We’re on it.

1) We were the best reviewed application of December 2010, according to MCV. Here’s the Quality Index website.

2) Gamezebo gave gave us a five-star rating. In its favour they said: “Incredibly well designed. Absolutely terrifying sound design. Lots of levels with a surprising amount of variety. The one negative point? “You will have nightmares. We can live with that. Thanks, Gamezebo.

3) 148Apps gave us a five-star rating in every single category, earning us a perfect score. “Hollywood quality,” they say. Read more!

If you’ve got a big ole website and want to review the app, drop us a line!

irfus

Papa sangre is awesome…

laurencehill
Playing Papa Sangre. It’s awesome. And terrifying. www.papasangre.com

SnapFlapGnap
I’m absolutly speechless about the coolness of @papasangre it’s truly amazing and easily one of the best games of the iphone, in my opinion!

_PhilHarris
Really enjoying playing Papa Sangre it’s certainly worth the wait well done @Voiceofse

JamieKing89
Very impressed with Papa Sangre. Go download it now

benrmatthews
Getting slightly freaked out playing @papasangre. Will be sleeping with the hall light on tonight…

dragon1424
@zersiax Why can’t you get @papasangre? That’s really a shame, you are missing out on the best audio game ever created!

PeterBellUK
@papasangre I spent yesterday scared with my eyes closed and with headphones on. Papa Sangre is The most awesome iPhone game.

m0nastic  Chris
Almost every day this week, someone has released a new iPhone app that is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Today’s is @papasangre

dwoodbridge  David Woodbridge
@papasangre Absolutely fantastic audio game, can’t stop playing, there goes my jobs for the day.

dragon1424 @papasangre is the best audio game ever done! I could play it for months.

Kevin Weispfennig
@papasangre well, the game does work on my iPod touch 3G 32 gig, I played through it. It, is, amazing! Best audio game I ever played!

thomasapage T.O.M.
Been playing Papa Sangre. Man that game is creepy, hell of an idea though. Bravo!

kpopper
Playing Papa Sangre is quite an experience. The video game with no video messes with your head. Very creepy.

digitalmaverick
‘Papa Sangre’ breaks the mould of every other game I’ve ever seen before – a risky idea uniquely & imaginatively executed

laurapea
Papa Sangre is a brilliant iPhone game. And it was them there 4iP folk what done it.

pkqk
Papa sangre is out, only 2 levels in and my heart is pumping with fear.

@TomDavenport: Too scared to play Papa Sangre again. http://bit.ly/papasangre

philstuart
#PapaSangre is freakin’ awesome! FACT. http://bit.ly/eoPyhl

railtonrailton
@benjilanyado papa sangre is awesome

pyro1234 Jim D
The Sound effects in Papa Sangre are really impressive! The designers did a fantastic job with this game!

mink_ette
This game is amazing and terrifying buy it. Buy it now

whitejamie
Of youre looking for a totally different kind of game, download Papa Sangre. It. Is. Awesome.

cali_chica
I love papa sangre. And sorry to those who need an apology. Going to bed.

re7ox
@papasangre The pressure & anxiety really teases out the imagination. Real panic sets in when one steps on a bone.Who needs graphics? Genius

paulpalinkas
Papa Sangre, a sound-only video game for iOS, is pretty amazing so far!

nickludlam
Just played the first 5 mins of “Papa Sangre”. One of the most absorbing iOS games I’ve ever experienced. Brilliant stuff, Somethin’ Else!

benhammersley
Papa Sangre and Word Lens are both giving me proper future thrill. So so so good.

digitalmaverick
Anyone else downloaded the Papa Sangre App to their iPhone? It’s terrifying- like if an App was made by The League of Gentlemen

saleem4rahman  saleem ur rahman
I have to say IOS Papa sangre is a great game so far! #Papasangre

Liamerven
papa sangre is a fantasticly awesome game. wow

AppleVis
Early reports on Papa Sangre are very positive. Everybody who has tried it seems to be enjoying it – http://bit.ly/e6TZlN

@FitFu: Sitting in the dark with a massive grin. @papasangre (iOS) FTW!!!! So good. Huge congrats to all involved.

KevinChao89 Kevin Chao
just reviewed #iOS game: Papa Sangre by Somethin’ Else with a well deserved 5 stars=excellent, fantastic, awesome!

rooreynolds  Roo Reynolds
Enjoying playing Papa Sangre very much. http://j.mp/evr2SG – The most I’ve ever concentrated while playing a game. Congrats to all involved

stevegreer
@tassosstevens Loving @papasangre but finding it impossible to play for anything but short bursts. Too scary.

skilz4comps  Thomas Dean
@papasangre alright I gave in and bought it even though I didn’t get to try it and I GOTTA SAY it’s GREAT!!!! I don’t blame u for gettin mad

DebbieHazelton
@papasangre I read. So impressive. Great minds and incredible work! Hugely commendable.

DominicSmith
@papasangre is great, I played it at the weekend. It reminds me why the radio has the best pictures.

matlock  Matt Locke
If you haven’t bought @papasangre yet, make sure you do. It’s an incredible game, and a remarkable innovation.

tomlangdon
A. Fucking. MAZING. @papasangre is every bit the ear bending dastardly fucker I’d hoped for. Bravo @benoonbenoon & co

re7ox  stephen hands
@papasangre Takes me back to MUD days with touches of rpg books by @ian_livingstone. A classic in the making to be sure.

sheffdocfest Sheffield Doc/Fest
It really is a mighty fine leap in playing, that there @papasangre

dubber
@papasangre I’m playing a scene, closing the app, recovering, playing another scene. This will take me a while.

Nettya  Jeanette
Papa sangre is finally out. 3d audio soundscape game, well worth your money on the app store. Not to be played in public, I just screamed!

Yup, we made a big noise about not supporting 3rd generation iPod touches, yet folks are reporting the game works perfectly for them. We thank you heartily for ignoring our advice and buying it (!) and we are delighted the game works for you — here is why we made the support decision in the first place, and why for now we aren’t changing our officially supported hardware list. 

When you’re making software for different hardware platforms, specs are one thing but real world results are another. When we were ramping up to release and making final support decisions we were finding knotty bugs on older hardware, and on the iPad where identical code was running on hardware with less RAM. Older iPods including 3rd gen iPods totally could not cope. This is, sadly normal. With limited resource we wanted to make sure we actually released the game by Christmas — let’s face it, everyone was getting sick of the wait. So we restricted support to a limited amount of hardware we could test continuously. That way, we could be sure el Papa did what we said it could and no-one would waste their money. 

We stopped testing on older iPods completely. We could not be sure Papa would run and we didn’t want to sell something that would upset folks we want to delight. So we restricted official support. 

Before release we did a huge amount of clean-up, fixes and optimisations on the code. Some of this may have positively affected how the game works on older hardware. We don’t know, because we still haven’t looked. 

Last time we looked, the 3rd generation iPod touch would crash on later levels.

For now we still don’t officially support 3rd generation iPod touches. When we’ve checked we may change this. But there ain’t no way the game will run on something *older* than a 3rd gen iPod — don’t waste your money — and we will never get stuff like the procedural reverb working on anything but 4th gen gadgets. 

Make sure you have at least an iPhone 3GS, iPad or latest version of the iPod touch running the latest version of iOS …

… and then click this link as fast as you can.

First of all, you’ll need an iOS device — we will not initially be supporting Android devices at all. This is because the binaural engine we are using in the game is incredibly demanding on a processor. Apple’s iOS 4 includes a maths library called “Accelerate,” which helps programmers speed up their floating point calculations. Without this, we couldn’t bring Papa Sangre to you at all. Once version 1 is out, we’re going to look at porting Papa Sangre to Android — we’re more likely to do so if you tell us you want it!

Secondly, you’ll need to be running iOS v4.1 at least. Fire up iTunes, connect your device, and under the Info pane for your device, check you have the latest version of iOS.

Thirdly, you’ll need to be running an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (4th generation) or iPad …

… to be clear, Papa Sangre does NOT support the original iPhone, iPhone 3G or any iPod touch but the current version. We wish it did, but we just can’t make it work with stability on those devices.

UPDATE: many people are having a good experience on an iPod (3rd generation) which isn’t currently officially supported. Check back soon for an update on this …

If you have a 4th generation device, we’re able to unlock even more audio goodness, similar to how powerful graphics cards on computers give you greater textures or frame rates. In our case this means ‘procedural reverb’ that gives you more detail and realism about the size and shape of room you’re in. Papa Sangre is super-cool without this, but super-cooler on an iPhone 4 basically.

Watch this space for pricing and exact release date information.

Paul Bennun Executive Producer

Neil Bennun Writing

Ben Cave Director and Producer

Sophie Choupas Graphics

Richard Evans Voice Acting

Ed Hallifax Audio Editing

Jim Holmes Playtesting

Adam Hoyle Technical Architect and Gameplay

Dan Jones Lead Engineer (Audio Engine)

Trevor Klein Playtesting

Lily Kumana Voice Acting

Ed de Lacy Interstitial Audio Mixing

Peter Law Project Manager and Level Wrangler

Rob McHardy Development Environment

Daniel Morris Launch Project Manager

Pilar Orti Voice Acting

Stephen Travis Pope Engineer (Audio Engine)

Margaret Robertson General Brilliance and Game Design

Nick Ryan Director of Sound and Music

Luis Soto Voice Acting

Tassos Stevens Lead Game Designer

Seaming To Voice Acting

Lucy Würstlin Executive Producer for 4iP

El Papa is about to make an important statement about his proximity to the land of the living.

Very close.

Very, very, very close.

Cross your fingers for some iTunes vouchers this holiday season …

We have been working on further audio design for the palaces. Last week a new Palace was born; designed narratively to sound dramatically distinctive, The Palace Of Glass has loads of levels all of which play with the acoustics of highly reflective surfaces. In one level there’s a major twist in functionality (but I can’t tell you what it is yet!)

The footsteps sessions are growing exponentially it seems and we have devised a way of delivering more footsteps more procedurally. This makes everyones life ten times more labour intensive *except* the player of course, who can now enjoy footsteps that are gradually adjust to changes in terrain – thus allowing us to circumnavigate the ‘peg-leg conundrum’.

I’ve just opened a  conversation with software developers ‘Flux’ hoping that they’ll let us try out the hotly awaited new plugins from Ircam Tools. Only just said hello but they seem very nice fellas and we hope that they dig Papa. One of the two plugins in question allow voices to be manipulated according to variables that change percieved age and gender – except it sounds like they’re taking a radically different approach to other tools that have done this in the past and the results are meant to be amazing. The other tool we’re hoping to get our hands on models acoustic space in new and exciting ways. More news to come on that…

I’m off on holiday next week but taking a friend with me – George or KU800 as he’s better known (god I’m a geek!) Anyway I’ll be taking George with me to some nice sounding places and recording binaural ambiences for use in the game. These will include a cornfield and a wood.

I leave you with some pics of the logic automation for the FWT’s voices  - if you dont know what an FWT is, you will.

Yesterday was an excellent day for Team Papa. The first in a series of playtests (this time for the good people of Apple and 4iP) we took over Channel 4′s Drum for nachos, beer and games.

With the glorious Alex Barrow on the accordion, proceedings kicked off with a few rounds of Sangre Y Patatas, the theatre game that inspired Papa Sangre. The rules are simple:

- Wear blindfolds
- One person is killer (‘Sangre’) and the others are prey (‘Patatas’)
- Keep moving
- If you bump into someone you have to greet them with your name – either Sangre or Patatas
- If you are Patatas and you hear Sangre you are dead, and may die as theatrically as you like and retire to the fringes
- The winner is the last Patatas standing

New games included hanging bells and Doritos on the floor as sound hazards. This gave everyone a look into the game world of Papa Sangre; a place where every step matters, where you have to listen and creep in a darkness so dark if you lit a match it would be invisible. And of course it was a good warm up for the ears:

Thanks to everyone who came along, and played both Papa Sangre and Sangre Y Patatas… we have some excellent feedback and playtesting notes to work with. And sorry to those that were freaked by Fluttery-wutteries whispering in their ears or Snufflehogs idly picking at their brains.

If you wondered what Team Papa Sangre looks like (minus Dan the Coder and Neil the Writer) here you go.

And for special bonus edit: chief Sangre Wrangler, Ben Cave, is not in this picture either. The author of this article sends his sincere apologies.

Short version: “When it’s done.”

Longer version: we reckon we’ll be done by early summer — to be specific, June.

Exact day to be determined.

It’s sounding pretty darn good by the way.

Dan Jones is the latest addition to the team, and is applying his considerable talents to turbocharging our audio engine.

Dan is part artist, part designer and part engineer. After pumping steroids into Papa’s world of sound he is heading off to the Santa Fe Institute - Mecca to all things complex and labyrinthine - to explore chaos and swarm theory in the desert. He is responsible for several site-specific audio/video performances, sound design and scores for film and stage, and web-based generative works, plus live and pre-recorded pieces for radio. Check his website, or follow him on Twitter… he is something of The Don™.

Below is a beautiful Dan Jones original. ‘Score Treatments’ sees the surface image of a series of classical scores subjected to techniques mirroring those found within contemporary digital music production: granulation, timestretching, mathematical repetition, and cut-and-splice collage. Welcome along El Jones.

The first time we met they (politely) refused to describe to me exactly what they did, preferring instead to demonstrate it. I was led into our large Black Room Studio here at Somethin’ Else, instructed to put on a pair of goggles (letting in light but basically blindfolding me) and a pair of headphones. They played a 10-15 minute sound file, recorded at 4am in what sounds like a playground with binaural voices and effects.

Throughout the adventure the duo use the space they are moving in, different types of illusion, touch and sound to create something that defies description. The experience was as surprising as it was wonderful and I found myself clumsily thanking them a lot.

Today was the turn of Paul and Nick for the L&S treatment and both absolutely loved it. Martina and Christer have over a decade of experience in sound art—often choreographed and with binaural audio—for audiences all over the world.

Their current project asks some serious questions about how the sense of self itself is created through stimulus — serious shizznit — and in that they’re working with Henrik Ehrsson from Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm who can make you feel like a doll’s fingers are attached to you. He was featured in a recent BBC Horizon programme … here’s some more about Henrik from the Beeb.

We really want to find a way to work with them on Papa (fingers crossed it will work out) but in the meantime if you ever come across their work make sure you take time to put the headphones on and turn off your eyes.

1: You are You — this is a first-person game where you, the player, are the person. There is an immersive visceral kick of feeling immediately that it’s you in there. This is not the real world (surreal), but it also isn’t abstract.

2: This is Horror — there are things in the space trying to kill you.

3: Finger Man Walking — walk with your fingers. Every step you take is meaningful and full of feedback; it locates you. It carries an outcome in relation to the threat. You need to understand the stakes on every single step.

4: Sound and Music — the world has sound and music in its fabric. It is the first game created with dynamic binaural sound.

5: Sightless World — it’s a game in pitch darkness, where immersive sound transports you in your imagination wherever you are.  There is no visual representation of space whatsoever. Instead there are safety nets such as *** REDACTED *** to help you. Playing the game teaches you audio cognition in the early stages.

6: *** REDACTED FOR SUSPENSE ***

7: *** REDACTED SPOILAR!!!1!! ! ***

8: *** REDACTED BECAUSE WE CAN ***

9: *** REDACTED TO SAVE KITTENS ***

10: Playing this enriches peoples’ lives — through positive subversion, confidence building and / or co-operation.

It features an interview and pic with Paul Bennun, wearing a very fetching set of yellow and pink headphones, freezing his arse off near London Bridge one February morning, 2010.

It’s a good article and the newspaper industry needs your support, so go and buy the excellent Wired immediately.

We’d love to hear from you!

The most interest we’ve had in the game is about the audio — probably unsurprisingly. So let’s have a quick look at that for our first post.

Well, here’s a couple of members of our team building the first teaser for Papa Sangre, which you can hear here … the rather fabulously good-looking Benjamin Cave, project producer, and the fantastically talented Dr. Nicholas Ryan (sound designer and composer).

There are two main types of audio in the game, both of them binaural.

One comes from a software engine that can simultaneously position a number of sounds behind your head — or anywhere else — and move them about in real time relative to where you move in the game (which, we may have mentioned elsewhere on the site, is BLOODY HARD TO DO, at least on a handheld device).

We haven’t got a name for our engine (maybe suggest one — we’ll use it forever and give you a credit!).

The other type of sound involves a few novel techniques using the extraordinary dummy head Neumann lent us (thank you Neumann). The head has the same shape, density and features as a human head, with two exceptional microphones in the ear canals. These shots show Ben and Nick moving around some of our studio speakers (playing mono audio) relative to the dummy head, which records what it hears. This creates flat two-channel files (left and right), which are beautifully binaural when you listen back on headphones.

This is not the first iPhone game to feature binaural audio: you can find a few games on the App Store that use a dummy head or something similar to record two-channel binaural files. The beautiful Zen Bound springs to mind. To the iPhone CPU this is as demanding as playing a stereo file (mainly because it is just a two-channel audio file!). The difference here is that we’re also generating binaural audio in real time.

It means the player can move about freely inside the game, and the game procedurally uses an HRTF to work out how sound sources should change relative to the player’s movements in real time.

This was, by the way, BLOODY HARD.