Perception Reviews
Thanks to its atmosphere, the game manages to create a certain palpable fear in the player, which is fundamental for a work of this kind. The game would benefit from exploring some of its mechanics at a deeper level but as it is, Perception can bring an interesting, even if rather short, experience to the players.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Perception starts with good ideas, but fails to build a really original game around them. The atmosphere is good during the first minutes, but It feels like a guided walking simulator without real scares.
Review in Italian | Read full review
While stuffed full of promise, Perception fails to execute what could have been an unique and brilliant horror adventure concept.
Perception feels like a perfect blend between Gone Home and Beyond Eyes, and whilst neither of those are horror games, seeing the best aspects of each mixed into the horror genre doesn’t make for a bad game.
By putting you on the shoes of a blind woman, Perception creates a unique survival horror experience, with heavy focus on narrative. It does a good job of playing with your… well… perception of the darkness and your surroundings.
Perception tries to take the immersive sim genre in a few new directions by adding in horror between story beats. While the presentation is top notch, the scares just aren't there.
Perception is a narrative horror that tries something a little different and for the majority of the game, it works to great effect. The darkness and sound design as well as some interesting level designs fill the game with enough low level tension to give you a crick in the neck. The visuals aren't always the prettiest, the game strays into the mundane a few too many times and the plot has forgettable moments but the unique premise and fright-inducing chases make Perception a better-than-average title.
The premises (a blind character, a creepy house, an evil spirit) were good, but Perception falls short as survival horror and as an intriguing walking simulator.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Although it has a very original and interesting idea, Perception ends up making a mistake for being a very easy horror game. The only enemy in the game serves more as an aid in some moments, and Cassie's sixth sense makes the exploration in the game and the fear disappear. Perception makes the players close their eyes to it.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
In the end, the game’s biggest fault is the missed opportunity. I commend Deep End Games for swinging for the fences, but a big swing and miss is still a miss, and it’s a shame. If you love horror games, then I think you might find the unique basis for this game worth checking out, despite the lack of terror. For everyone else? I’m afraid I just can’t unconditionally recommend Perception.
Perception offers a decent set of horror stories, but exploring this house gets dull pretty quickly.
A novel and inventive approach to first-person exploration falls short of its ambitions.
Perception is miles better than the myriad "me too" horror games saturating Steam, but it's certainly not exceptional. Underneath the visual style – and it's ultimately just an aesthetic choice – is regular ol' walk-and-talk horror game that manages a little panache but contains no material of substantial value, be it narratively or interactively.
Perception has some good ideas, but it is ultimately a disappointment thanks to an annoying art style, frustrating gameplay mechanics, and an underwhelming narrative.
Perception isn't great, failing to clear every benchmark that it set out for itself by a healthy margin.
The unique blindness mechanic just isn't quite enough to overcome a bland execution and lackluster story.
Despite its originality, Perception is only worth a look for those who can see past its shortcomings in pursuit of a fairly compelling narrative.
Perception was an opportunity. It was a real, genuine opportunity to do something remarkable with the horror genre, and join a couple of other experimental 'walking simulators' such as Layers of Fear, Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, and the recently-released The Town Of Light, in proving that the horror genre in video games can be cerebral, rather than visceral, but this one largely misses the mark.
Perception is as much a disappointment for the clever and inherently frightening idea it wastes as it is for the mistakes it makes. At its heart, there's the promise of playing something genuinely new, from a perspective that could help teach and thrill simultaneously. It's unfortunate that, like its echolocation mechanic, the more I saw of Perception, the more there was to worry about.