The "Development" of Proximity Chat

Although games with voice chat have been around for decades, voice chat centric games have been on the upswing since the 2020 lockdown.

Phasmaphobia popularized the idea of communicating with enemies. Players can ask the ghost questions and taunt them. It wasn't particularly innovative, but it was an incredibly popular game.

Lethal Company came out shortly after, implementing a similar sort of feature with the eyeless dogs, and it brought a massive amount of popularity to the genre. Content Warning, R.E.P.O., PEAK, and several other games came out afterwards, all very similar.

Mage Arena was the first decent innovation with voice chat, where the players must speak to cast spells. This was an incredibly interesting concept, but in my opinion it was horribly implemented. Since the game put players against eachother, there was little skill expression, as the game boiled down to spamming spells on cooldown.

YAPYAP

YAPYAP came out a few months after Mage Arena, and as far as I'm aware, it was the first of its kind. Since YAPYAP focused around being a coop game, rather than a PVP game, there were plenty of more interesting obscure spells that could be implemented. Rather than just blowing people to smithereens, there were spells such as healing allies, summoning animals, swapping positions with another being, teleporting yourself up/down, reviving allies, etc.

The game also has many small quirks about each spell. One mobility spell, updog, boosts the player up in the air. The player can then say dog three more times to keep them horizontal. Another spell, ignis tongue, allows the user to spit a stream of lava from their mouth while making noise. The louder the noise, the further the spit will go.

Hopes for the Future

Unfortunatly, I haven't seen YAPYAP get nearly as much hype as Lethal Company or PEAK. Either way, I'd to see more games take some inspiration and utilize voice chat features in more unique ways apart from simply communicating with allies and enemies.