Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods PC Review

This one is a little different to most. Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods is a first-person shooter with rather simplistic shooting and shield mechanics in which you wander through a relatively small facility and deal with a variety of obstacles. The obstacles may not seem like much, moving through a minefield or crossing a bridge (and not a unique bridge, just a regular ole bridge), but the thing that makes it different from pretty much everything else is that the game has no visuals whatsoever.

Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods is, effectively, a blind experience. There is one visual screen in the game, and that screen tells you to put on some stereo headphones and to close your eyes. And I did indeed play the majority of this game with my eyes closed, but it does sometimes feel a little strange to have your eyes closed for protracted periods while playing a game, so that may be a bit difficult to get used to but it happens. And it does seem to get easier to play when your eyes are closed.

 

Now, you may wonder how this even works. Well, you are given a variety of audio cues to help get you through it. There is practically always someone with you who can see, and they will guide you by talking to you, snapping their fingers, or whistling at you. It’s a bit jarring at first, but you learn to turn your character’s head, determining whether a sound is to the left or right and then moving accordingly. In the beginning, you’ll probably go slowly as you get used to the thing. Still, before long, you’re walking with confidence and following the sound of that elevator music in the distance that signifies your destination!

There is no actual exploration or choice with regards to how you play, so it is a very linear game, but that isn’t actually a problem. A game like this probably wouldn’t work if it was too non-linear. You’d get lost all the time. So, it would be better to see this short, few hours long game as an experience rather than a hardcore game of some kind. It’s to try something new and different. Or at least something new and different from the perspective of someone who can see.

Ironically, if you, like myself, need to wear glasses when playing games, you will be able to remove them for this experience because there’s nothing to see anyway! Which is nice. Speaking of physical things, you need to play Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods; you need, and I mean you need, to have stereo headphones. This game would not work with speakers because they cannot accurately help you find your spatial position. Noises are around you in space; they are to the left, right, behind, and in front of you, and speakers cannot help you with that experience.

However, once you have those headphones on, it becomes a manageable experience. Now, let’s look back at the first paragraph of this review. Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods is rather simplistic in its shooting, but you couldn’t have a Doom-style system with no visuals; you’d die. So, it needs to be rather simplistic, and it needs to be relatively simple to proceed.  

I cannot speak to the experience of entirely blind players, as they may find this a lot easier, but to someone who can see (albeit with glasses), you want this game to be easy. And so, thankfully, they have frequent checkpoints because, without those, you would very quickly get frustrated by how easily you can die. I walked off bridges and cliffs so many times because I failed to hear my companion calling me. Furthermore, you're dead if you get hit once by an enemy.

But how does combat even work? Simple. Enemies are noisy. They say many things while they fight, they audibly prepare to shoot you, and when it comes to them shooting you, you can hear where the bullets are coming from. As a cover system would require being able to see, this game does not use one. Instead, there is a shield system. When you hear your enemies preparing to attack, you raise your shield, wait for them to stop, turn until you know their position, and open fire. Your enemies also make a noise when they fall over. So, it’s effortless to understand through basic audio cues.

You can also use stealth, but I couldn’t figure out how myself as I would always end up walking into enemies and getting into a fight, but someone with a better grasp of their hearing may be able to do a better job.

However, they use the audio cues incredibly well because combat is only part of the gameplay, as you will often be put into gameplay-oriented environments that may, for instance, require you to follow your companion as he walks (and he’ll make noises to show you where he is) and sometimes you’ll have to navigate through something like a minefield by listening for the beeping of the mines. Not particularly realistic mines because of that, but you can’t go expecting silent mines in a game that is so based on audio; you’d die so unfairly!

This is all great and makes for some unique moments, but Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods is not without its problems. Firstly, I did have to restart a section on two occasions because my companion went quiet, so it became impossible to navigate a sightless environment. However, as checkpoints are frequent, this wasn’t a problem, but it is worth noting.

But this does not excuse something else, and this is not a technical thing. Sometimes, you’re trying to listen out for, say, an exploding enemy that chases you. Still, you can’t hear where they are because the main antagonist keeps talking over the facility’s intercom system! So, you’re trying to listen to environmental noises while someone is blaring their opinions in the background. It can make the few sections this happens immensely annoying. They should have saved the bad guy speeches outside of areas requiring concentration. It’s a massive oversight in a game that markets itself as having no visuals. Yet, they interrupt the one sensory perception you have at your disposal, in a medium that is usually an audio-visual medium, for the villain’s ramblings!

The narrative that is served by that narration is also somewhat weird. It’s just strange. Everyone has accents, which is excellent because most games tend to have nothing but American (and sometimes British) accents. Still, this possibly German-accented villain is a mad scientist performing experiments on people and making them into blind psychic warrior things. It’s a little silly, but it’s also entertaining.

For this reason, though, and because of the strong emphasis on specific audio landscapes, Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods is not remarkably replayable. It’s very scripted, but that isn’t bad if you are looking for a unique experience rather than a game to play for weeks or months. But it’s a fun enough thing, even if it can get frustrating at times with overlapping audio streams, but it’s an experience worth having!

So, if you want to try something different from everything out there, give Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods a try! Just expect some frustration if you’re used to relying on their eyes.

Justin van Huyssteen,
Editor, NoobFeed