GameScent Is A New Device That Lets You Smell Your Games As You Play Them

As it becomes harder and harder to imagine how studios will possibly make games look more realistic than they already do, developers are trying to find new ways to further immerse players in their games. Some are pushing VR, letting people feel like they are quite literally stepping into some of their favorite games. PlayStation has used the DualSense to further immersion, its haptic feedback letting you feel certain elements of your game. Now, thanks to the GameScent, not only can you see, hear, and feel your games, but you can smell them too.

Compatible with consoles, PC, and VR, the GameScent is loaded with cartridges designed to replicate various smells you might come across while gaming. The device uses AI to determine when those scents should be released as you play. If you’re locked in a firefight, bullets flying around you, a scent matching that situation will fill the room. It can also make it smell like you’re sailing through a storm in Sea of Thieves, or trapsing through a forest on Pandora.

The GameScent can emit five different smells, scents designed to replicate what an explosion smells like and the aroma of a racetrack joining the three already mentioned above. GameScent has already promised some of the follow-up smells coming to its device in the future too, the ocean, the smell of freshly cut grass, and blood among them. Unsure what blood smells like or how the team who determined that and replicated it for the video game world have managed to achieve it, and I’m not sure I want to know.

With different scents to release, potentially one after the other, GameScent also has a function that attempts to ensure they don’t mix. Its Clean Air function neutralizes the room you’re gaming in, making sure when the smell of a sports arena (another scent coming soon) hits, it isn’t tainted by the smell of a grenade that went off while you were playing Call of Duty ten minutes before. Fascinated to know more about this smell-neutralizing technology as if effective, it feels like something that would appeal to more than just gamers.

The GameScent is available now through the links in the box above, retailing at $179.99 but on sale at Amazon and Best Buy for a limited time. The cartridges are easy to switch once depleted, and will presumably need to be replaced once they’ve run out. If successful, this may well be the next step in video game immersion. By 2025, there might be a Best Smelling category at The Game Awards. Now, excuse me while I go find out what it smells like when you drown in Sonic 2.