ᴵ ˡᵒᵛᵉ ᵖʳᵒˣᶦᵐᶦᵗʸ ᶜʰᵃᵗ. ᴼʰ, ʷᵃᶦᵗ ˢᵒʳʳʸ. Okay, that should be better.
I love proximity chat in games. It makes for incredibly unique multiplayer experiences in of itself, with plenty of comedy coming from hearing the distant voices of your friends as you speak from further away, or more likely, as one of you gets into a pickle and has to scream for assistance.
Aggro Crab’sPeakis the latest hit multiplayer game to utilise proximity chat, and while I love the feature already, the co-op climbing game shows how games can spin unique angles on it to improve the experience. Looking back, every game with proximity chat offers something different, and I need more and more to continue experimenting with it.
The Only Thing Peaking Is My Microphone
You can imagine how ascending a mountain might lead to some slip-ups (literally), separating one or more of you from the group as you go. At first, it seems worrying.If you fall into a cavern away from your friends, you’re too far away to have any hopes of finding them again, surely?
Worry not, as one quick shout into the void will echo your voice across the unforgiving mountainside. Not a voiceline, an actor’s cry for help. Your own cries, ringing off rocky outcrops and diving through crevasses until they reverberate your friends’ eardrums. It’s useful, it’s unique, and it’s endlessly hilarious. Hearing your friend’s voice on the wind, bouncing off rocky walls, as it makes its way to you, is such a creative way to implement voice chat into a game of this style and has led me to love the game that much more.
It creates a sense of adventure in a game where that is the goal - you’ll hear the distant echoes, you’ll sound different in caves, you’ll struggle to hear the muffled sounds of friends just out of sight or nearby in a blizzard. It’s incredibly simple, but effective, and that’s the sort of creativity that I think is key in elevating the voice chat to play a bigger role in the direction of a game.
Among Us 3D Makes Others’ Proximity Unnerving
But proximity chat has been cleverly used before.You probably don’t want to hear your friends’ voices in Among Us 3D/VR, as that means they’re nearby. If they are, you’re probably in danger. That is, unless you’re the imposter, in which case you may hear if someone seems to be alone or in a group before approaching them and attempting a kill.
Among Usmakes voice chat eerie, as silence is often preferred. Silence, too, is inherently unnerving, though, so there’s no winning. I remember wandering the halls, hearing someone’s muffled voice in the next room as I saw another player head that way, only to notice the voice abruptly stop. I ran for my life, called a meeting, and prayed that people would believe me. They didn’t.
Phasmophobia MakesMyProximity Unnerving
Phasmophobiadoes a fantastic job of making me too scared to speak half of the time, as my voice might attract unwanted attention. Ghosts will not only know where you are, but they’ll also react to the words you say - you can say their name, you could make them angry with inappropriate words, or you could try asking them questions and hate the answers. It’s a unique instance when proximity chat is not only an engaging tool for you and your friends, but has a direct effect on the environment and dangers, too. It feels like a real ghost hunt when every action, every noise, will have you on edge.
If I’m being real, I’m one of those players who will scream the ghosts’ names before running out of a room and leaving a friend, just in case that it might make for a hilarious, untimely end. The good news is that it often does. The bad news is that it’s usuallymyend.
Repo’s Voice Chat Makes Me More Animated Than I Am In Real Life
Repo’svoice chat works similarly to the hit indie co-op gameLethal Company, in that the proximity is pretty standard as far as the mechanic is concerned - you can hear friends, but not far away, and they might be muffled in the next room. You might also hear their voices stop as you wonder if something else found them first.
Exploring spooky locations while keeping your friends close is entertaining enough, but what makes Repo stand out even more, however, is the visual element of the voice chat.
Shoutout to the voice-changer items in Repo, too. I get excited every time I see an hourglass and get to talk in slow motion.
Repo’s twist on the mechanic involves Muppets. Not specifically Kermit and co., but as you talk, the player-controlled Semibots - Muppet-like robots - will exaggeratedly move their mouth like Kermit having a breakdown, and I have yet to get bored of this. It makes every conversation feel more visually effective and every scream of terror more hilarious as you see friends run away with chaotic animations as you try to keep yourself from laughing and giving yourself away to the monsters.
While maybe not as revolutionary as Peak or Phasmophobia, the simple act of adding in a little animation can turn proximity chat from a basic feature to an object of hilarity in itself.
DayZ Extends The Proximity, And The Dangers That Come With It
In a less hilarious turn of events,DayZmakes a few unique uses of proximity voice chat within its tense, gritty, apocalyptic world. However, the standout is with the use of radios - the classic form of proximity-based communication.
Players can obtain radios that allow you to communicate with your teammates from much further away. The issue? If anyone on the server is tuned into that same frequency, then they’ll be able to hear everything. You might not know it, but you could be giving yourself away at any moment. It’s a clever spin on the mechanic that adds a brilliant element of risk versus reward to voice comms that’s absent in nearly any other game.
I want to see more multiplayer games take proximity chat in unique directions. It’s a fantastic feature at the best of times, whether it be with a group of friends or large servers full of players. But I’m excited to see what else can be done with it, tweaking it in interesting ways that make sense within the context of the game. Make me terrified. Make me laugh. Make me have to scream for help like my life depends on it. But, most importantly, make it fun.
