I smelled the world of Dragon’s Dogma 2 and it was putrid

It was a romantic Saturday evening when I told my partner the seven words every girl wants to hear: “Are you ready to test the GameScent?”

Look, writing about video games for a living comes with some inherent embarrassment. Sometimes it means testing a game like the salacious Stellar Blade and having to assure loved ones that I’m not, in fact, watching porn on the clock. Other times, it means getting some obtrusive piece of tech to review that just lives with you for a while, like my now-defunct iiRcade cabinet that looms in my living room. But nothing has quite caused me the same degree of existential dread that I felt testing the truly foul GameScent.

If you missed its viral moment in February, the GameScent is a bizarre new product that lets players smell their games. After hooking it up to any gaming device, it uses AI to analyze a game’s audio and release one of six scents to match what’s happening on screen. It’s the kind of tech experiment that you know is a bad idea the second you hear the elevator pitch, but you feel compelled to try. It’s like when a friend asks you to “come in here and smell this!” You always oblige.

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Despite my trepidation, my curiosity got the better of me, and I assigned myself the unglamorous task of testing the glorified atomizer. I thought it might be the perfect companion for a game like Dragon’s Dogma 2. One rancid play session and a splitting headache later, I now live in fear of the black hexagon haunting my apartment.

The return of Smell-o-vision

My ill-fated journey began when I was invited to test the GameScent in person and chat with the creators behind it. I stepped into a large hotel suite and sat down on a couch. A black box appeared on the table before me, with glowing blue lights on its side and six