Stereo Game
A narrative game played entirely via a stereo
A video game concept that I think would be rad to work on someday!
⏮️⏯️⏭️🔊
The game is a mobile app (doesn't strictly have to be I suppose, but that's how I've imagined it), and connects to the player's stereo via Bluetooth. It will present small snippets of story, update the Artist/Title/Album text on the stereo display, "intercept" the player's Play/Pause, Skip, Previous button commands, and react accordingly.
Imagine the story and dialog presented entirely through audio, and the player's choices are displayed on the stereo display. So perhaps they could hear a narrator say "...and then (player) had a choice to make - do they fight back or run away?" with "FIGHT" mapped to NEXT and "RUN" mapped to PREV. It could be displayed like this on the stereo display:
Artist: [NARRATOR]
Album: FIGHT (>>)
Song: RUN (<<)
Play/Pause can bring you to a pause menu:
Artist: [PAUSED]
Album: CONTINUE (>>)
Song: QUIT (<<)
Hitting NEXT (Continue) from the pause menu would also replay the last voice track, in case the player missed hearing something. PREV would bring you to the main menu.
For folks without a stereo that has a display, or isn't compatible for whatever reason, this could very easily have an "emulated" mode that shows a basic stereo and controls on the screen, in the app.
And for full accessibility for blind folks, there could be an option to also give audio prompts for the commands, after the narration, like: "Press NEXT to FIGHT. Press PREVIOUS to RUN".
Um... also it'd probably have to have a "HEY, do NOT play this game while driving!!" audio prompt every time you start up the game, 'cause distracted drivers aren't cool.
ALSO, who needs audio when the entire story can just be displayed on the stereo via text??
Artist: You've encountered a door, with a sign that says "go away"
Album: BANG ON DOOR (>>)
Song: LEAVE (<<)
This of course would not be compatible in all cases, as some stereos just cut off long text and don't scroll it, and/or have a character limit. But still an interesting idea!!
So yeah, super short narration followed by simple commands and choices, in a format I've never seen before. Imagine enabling the accessibility mode that speaks aloud the actions you can choose from, playing with headphones in on the train, and using your headphones' next and prev button or gesture commands to interact with the game! There's potential here for a whole new wave of choose your own adventure stories that you could play on the go, and since those can kinda grow exponentially there's super high replayability there too.
Someone give me money and I will make this happen.
Edit: A game with a similar mechanic, Alt Frequencies
(Thank you Dillen on Bsky for sharing this with me)