Wonderful game, great ambience, and great potential for a funny and cozy little game that you are known to bless us with.
It’s definitely a little bit of a bummer that there’s wasn’t enough time to polish the game. As I’m sure you know, at this point in development, it would be quite hard or impossible to play this with eyes closed, relying only on the sound cues and screen reader cues. The screen reader was also very buggy and the music also glitched. And I’m also sure this is meant to be fixed, but some things I would do to improve, besides these bugs, would be:
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Pathfinding letting me explore the whole town. Maybe each tab would be for a different area of the town (and I mean the area we’re at, not only what’s on-screen). Because when you’re blind, you’re not going to be able to see if your screen is showing new things or old things you’ve already seen.
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I would make each character/item read as a question mark when when they are really meant to be something puzzling. Otherwise I would label them as “Woman” or actually “Blonde woman”, or stuff like that. And when you meet her, it starts as “Blonde woman” but then as she presents herself, it becomes “Katherine”. Maybe I would do that. And when we approach her, I would like to see her name popping on top of her head (visually) and be read by the screen reader.
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I think it’s cool that you did the pathfinding; I might though try to give emmission sounds for each character, at least, and maybe even each house. For example, at the bar, maybe, you hear some music that’s coming from inside. I’m thinking of this because Talon was great with our game and he thought of this for it, even though we don’t have the sounds implemented yet. It strikes to me how helpful each thing having an emmission sound is, to navigate by sounds when your eyes are closed.
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I think it would be great to see the audiodescription displayed also in a text box, as we’re hearing it. As a sighted person, I didn’t always understand exactly what the screen was saying, because I’m a bit noober or the voice I use is not the best one. And I think that making that available would make the game richer for sighted players, as well. So I’d think about that as a plus.
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Announcing each place when we enter it, and announcing every thing we’re near to (like if I’m neat a door, it announcing that, or announcing ‘go to your garden/house’.
Now for the great things I want to highlight:
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I know this writing must have been done with a bit of a rush. But I love the vibes of your game, and how each character is unique. You are great as a game designer and writer.
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I love that we also got to talk with the messenger kid and reply to him. I like that you still had time to implement a dialogue system.
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I love that there are audiodescriptions, and some made me laugh - I remember the septuplets house. Hearing that the kids were standing up in a perfect line just hits differently, and very funnily. And some audiodescriptions were really well done and brought things to life, even things that may have had art to them, when you hear the description, things become more real. Like, the bread maker and the tool maker and the setting behind them with the grains and stuff. This is a great proof that audiodescription is also for sighted people and also helps enrich a lot a game that with or without fancy art, can just become so much more alive.
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The music is beautiful, I love it, I don’t even know what else I can say about. It’s great composition and fits the world and game perfectly.
Lastly, I’m going to say I really hope you continue this game, or other games like your great ones, with these learnings in mind, because I felt very hearwarmed about it, and I love the concept and demo. You are great. I love your games and I would love to see this grow and become a blind-accessible narrative RPG. The next “Undertale” (as in, cozy vibes, awesome narrative, great game, but - different from it - blind-accessible!!). Keep up the excellent work. I want to see more.