GameScent review: Smells like video games

On paper, GameScent isn't a product that should have a lot of appeal. It's the old Smell-O-Vision gimmick from the 1960s, but repurposed for video games. It's a product where a person's first reaction is often, "Who is this for?" However, seeing is believing. In the case of Shacknews Head of Video Greg Burke, smelling is believing, because GameScent excels at what it does and has great potential for growth.

Here's how GameScent works. It's a case that contains six slots for different scented oils, each meant to simulate a different smell that a player may encounter over the course of any given game. The package comes with a small device meant to be an HDMI passthrough between the GameScent atomizer and your gaming device of choice. Greg had some trouble getting it to work, because he's Greg and has a complicated setup, but the average user shouldn't have too much trouble getting that initial hookup going. What's interesting is that the adapter is the only item that has to be hooked up between the console and the television. The atomizer itself can be placed anywhere as long as the native GameScent app is connected via Bluetooth. That means one single area doesn't get totally cluttered.

As far as the actual scents themselves, GameScent comes with six different cartridges in the initial package. There's Gunfire, Explosion, Storm, Racing Cars, Forest, and Clean Air. That's a limited range of scents, but the team behind GameScent will look to release additional scents in the future. How they'll go about doing that remains to be seen, but one of the ideas lobbied about is scents tied to specific gaming franchises or select genres.

With all of this said, how does the product itself work? As Greg notes in the video above, it works far better than anybody could have expected. The atomizer works as advertised, taking cues from various games, and pumping out the scents out of their cartridges whenever the situation calls for it. For the purposes of this review, Greg ran around the world of Fallout, but later dove into one of his favorite current titles, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. The latter is where the potential started to become clear, offering a level of immersion not seen in games to this point.

To add to the points Greg makes in his review, I can also chime in, having also received a GameScent unit, courtesy of the GameScent team. The Forest and Clean Air scents came through beautifully when climbing the cliffsides of Jusant, both automatically and manually triggered from the app. And, while I'm not a big fan of the Racing Cars scent itself, I can't fault the functionality in a game like Rocket League.

Prior to receiving our review units, Greg and I discussed the potential of a product like GameScent. We wondered what it could do for something like horror games, like Dead by Daylight or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. What could this do for cozy games like Stardew Valley? In practice, we both came away impressed with what we saw, but ultimately lamented the limited number of available scents. Once more of them become available, GameScent's possibilities could be endless, but for now, it's good for what it is.

GameScent is available now, but it'll cost a pretty penny. It retails at $179.99 USD. It's something that'll serve as a great complement for your gaming (and movie) collection, made better by the fact that it can be placed anywhere in the room. Just be wary if you have a more sensitive sense of smell, because the atomizer can be overpowering at times. For everyone else, GameScent promises greater immersion and it delivers. We smell a winner.

This review is based on GameScent units sent to both Head of Video Greg Burke and Senior Editor Ozzie Mejia. GameScent is available now from the GameScent website.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?