Awesome Auti-sim Game: Feel the Discomfort of Sensory Overload

You are standing on the field under a beautiful blue sky. A few meters away from you is a group of screaming and happily playing children on the playground. But when you come closer, you suddenly notice that the children are, in fact, faceless statues staring blankly at you. Their scream almost stuns, layering on the monotonous school rumble. The idyllic picture, too, is beginning to be blurred, as if the world is torn between reality and the hindrances of an upset analog TV channel. The only salvation for you is to retreat to the safety of your initial location.

This may sound like a description of a new horror movie, but in reality we are talking about Auti-SIM - a small but thought-provoking first-person game dedicated to the hypersensitivity of autistic children.

“I did not seek to imitate what hypersensitivity is in fact. My goal was to induce a similar reaction in a person with normal neuroscience. Thus, the task basically came down to annoying your feelings like hell. "- said the main developer Taylan Kay (eng. Taylan Kay).


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Kay also said that the game was partly inspired by a passage from the Inside Autism documentary material, which also uses similar audio and video filters to convey the sensory overload experience. As the creator of the video put it, “My brain loses its ability to learn. He falls like a computer. ”According to Kay, he thought it would be a powerful personal experience, and not a bad project for the weekend.

In addition, the idea was due to the fact that Kay's wife is a social worker who interacts with people with special needs and their families. One of the groups consists of children who have brothers or sisters with impaired neuroscience. They often do not understand how their sister or brother feels and feels forgotten, because parents spend less time on them.

The game received generally positive feedback, both from people with autism and from special educators working with them. However, there were some negative reviews, which, in other matters, are perceived by creators as an additional incentive to improve the product.

From a small demo-version written in two days, Kay and his team plan to develop Auti-SIM into a full-fledged game. There will be more interaction, characters with artificial intelligence and new locations, for example, a training class or a shopping center. Although the game is not a commercial project, developers are waiting for funding from government agencies and people who share the goals of raising awareness about the problem of autism and related issues.

Source: Auti-sim lets you experience the horror of sensory overload