Bose’s AR Frames get a narrative gaming boost from the team behind That Dragon, Cancer

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The most recent game from the team behind the emotionally evocative and autobiographical That Dragon, Cancer was built for a pair of sunglasses.

In The Other, players wear Bose AR Frames — head- and gesture-tracking sunglasses with built-in speakers — as they listen, look, and walk their way through a narrative game set in a dystopian future.UnmuteAdvanced SettingsFullscreenPauseUp Next

“The Other takes place in a fictional authoritarian dystopian city-state,” the developers at Numinous Games told GamesBeat in a group email interview. “A cultural revolution has mandated that those deemed ‘the other’ be rounded up and forced to conform under threat of death. Vigilante mobs dedicated to this cleansing roam the streets to enforce cultural conformity. You as the player are an “other” who has been offered safe passage out by a smuggler. Can you work together to avoid the mobs and escape the city?

“This audio-only adventure game acts as an allegory for the ideological division in contemporary American society. We think it’s important to continuously ask ourselves the kinds of questions that shape who we are as a people in this country. We’ve been given tremendous liberty in this country, who should we extend those freedoms to? When and how should we risk our own freedom for others when seeing injustice around us? And, finally, can we do better?”

The team said they learned from their work on That Dragon, Cancer, that it’s more interesting to wrestle with the answer to the questions they ask they to presume they already know the answer.

While the story explores important, timely issues, it’s how players interact with the game that genuinely sets it apart.

You can read the full story, which originally ran on Sept. 15, 2019, on Venturebeat.