Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Accessibility: 1. Start of the game: Glad to see the game has a warning that is both shown on the screen and read out loud when staring the game. This scores good toward cognitive accessibility, as it makes people aware of potential triggers and barriers. Its also positive to see that it is read out loud to ensure that the gamer both sees or hears the warning. Good contrast between the text and the background. It’s good to see that we have the setting menu/options accessible to us on the start menu, as some disabled games will need to access the setting before starting the game. Impressive to see the sound get triggered when you move the mouse around on the screen. 2. Settings: A good option menu that is read out loud for the gamer, with example of the sound each command makes. I have not seen sound been used in a game before, so this is quite creative and impressive. I’m wish we had an audio slider, since the game focus heavily on sound. 3. In game: Really impressed by the use of sound and sonars to distinguish how close you are to an object and how to move. Playing it without sight was a lot more challenging, but it was a fun test. Giving the character an outline makes it easy to see them against the background. Would be cool in the future to see an option to switch between white and black outline. The character is moved by using the WASD keys, which feels quite intuitive to do. The game is also controller supported which is good for motor accessibility. It recognised my Xbox controller as soon as I connected it into my PC which is a huge plus. Sadly, missing a way to access the option menu without restarting the game. This can be a bit hard for cognitive accessibility as some gamers struggle to remember the control setup, and that need to access the options to remind themselves. Easy and fun game, and I actually got jump scared when I came across the wolf the first time. 4. Theme: The theme of the game make sense in the context of new beginnings. Innovation/Creativity: I have not seen the use of sound and sonars in a game like this before, which makes it quite innovative and creative. Well done, really good job! Gameplay: Easy to understand and fun little game. Impressive use of sound! 5. Conclusion: All in all, the dev hit the target of the goals they set for themselves with this jam. The accessibility that is implemented works well. The only things that I’m missing is a volume slider and the options being possible to access during gameplay. Well done making something this unique in a game jam. Keep up with the good work!
• One of the things I love most about this entry is the fact it's inspired other developers already. The echolocation style pulse for detecting where obstacles are is a fantastic idea, unfortunately in the game's current stage it is currently inaccessible for the blind. Directional audio is a must, as is some audio adjustment.
• I absolutely loved the game itself, and I love the idea of using audio cues (something I have actually spent a lot of time thinking about recently)! However, I think the audio cues could have been used in a different way to help gamers with low vision - I think instead of using the audio cues to suggest which button the user is holding, they could have been used to instruct/suggest to the player which direction to go, as that could be unclear. I tried using the sound pulse to suggest how far away objects were, but this still made jumps/judging distances a little unclear.
• This was great, this sort of game was what the jam is all about, the only slight criticism is that when you reach a dead end, the sound of the direction you need to go should be played , also a proximity sound for hazards but these are only minor gripes, the creativity was top notch and with more time, i can see this developing further