itch.io

Hi! I was the host this year of https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-5/entries

The feedback I got from a good number of users is navigating the entries menu via screen reader is awful and discouraging. 

Getting to a game requires pressing tab about 40 times, and it doesn't seem to convey if you've rated a game or not, So just really wish it was a better experience where games had headings so could jump from one to one.

Oh yes I have a tutorial based around doing sounds! This one was more focused on doing UI stuff.

But having a part 2 of the tutorial for making it sound nice would make sense! Making a main menu screen, end screen, options, sfx for like the cards being shuffled, stuff like that, does make a lot of sense! That way if this is the only tutorial they want to do, they are taught how to do that stuff and can build off from there.
"Here is meat and veggies of a deck builder"
"Here is a little bit of seasoning!" 

Amazing game! I am so happy we are getting creative games made with such heart like this.
I haven't gotten back to it yet so maybe I was missing a key item or something, but on the first day of the actual game (not tutorial, Sitrine was yelling at me) I made it to the final room and nothing happened. Not sure if I was meant to make it or not before finding the gold shrine, but thought I'd mention it in case a bug. But fun either way!

Oh also, don't forget how important it is to prove that a blind accessible games don't need all the bells and whistles. Making a card game that is genuinely fun and also accessible is something I wish more folks would try. Cause countless games on steam would be accessible for just a bit of consideration at the start of development. So games that show case "Hey look, does your game look like this? It does? Cool, you're setting up a screen reader at start of dev and making sure nothing you do breaks it away from being accessible" i love.

Also I'm a sucker for roguelike card games. 

Oh thank you so much! 

And those aren't nits, they are feedback that really help!

I didn't get as much time on it as I wanted too to work on this given how ambitious it was, and as a result I didn't get as much play testing/feedback in, cause I didn't have like a build with all core features until uhh 6 hours before. Compared to Necromancer Nonsense which I would have been happy to submit a week and a half early, so the last week was just playing it and having other folks play it and trying out different thing.
So important reminder on how important a beta period is! So I think you're right on basically all of these! 

1. Yeah I think having some sort of audio theme for all friendly vs enemy things would have been nice. That was a big part of why you only got ally orbs, so you only have to recognize the one sound. But I think it fell into the mess. Gotta think how to clean it up.

2. Good point! I say you wanna be behind it, but in the chaos of the game it's probably hard to tell right away.

3. So the sonar "should" be what you're asking for, but maybe it's not working intuitively. It gives you little pings based on what is in front of you, but with a delay based on how far away they are. Idea being it's like a real rardar, where it's based on how long it takes for sound to hit the thing then get back to you. Maybe this is just a tutorial thing, or maybe I can print results of radar to log to make it more obvious what it did? Probably both!

4. So the enemy distance noise is game saying "You are in range of attack", assuming you mean the danger thing. IDK if that ended up being all that help though except for the tower.

5. Yeahhh idea was you'd need to bounce between the other lanes, protecting the lane you weren't on, then jumping back to push your other lane because the lane you weren't on would be destroyed if you didn't. I guess moba like? But I reallllly struggled with balance. Anytime I got the enemies pushing right, players died too fast. If I weakened the defenses, then it felt like there was no time to do anything on the other lane. I really need to decide how long I want a game to last, then time out "Okay if I push like I expect a player to do, it takes me X time to push a lane. So I need the other lane to fall in less time than that if the player doesn't intervene" and buff/weaken things to make that happen. I keep thinking I should add some sort of "pressure" unit called flankers that are extra units that only spawn on the lane you aren't on, and the longer you aren't on that lane the faster they spawn. That might be easier than trying to perfectly balance a level. 

Or opposite, where there is a "hunter" character that spawns on the players lane if they spend too long on it. 

6. Ahhh so many noises to balance. You are totally right, I just gotta figure out how I need to clean up the sound scape in general. Maybe I just need to get more into having very distinct audio pings for things that play as well as the pretty stuff that cuts through since players have full control of audio levels, they can always lower them if not wanted. Or tie all "advanced accessibility" alerts to one thing. 

7. Idea was I didn't want player to be able to body block for forever. I made the player rather tanky, so didn't want it to be like "respawn, step in front of gate, kill a few things, die, repeat" and instead be you need to stay safe for a second and heal. Having the enemy get something beneficial, or a longer respawn timer, probably does this just fine though.

8.Hmm there are audio tells when abilities come off cool down, but as part of balance I will admit they didn't have the impact I wanted. But again, audio sound scape crowding was a problem.

9. Me and fonts man. I picked a font, used it in places... oh dang looked unreadable in this menu, okay lemme change it here then go change it elsewhere later... oh crap in another place the new font is unreadable, uhhh new font. Then never actually got around to finding one that was half decent everywhere. So yeah... just right.

So yeah a lot of the feedback is "soundscape and audio balance is off" but you gave good specific issues with it, which is good cause as the dev I'm like "I recognize it's a mess, but my silly brain hears all the alerts fine and knows their purpose, because i made them" so very helpful! 

Haha if you wanted to really mess with pedants like me, the very next question would be "do they smell" and then "Yes, they have noses"

Fun stuff, thanks for making a silly game!

I mean it was the request of the community by an overwhelming amount for us to put in this rule:

6. NoGen AI:To nurture our supportive community and respect the skill and talent of our participants, please avoid using generative AI for creation of assets, including source code. If you need, you may use it to manage accessibility-related barriers (e.g. modifying an inaccessible game engine).

In part to just give people a break from being expected to use AI, and to give people a break from having to deal with AI gen content. Combined with we want folks to be learning and documenting and innovating! A lot of engines have garbage implementation of accessibility things, and odds of AI coming up with a new solution are rather low. You can absolutely go "Hey I'm trying to do XYZ, what function should I use?", heck even "this is wrong, why?" because its pattern recognition will find that stupid flipped < symbol. Maybe even "I found this addon in another engine to add accessibility to my engine, what is the equivalent syntax for my engine?"

 but having it write code I don't trust at all still at my job, since you mentioned you didn't use AI except for the music I'm assuming you meant programming at work though and did all programming here! 

Sorry for bother, I was confused by the nipples, which led to confusion about music. If you have any questions or concerns do feel free to message me on discord so we don't spam up your comments with this weirdness! 

Oh okay! So it just took your whistling and built vocals?

Sorry for confusion! People are jumpy at the word AI. 

Haha I mean if they were meant to be there to be silly I wasn't gonna question it!

Then someone reported about the music being AI since our rules say no using things made by proc gen. We don't say no letting proc gen help at all, since with how baked in AI is to everything that'd ban using google at this point.  So can you clarify how much proc gen helped with the music just to make my life easier? 

Or if you can replace the music that might just be easier as that way folks can focus on your writing and the feedback is on your game instead of AI nonsense. 

I have a point of contention! 

Flowers do not have noses, so they do not smell! So the correct incorrect answer is yes!

Glad you had fun with the prompt!

Strings and stone? Alliteration?  Well surely 5/5 game right there!  But more seriously, I really love the divining rod system!  People making systems that can go into other games  to help make them accessible is always a dream, and the divining rod system ported into a lot of top down games would just make them accessible (once you know, all the hard work of tagging objects with descriptions and ya know.... but point stands!) So wonderful work, thank you so much for the effort and care!  

I'm curious, was there another game that had the divining rod system? Since I might steal it one day, I wanna know who I would be robbing. 

I HATE IT.
Because horror games give me anxiety and dread, so 10/10 execution, never playing it again.

Thank you for the awesome entry, great quality and awesome use of limited mechanics. I lulled when the voice mentioned that we were just packing heat. Not what I was expecting. 

Ahh okay, if that's the case don't forget on the publishing of it to mark the "Has AI content" Since that wasn't checked I assumed it wasn't.
Ai is allowed to help devs with accessibility issues, and if image is only thing then that's probably fine since that isn't actually in the game. If you want help to replace them do feel free to stop by the discord and we'll be happy to help! Thanks for entry!

I really hope you keep working on this! It already feels like the intro to a fun game, really done! 

Oh where'd you get the image from? It's a weird picture but looks custom, so don't forget to credit your team!

Hey thank you for entering the jam!
So game crashes if you open without screen reader open, but I don't see any mention screen reader is required. Since plenty of sighted folks play and may not open their screen reader unless needed! So if screen reader is required, let folks know!

Okay I gotta know, why in the picture does he have nipples on his shirt? (Also don't forget to have alt text if your images is conveying something silly like that!)

Hello! I uploaded a new build that undid a UI change. Can you test and see if it works now?

So sorry for that! Hopefully it works now! Do let me know if it works or not!

Hello! I uploaded a new build that undid a UI change. Can you test and see if it works now?

So sorry for that! Hopefully it works now! Do let me know if it works or not!

Uhh I'm really confused as someone just reported same thing, screenreader should 100% be working and is working on my machine and previous testers it worked. I'm going to investigate, if you open the console inside the folder then click around the menu, does the console throw any sort of error?

That is incredibly strange, screen reader 100% is working and there isn't a debug menu. I tested the windows build and my NVDA works so I'm unsure what's going on.

Can you explain more what opens? Are you running linux or windows build? Would it be possible to send a screen shot of what opens on discord? Just as much information you can provide to help me bug fix. 

Mmm there is a learn sounds menu, do you mean in the over view tab? Or more details? I call it audio index in the main menu.

And you have lots of allies, they are little units that spawn so there is no easy way to convey that. 

But I did make it projectiles from archers now how their own unique warning sound when you are in danger of them! So hopefully that helps? 

Could you clarify at all though? I thought the tutorial was pretty good, is the map mode and sonar just not enough? The overview has details on everything happening in game, so is like something missing from there to give context? Does something need to be moved out of there to an easier to reach spot?

Like all the information should be there, so wondering where the loss is! Like does some of the information not make sense? 

Oh no! I'm sorry, yeah I'll keep adding stuff.

Oh wonderful! Thank you so much for testing again. I'm far less concerned with ratings and more concerned with just making sure my game actually is accessible! Having a 1+ second delay on screen readers is not very accessible to me.

Realized I need to turn off VSYNC in godot, otherwise it will tie updates a second to FPS. If anything makes it so it can't find out what the FPS is (out of date drivers, monitor is off, no monitor, etc.) it'll decide to do an update like once a second (maybe longer on some systems?), which is real bad.

Maybe I can request that part of setting "screen reader always on" is turning off that setting.

So my only play tester was Unsytedvoices who is blind (probably know him, so maybe uneeded to say since he's so active in community)! He said he really got a hang of it once the Sonar and map was working and M key opened map directly, since he could ping sonar and if he wasn't sure what it meant jump back to the map and get an understanding. Then he also said the ability to go and lower things you felt like was drowning things out using the AudioIndex/learn sounds menu was really helpful.  But I wish I had gotten more play testers, because Unsyted got pretty good at the game, so by the end was he doing well because I made the accessibility much better, or just he'd spent a couple hours on it and I explained things to him that didn't make it into the tutorial? Probably both. But that means I have no idea how long it takes with the current setup to go from "new game" to "Feeling comfortable" for a blind player. I'd love to get that down to like 5 minutes, I don't think it's there yet. If it's 20 minutes, eh, fine, not bad, not good. If it's an hour? More?  Blech, bad. 

If you have any suggestions on what to add/modify, to get that "time to feeling comfortable in game" down, do let me know! I always try less commonly made genres as I wanna encourage other sighted devs to make what they find fun and not panic run towards "safe" genre of games (Rhythm/text). But if they aren't actually accessible, probably just reinforces the feeling of staying on safe games! So any specifics is super helpful.

Maybe just need to make it so can access the audio library from in level... hmm.. also debated adding a practice mode where you can run around invincible so you can just like stand in a place listening to get an idea of what is happening and not be worried about dying. Not sure if you think that'd help, or if maybe just need first few levels to be less chaotic! Having multiple torches firing projectiles and enemies all in range probably is a lot. If I was super cool I probably could also add a control to globally increase/decrease your listening range. So like if you're in a tighter battle you can lower down to only really hearing what is right next to you, but if you're trying to get vibes, can expand it to most of the floor?  Not sure if that'd actually be helpful, or just be annoying cause you'd get ambushed by arrows whenever you shorten the listening range.
Maybe need to make the arrows have a warning box and move a little slower....
Sorry now I'm brain storming in response! 
But thank you for the feedback! I'll keep trying stuff!

Haven't had a chance to play yet, but you can try zipping the exe, that might prevent warnings from stopping the download. 

I fixed a bug right before submitting, which was that the attack stat of the archer wasn't being passed correctly to the arrow.

But now that it was, uh.... yeah a lot stronger than when I tested it. I do this every year xD 

oh dang it I just realized I accidentally tripled the attack of the archers from what I tested with XD I'm nerfing them back to where they should be if you wanna give them another try!

Oh I uploaded a new version, can you test with new version? 

Sorry for triple post, but I made a change to the project that makes it more compatible with other systems.

Please download the new version and give another try. Don't forget to give details when you run into bugs though! 

Hmm yes I just tested it, there is 0 lag, and my other play testers have 0 lag as well.

Can you please give more details? Are you using native windows? What screen reader are you using? Do you have a monitor?  Since it works on other blind users screens I can only assume it's a computer issue without more context.

Then if you check out the description of the game it does  include this:

There are tabs on top, then each tab has a list of sounds and you can modify the audio level of each individually. For audio that is attached to moving things, this is the "loudest" it can be.

I do appreciate you taking time to give feedback, but I do need some more details! the sound menu is there in the main menu, and need some specifics on system so I can determine source of lag.

There is a learn sounds menu, and there shouldn't be any lag?

Can you help me out, what do you mean there isn't a learn sound menu? In the main menu if you press down a few you'll get it. 

Do feel free to join the discord and share! We have hundreds of people there!

I mean, what do you do when you make a mistake in the game?

We have hundreds of members on our discord that are looking for teams, sharing their games, and helping one another, so I hope you join!

https://discord.gg/RaXz5MzJkF

Oh thank you so much for kind words! Yes I've been talking to a lot of people about how to help make the data streams less overwhelming and what is happening more obvious, watching some blind players steam helped as well.

So I'll for sure see how I do! I do love RTS and always wanted to make one, so went with a sillier approach!

Okay so I think I know how I'm gonna fix the UI after talking to people! 

First, line by line focus with tab. You can choose to focus on a line and once you do you only get updates about that line. When you move to a new location, it will read out the header line + the focused line. With header line being coordinates+ owner.

Then the current plan is to make what on each line is customizable! So if the default order/groupings/header don't feel right for how someone plays, can move them. Also think that allows toggling on like descriptions of the units it makes, bonuses it gives, weirder stats that only matter to certain buildings, stuff like that.

Then did you do level 5? Patricia said it was a nightmare and I was confused as it was supposed to be easy compared to 4 since you start with a stronger building and with less zombies in path of expansion.

I'm glad you liked it! Also I guess the tutorial does an okay job then if it made so much more sense! I was actually talking to Patricia about how to make everyone actually play the tutorial because people are so used to skipping XD 

Cause if you make it required like as first few levels of campaign, people who know what's going on will quit. 

Make it optional, people skip and get annoyed! We were talking about it because she's my team mate and she skipped a tutorial level XD

Yeah not sure how far you made it but for sure gotta be very mindful of turtling! The general idea is "If you have more production you can turtle. If you don't, you have to be aggressive".  Things like the 3 special buildings can tip the balance used properly where you will out put more power to the field despite having less buildings, but they can also get you killed used poorly.

Yeah I've gotten some great feedback on how to make it less overwhelming! I added ability to slow down stop time to offset it, and explains things more in the tutorial.