Games for Blind Gamers 3

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A jam submission

Blind GuardianView game page

Defend an ancient structure with hearing alone. Made for the Games for Blind Gamers Jam 3.

Submitted by popcar2 — 3 hours, 55 minutes before the deadline

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Blind Guardian's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Blind-friendly and good use of audio	#1	4.778	4.778
Fun gameplay	#3	3.889	3.889
Setting, story, characters, and world	#7	3.778	3.778

Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Comments

BtzrSubmitted276 days ago(+1)

Nice game, very simple and easy to learn controls and the intro narration and tutorial are excellent.

I also like the sounds you used for the game everything blends really well and create a good immersive atmosphere. The visual cues were a nice touch.

I'm don't really play rythm games, so I can't really comment on the difficulty curve, but I think is ok for the jam timing constrains.

Also I think I used the same sound for the enemy attack in my game, I had to check twice I didn't leave my game open while I was playing your game.

Submitted

What we hunt In the shadows

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superfreq279 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

I like it!

Excellent sound design, logical controls with a great tutorial, a bit of writing to make things more interesting, and I enjoy the rhythm mechanic even if my tempo and memory is terrible. Also, bonus points for the ability to pause any time.

The biggest point in your favor though is that the game isn't overly easy. It gets complex pretty quickly, and honestly as a blind gamer, I'd rather lose at a game meant for me because of a skill issue than win easily any day.

Maybe this is unfair to a first time jam entrant, but any game with the word blind, darkness, sight, light ETC in it is just kind of annoying at this point. It's really overused. A game with a blind protagonist is much more annoying to me, but since you didn't do that here, I can hardly complain much.

We've had many of these bopit style press arrow to react games in the past and they are getting a bit old, but again that's hardly something that I can really hold against someone who doesn't know that, and at least your game used rhythm and had a steep difficulty curve which is more than I can say for most others in this genre.

I do wish that the game would penalize you for attacking too soon though (within reason).

If the game ever gets expanded, I hope that things get more complex. Maybe with the enemy countering and needing to be blocked in the middle of a set and you having to figure out where you left off, or adding the down arrow key to block in the middle as well, or making you hold the shift, control, or alt keys with the arrows to block elemental attacks from a wizard, putting you on the offensive instead and making them defend, making a hard mode where injuries carry over to the next fight, changing the block and strike sounds for different enemy weapons, letting you use a special attack after building up a meter, having a bard enemy who tries to confuse you with music of a different rhythm ETC.

A game like this is inherently kind of limited in scope do to not having free movement or equipment, but there are a few things you can do to spice it up a little.

Despite any criticisms I may have, this is a solid first time audiogame and I think you have a good chance of placing in the top 5, definitely the top 10 at least.

Thank you very much for lending your time and effort to our jam. It really does mean allot, and I'd love to see you back here again next year!

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popcar2Developer279 days ago (2 edits)

Thanks for the really in-depth review! I've taken note of some of this and gotten great feedback from others as well which I'll work on if I ever continue working on the game (or join the next jam).

Also, congratulations on being one of the few that liked the difficulty haha. The #1 complaint I get is that it's too difficult, unfair, or infuriating.

There actually were plans to make it way more complex but time definitely got to me, I was in a local game jam at the same time where I had to travel to a different city so I didn't have much time to work on them. The idea was to have enemies sometimes interrupt their attacks sometimes and force you to dodge backwards, or shoot arrows that you have to attack right before they reach you. Of course an endless mode too would've been nice. Maybe I'll work on these in the future, if I have the time.

Again, thanks for the detailed feedback!

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superfreq279 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Oooh good ideas! And totally understandable about the time crunch. I think this is a difficult game for sighted people who naturally aren't used to using their ears like this, and I don't want to exclude them so easier modes are totally a fine idea, but [and not to sound mean about it] but this is for blind gamers ultimately, not sighted ones.

Among those few blind people who do game, and the even fewer who play action games, generally we don't mind some challenge. Obviously there are blind newcomers as well, it's not just sighted people, but I've always felt that the default should be a more difficult game, with easier modes as an option, rather than the other way around. No shame to anyone who wants or needs those easier modes for any reason, but doing it the other way around can often give devs the wrong idea about our capabilities, or lead them to creating harder modes that aren't very inventive about how they make things more difficult, preferring to simply change some values rather than adding true complexity. Always easier to remove than to add IMO.

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cpresserSubmitted280 days ago

I liked the high-contrast iconography at the start. I had a hard time starting my defenses quickly enough after the two clicks.

Submitted

E-I-E-I-O

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SubstainSubmitted280 days ago

This is a cool game! The mechanic works quite well, although I agree with the others about the timing. I do like the overall approach, its pretty simple but still challenging, and the story is engaging, too. Good job!

Submitted

The Keeper - Curse of the Wretched

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jukesy1992282 days ago

I love this!

For the full version, I have two suggestions:

*the tutorial should be a prologue, so, perhaps just before you get the task, or, it could do the task bit first, but before the first opponent approaches, there could be a scene where the character flashes back and remembers how to fight. Then after that normal tutorial, the first opponent approaches.

So, it could either be a sort of test by whoever the benefactor is, then you walk towards the thing, or you walk first then do some sort of tutorial fight before the first opponent.

My second suggestion, an endless/survival mode of sorts.

I hope we get to find out what's behind/inside the structure.

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JRJurmanSubmitted282 days ago (2 edits)

The narration is super nice! Like others, had trouble getting through the combat, but with some tweaking there, this would be really cool.

Update*: gave this another try with a nicer headset, and I actually started getting the hang of it 😄

Submitted

Lunch Gambit

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Origamez (Oriol Gomez games)283 days ago(+1)

I hope you can finish this game, it’s a cool and interesting concept!

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Gabor Heja (gheja)Submitted284 days ago(+1)

It is a game really well made but (as others commented) the timing feels too strict, I could not get past the second guy. I really like the atmosphere and the mechanics, I wish there was more content and could play longer. But I still enjoyed it. Great work!

Submitted

Doggy Daycare (jam version)

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Callum DeerySubmitted284 days ago(+1)

Fun concept with some good feedback on actions.

The block timing seems quite tight (or I'm just very bad), so an option to adjust that might be nice?

Submitted

The journey to Kepler-186f

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popcar2Developer283 days ago

The difficulty curve is a bit harsh because I ran out of time, hopefully I can make things a bit easier later :)

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