Watch your step! A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead reveals its ingenious mechanics in new development video

Movie-to-video game adaptations don’t always feel organic or purposeful, but A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead definitely looks promising. As part of a new development trailer released just yesterday, Diego Sambataro, sound designer at Stormind Games, delved into the mechanics of the game, which was announced a few months ago and is said to bring something new to the survival horror genre while staying true to the source material.

This will be a game based on the movies of the A Silent Place franchise, where an alien race has invaded Earth. These ruthless monsters are blind but extremely sensitive to sound, so the main characters in both the movies and the game have to be very careful when moving around.

Sambataro then explains that the player will have to pay attention to three aspects of the gameplay: movement, interaction with objects, and sound thresholds. The development video explains that walking on sand, for example, will produce a different sound volume than footsteps on compacted earth or, of course, on metal.

In the nearly 3-minute clip, we can even see the player walking while sprinkling sand in front of his footsteps to make life easier.

“But it’s not just the ground, because there are additional layers [of objects] on top of it,” Sambataro explains. “Leaves, water, glass, and other materials can be sprinkled over the surfaces, each with its own level of noise that might attract the creatures,” he adds.

Likewise, interactive objects will produce a certain amount of noise, making mundane tasks like opening a door a life-or-death maneuver, as will pulling out a drawer. Walking near cans or glass bottles, turning the key on a pipe, or worse, falling into a trap, can all cause sudden death due to the sound they make.

How loud a sound is and how long it lasts will also play a critical role in making it possible or difficult for creatures to decipher your location. And, as you might expect, the difficulty level of the game will affect how harsh or lenient the system will be on these values.

All in all, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead looks interesting, to say the least. And if you are a fan of the movies, even better, as this adaptation is also a spin-off, starring a young woman with asthma, accompanied by her boyfriend, as they struggle to survive in this oppressive world where noise is your worst enemy.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead will debut on October 17th for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.