like houses and trees you know haven't moved. But creatures and certain objects in particular don't follow this rule. This means if you want to run, you have to rely completely on sound to know what's around you which isn't necessarily accurate for exact placements of where something is. In other words, if you want to run away from a horrifying creature, you need to turn your back on it and lose sight of it. This makes you tend to question how far away is it from you, is it catching up to you? If it is, how much time do you have before it reaches you and kills your extremely fragile behind.

As stated, this limited field of view is not a limited field of sound. Sound design in darkwood is integral to the game and its mechanics. Usually, tension is not created with what we see, but what we hear. When something sounds or feels wrong, fake footsteps, moving objects and noises that you know shouldn't be happening or you can't tell what's causing it, this is what sets people on edge. This is not even taking into consideration the different audio cues each type of hostile entity emits. You can't necessarily tell where its coming from, but you know it's somewhere. This is the Darkwood's game mechanic of perspective in a nutshell.

This is a generic PONG written in javascript, html, and css. The up and down arrows control the paddle on the right; w + s control the paddle on the left.