Using a system inspired by my previous project about a bat, Hoichi has a reactive form of information-gathering that I think is pretty novel for a first-person game. Other games that use blindness as a mechanic feel restrictive and use the player character's blindness as a challenge to overcome. Rather, I wanted to use blindness as a recontextualization of the space, changing how the player gathers information rather than reducing the information gathered.

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     Distance is a hard thing to portray in a game like this, and one challenge was in making any particular area feel as open or close as would seem in a more traditional visual style. My solution was to extend a "vision pulse" to have a long visual "tail" in the expansion radius. This effect shows a depth in absolute distance over a few seconds, making the interaction between time and space easy to interact with.

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Music As a Mechanic

   Music is an important aspect of Hoichi. While it takes hundreds of hours to master an instrument, everyone can enjoy music and have an intimate relationship with the process. Hoichi features several choreographed "musical moments", where the player sits down and plays a song. This song has no rhythm restrictions, and often features multiple note suggestions from the notes available.

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     Opening these songs up to player interpretation was an attempt to tell players that there's no "wrong" way to play these songs. In fact, there's no reward system intrinsic to gameplay for completing any of these songs. The reward is in the experience, and this idea permeates throughout the rest of gameplay. Right or wrong, there is no difference. Enjoy the ride.