Voice Runner
Endless runner where your voice is the controller. Hum to jump, shout to dash. The mechanic worked; the audio-input UX never quite did. Shelved for the right insight.
Can voice work as the primary controller for a mobile game?
- 01Rising pitch to jump
- 02Volume spike to dash
- 03Held tone to glide
- 04Ambient-noise testing
- Jump trigger
- Above 200 Hz
- Main failure
- Social context
The mechanic worked in a quiet room. Public use, ambient noise, and the effort of making sound made the full control scheme impractical.
The why
Most mobile games use the same touch-screen control schemes. Taps, swipes, virtual joysticks. We wanted to try voice as a primary input.
Hum to jump. Shout to dash. Hold a tone to glide. Fun on paper.
The approach
An endless runner where the controls are entirely voice-driven. Built in Unity with a native audio analysis plugin to detect pitch, volume, and sustain.
Jump fires on a rising pitch over a 200Hz threshold. Dash fires on a sudden volume spike. Glide holds a tone. Visual prompts help you learn the mappings on the first run.
What we learned
The mechanic worked. The UX did not. Three problems.
First, people don't want to make noise in public, even quietly. Second, the audio model fights against ambient noise. Works fine in a quiet room, fails on a bus. Third, even alone in a quiet room, making sounds while playing a game feels weird after a few minutes.
Voice as a playful supplement, a shout to dash here and there, might still work. Voice as the entire control scheme fights too hard against the social context.
Status
Shelved. Waiting for the right insight on how to use voice as input without fighting the room you're in. Could come back.