Papa Sangre is the first game created anywhere using fully dynamic binaural sound. Game play takes place in pitch darkness, where immersive sound transports the player through the story via his or her imagination. Navigational aids take the form of vibrations and movements: there is no visual representation of space at all, just rich binaural sound.
Papa Sangre is a 90-minute deep-rooted psychological thriller set in a world where the afterlife is a malevolent, unpredictable carnival. The player’s mission is to explore each of the rooms of Papa Sangre’s mysterious palace and save the soul of the person they love.
The player moves through places and spaces guided by audio alone and must escape each room they enter avoiding man-eating monsters, navigating vast open spaces and small cramped holes. To win the player must find a way out of Papa Sangre’s evil dark kingdom and break through into the light.
This is a game, not a drama of which the player forms a part, hunted by a predator that can hear each and every move. Every footstep counts, making surfaces crucial to gameplay. Some, like soft grass or thick carpet will muffle your footsteps and let you explore in peace. Others will broadcast your every move to the sickly, hungry hunters who patrol Papa Sangre’s palace. Objects and musical notes can be collected on the way, which serve to help or hinder the player on their journey through the underworld, and which add to the richness of the sonic landscape you’ll discover.
The God of the game, Papa Sangre himself, knows you [the player] and all the characters you will meet along the way. Your task is simple: get out in one piece, and save the one you love.
“We are extremely excited to have created the first iPhone game using binaural audio created in real-time. We set ourselves the impossible task of rivaling any of the top 3D games on the PS3 or Xbox – using no graphics whatsoever,” says Paul Bennun, Director of Digital, Somethin’ Else. “Papa Sangre is solely about sound. It is the first time that genuine real-time, 3D, spatialised audio has been implemented on a mobile device. It’ll be different for every player, too — the pictures in your mind will be different from everyone else’s, because audio can stimulate the imagination instead of replacing it.”
Papa Sangre has been in development for just over a year with the support of Channel 4, “We are thrilled to have been able to support Somethin’ Else on the development of Papa Sangre, and to be part of this extraordinary technological breakthrough with audio,” says Lucy Wurstlin, Digital Commissioning Manager, Channel 4. “Papa Sangre is a great demonstration of the appetite that Channel 4 has for taking risks on innovative, boundary pushing digital products and services and one which we believe will resonate with hardcore and casual gamers as well as the growing demographic of smart-phone owning new gamers”.
About the Papa Sangre Game
The Palaces
There are four Palaces that the player must visit before entering the final Palace of Papa Sangre: The Palace of Brass, The Palace of Strings; The Palace of Wind; The Palace of Bones, each a bundle of four levels. There are four doors leading off from a central antechamber, North, South, East and West. The player must knock three times on the door they wish to open and enter.The Song of Papa Sangre
At the start, the song of Papa Sangre is a bare percussive riff but as a player moves through the palaces the song builds, sets of notes are collected each forming a section of the song. Once all four Palaces have been found the song is complete save the lead vocal track, which Papa Sangre will bellow when the final Palace is found and its three levels complete – the Palace of Papa Sangre itself.The Fluttery-Wuttery Things
These are creatures that inhabit each level, which flutter and whisper in the players’ ears, to guide, tease and torment. Some say important things that a player needs to know, others are unreliable and send players in misinformed directions. The player needs to work out who they can trust.The Dilemmas
Dilemmas are creatures that can either be ignored or rescued from the chamber, but increase the challenge of completing each level.For example the noise of a crying baby will attract monsters if you pick her up and try carry her to safety, but can you live with your conscience if you leave her behind, frightened and alone in the dark?