Great game. Bit of a learning curve - the tutorials have a lot of information to take in, which can be tiring and taxxing - but I agree that they are great mechanics, and also a great tutorial. And it’s great at least as a starting point to be a standard for more blind-accessible first person games.
I do have some ideas to improve on it. For starters, I think I might make some of tutorial sentences shorter. Most are a good length, but as you start getting tired, it gets harder to follow long sentences, and it’s always a bit taxxing to follow long sentences anyway.
Another thing I’d love to suggest is in the dojo… these are minor frustrations, by the way, this is miles into being a good game, which it already is… anyway, it was frustrating to have the old man interrupting my process of experimentation by talking to me every 5 seconds. I would like to have more time to look around and experiment with the controls before being interrupted by him. I heard his advice and this is time to experiment a bit with it, and he interrupt too quickly and too many times, I guess. It’s something I’d like to see fine-tuned, maybe at least 10 seconds of interval or 15 between his tips.
I think another thing to think about for improvement would be options to toggle on and off the use of the divining rod (aka chicken finder) and the lock on feature by just pressing those buttons instead of having to hold them down. This would be very helpful for players with motor disabilities and would be a big improvement. I also have found a person in the wild, recently, who struggled with the bow and arrow mechanics in Zelda, because he had motor impairments, and he had ideas to make the mechanic more accessible for him, so I’ll try to find him and forward him again back here. Maybe he’ll have good thoughts to share with you as well.
I’d love to see more improvement with some sound design, as well, like candy sounds for bumping into certain types of walls. Like a different sound when I bump into a bed different from bumping into a wooden wall. It’s a thought - something to maybe explore, for more immersion.
I’d also love to see this being totally screen-reader compatible, and at the same time, see voice acting added to it. Having both options to change between would be great because it’d make it more accessible for people who need or want to to use braille displays, and total screen reader compatibility will allow them to follow the text like that; whereas voice acting will make the game more rich for everyone who had good hearing. These are improvements I’m suggesting that I save for games that are so well-built that these are the next steps, instead of the next step being needing a tutorial because I can’t even play.
I think I have even more thoughts - I might have jumped into some bugs? I can’t enter “my house”? I also couldn’t exit the bakery without having the “lock on” feature active. And also I think the sound EQ is not great for me. I had some trouble, and I have a lot of noise sensitivities, so the harsh differences between some menu sounds like the back button and other things, like the TTS voice, were uncomfortable, and also I have to be very focused to actually hear the TTS well, even after putting it on the maximum volume.
I may have more feedback in my VOD.
But I wanna say also that I loved having the chickens in my arms, it was sooooo fun!! I think the story is also very promising and I hope this continues to grow and improve. Thanks for the GREAT submission!
VOD for a few days: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2718827191