itch.io

Congrats on the submission here! Every one of your games feels like such a psychedelic experience, with so much to explore and do. 

Like others, I think the tutorials at the front may be a bit much (and I'm not sure that they actually explain that much more, unless I'm missing something)? I feel like there might legitimately be a bug with repeating tutorials showing up, but in general, feels like they are more story and vibes than they are how to play the game anyways (or maybe I should have read more closely 😅).

Another note, the game audio started to glitch out after a while of playing - of course that could also be my old machine showing its age (8 year old laptop 🧓).

I feel like when I was quickly navigating in and out of systems that I would have preferred to have it interrupt NVDA, which doesn't happen when using a controller. Maybe I just have my NVDA set to a slower speech rate, or if I was actually playing blind that would be useful. 

Again, congrats on the submission here, really well done 👏

Great job on this awesome submission!

I really enjoyed the gameplay here, and I thought the drafting rooms was really awesome. I also really enjoyed the different characters and voice actors for this. I always put plot and story last in my games, but you really did a great job here building an atmosphere, and it really pays off! Kudos to all the voice actors that really breathed life into here.

Like others, I think there's probably a little bit of polish to add with the focus and navigating menus. When using a controller I often ended up moving around the menu when also selecting the next room (this didn't interrupt the action, but caused extra readout that I imagine would be very confusing for a blind player). When opening the map it starts at the top left, and really should start on your current square. I also found that the map would sometimes not reset even when I had started a new game (it looks like it only resets when you draft your first room).

Separately, I wonder how much you might get away with reducing some of the menus / controls. I think while being able to look at your inventory is useful, I wonder if you could get rid of that entirely (and have items auto-apply when you interact with the room). It might also be worthwhile to just get rid of backtrace, just to remove the cognitive load of another item / control. There's probably a little bit of tuning when it comes to the actual difficulty too - I'd increase the steps you give to folks by 5 or something, so that getting to the end doesn't feel quite as tight.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game - I think the gameplay was super intuitive and was a fun challenge to play. Congrats to the whole team on the submission!

Thanks for the comments and feedback! 

Yeah, the errant punctuation always trips me up - next time I'm going to run all potential copy through a screen reader before coding everything up 😅.

Original version of the game intended to have extra points for recipes and a whole achievement system. It's definitely something I'd love to add! My next goals will be looking into mobile support (it's sorta there, but screen readers totally trip up on the web based export), and I'll be trying to look into what it would take to make a physical version (if that's even possible). But after all that, maybe! Definitely agreed that there is a ton of space here for more cards and abilities. 😁

Easily one of my favorite games of this jam. I loved loved loved this. I'm blown away at what everyone accomplished here for this project. I'll echo what Patricia said, this is honestly award-winning stuff.

The voice acting and dialog was amazing (shout out to both the actors), the music was perfectly eerie. I loved the story - the reveal was TOO GOOD. I really enjoyed the puzzles too - a lot of ah-ha moments, and just the right amount of difficulty.

I feel like with a lot of other games I can really easily get lost in movement, but the combination of the sound design, layout, controls, and the echo step made it all super easy to traverse. I think there were maybe one or two times where I really got stuck, but it was never hard to get my bearings again.

The only hiccup I ran into was after playing for a while the audio started to glitch (some sorta memory leak) and I had to save and quit, but I was able to pick back up right after that with no issues and finish the game.

Again, congrats on this amazing submission. You all literally knocked it out of the park, and this is easily going to be one of my go-to recommendations for nailing a great game jam game.

Congrats on the great submission!

I struggled a bit at the beginning, but actually felt I had the tools I needed to make progress, so after a few times dying at the first zombie, I did make it to round 3!

I couldn't quite figure out how to use the machines or get any upgrades. I'm guessing there's a sort of targeting I can do to find those, but it wasn't immediately obvious (even after scanning the manual). I will say, it's quite a long manual, and I think for a game jam, it's quite a lot to read and process (especially those of us that are trying to rate and play each and every game). There's probably a way to trim down and focus the game on the mechanics that feel good and make the game tense. I would really think about each and every key and whether it is worth the cognitive load for what it adds.

I found movement and firing fairly intuitive, and while I understand what aiming with ctrl did, I didn't quite understand the left/right arrow targeting while aiming. Like Patricia, I found holding control to be a bit awkward, and I would think about folks who might have motor disabilities, and would prefer not to have to hold a key down.

All of that being said, I really like the sound design (which made it clear when the round was starting), and really enjoyed this game. Congrats again, and thanks for building and sharing for the jam!

Congrats on the great submission here 👏

At first, I was confused how this would be accessible, but then I opened the pathfinding menu, and honestly was blown away. This is clearly a thought out system that makes it easy to move and interact with the town! I thought it was super cool, and made it easy to get to all the characters.

I was playing on Mac OS X with VoiceOver, and actually didn't run into too many issues. I think the first bit of dialog was missing when talking with characters, but other than that, most everything seemed to work as expected.

Aside from that, I thought the music was great, and the sound effects were helpful. Even though it's not the game you originally set out to make, I think we all suffer from high aspirations at the start of the jam that we eventually have to scope down. I think as a fun little town exploration game this was pretty great.

Congrats again, and thanks for building and sharing something for the jam!

Crafting games aren't totally my jam, but I would love to see more games explore this space!

As others mentioned, I couldn't do too much. The menu navigation was a little unwieldy, and I definitely wouldn't have know to move around unless I was looking at the screen.

I really enjoyed using Tab to tell me where nearby things were, and how many steps to get there. I think that's a great way to communicate that information. Unfortunately it seems like some of the steps didn't always make a sound (if that was intentional though, it certainly would make it a fun challenge 😅).

Congrats on the submission 👏

I really really love this concept, I think it is super cool, and I think the aesthetic and soundscape is perfect. Like others, I struggled with the movement and hacking (it sounded like I was moving / turning while I was hacking?). I also couldn't quite remember the tones for the different directions, so I wonder if there is a different kind of sound you could do for the different directions  (or maybe I need headphones that distinguish front and back better 😅).

Thank you again for building and sharing this for the jam!

Congrats on making a submission for the jam! 👏

As someone also not familiar with FNAF, I probably fall in the same camp as Patricia and shiftBacktick, and I agree with their feedback that incremental ways to introduce the controls would be super useful. 

I also feel like the audio affordance was backwards from what I expected when closing doors (hearing a sound from the opposite side of the door), but maybe I have it totally backwards and that is intended 😅

Thanks again for making this and sharing it for the jam! ❤️

Yeah, definitely heard on the "tuning for everyone is really hard". I definitely agonized over that one for this jam a lot 😅.

I would have definitely spent more time if I didn't have all the other games to get through, but I'll let you know I got to the end of the first cinematic (where you get the mine key). I will say, I'm glad I stayed around to that point, because the atmosphere definitely hits when you get to that point - it makes it really feel like a AAA game.

Congrats on the submission! Like Patricia, I sorta struggled with knowing exactly what to do to start, and I think some audio cues when interacting with things would definitely help. It definitely reminded me of some min-escape rooms I've done though, so definitely nailed down the puzzle bit, and I really enjoyed the sound effects and soundscape overall.

Congrats again on the submission, and thanks for sharing it for the jam!

Congrats on getting a submission for the jam.

I think there are some basic flow things that probably need better screen reader support (some of the modals didn't have the best affordances on what was being shown or how to close them). I think there's a lot of bits here that are nice, but probably don't add a ton of value for blind players (like setting the unit colors), and I wonder how much of the modals and configuration you could cut out to make it easier to get straight into the game!

Side note - I'm surprised you didn't end up making a web build since this uses Web Awesome - I'm genuinely curious how you put this together (since I've been following the Web Awesome development for quite a while, and I'm working on my own web applications with it as well).

Again, congrats on making the submission and thank you for sharing it for the jam!

To clarify, I meant an audio affordance for changing which audio channel is selected. I actually think making volume changes was actually quite clean (and I certainly wouldn't want anything that makes it harder to hear or understand the audio playing!)

And +100 for making games deaf / hard-of-hearing accessible 👏 - you could probably even do it with this (with a bunch of overlapping subtitles or something 🤣)

Congrats on making a submission, and being able to participate in the jam!

Like others mentioned, I think it wasn't totally obvious what to exactly do to start the game, definitely worth adding something to the itch.io page on how to build and run the game for different platforms if possible (and which files to specifically open).

I tried using NVDA on windows, and didn't get any kind of audio affordance for the instructions. I think if these were in itch.io, that would be a good substitute, or conversely, just include an audio recording of the instructions at the start of the game! I think testing and making sure that the game is easy to run and launch with a screen reader (VoiceOver on Mac, or NVDA on Windows) would be extremely valuable.

All of that said, once I was able to run it, I understood and was able to find my way through the room. I was able to complete it in just under 2 minutes, and navigating around wasn't challenging at all. 

Congrats again on building and sharing this for the jam.

Man, every year the games you put out tempt me to make my own blind accessible real-time action game. This is great proof that blind games don't have to be simple, turn or text based games.

I loved the art style, the options between rounds, and I thought the music and theme was great overall.

Some immediate thoughts:

• I think, like others mentioned, the sound scape was a tad noisy, and would have benefitted from sound effects that were clearly friendly noises vs enemy noises. Turning down the music just a little by default might also help here.
• I think it would help to give the ally orbs a more friendly sound, and something to make it clear if they are in front of you (and the fact that they are always moving forward).
• I couldn't quite figure out how to use the sonar. I feel like the map was useful, but I wonder if something more immediate and direct would have been useful - a button to tell you what are the next 4 things in front of you, and one thing behind you, with distance, would have been perfect.
• I wonder if it also would have been worthwhile to make the enemy distance noise a bit farther out (rather than making it only ping when you are right next to them).
• I ended up not going to the other lanes (and it doesn't look like that stopped me from progressing for the first couple of levels at least?)
• Enemies don't have an audio tell before they attack (just on their attack) - maybe that wasn't super impactful, but I think a grunt here or something could help players know that they are about to swing
• I'm not sure I totally understand the purpose of having the health not reset when you are knocked out - knowing that you need to heal feels like an extra step that doesn't add a whole lot
• Having other abilities is neat, but without a specific audio tell, I'm not totally sure how much it adds, I wonder if having a charged or quick-succession attack on spacebar would have been just-as-good, with less overhead / learning.
• I'm not sure how useful this would be, but I imagine the font might be challenging for low vision players - it seems like there were quite a few different ones being used, and an option here to use a more accessible one might be useful (for both sighted and low-vision players!)

Sorry, I realize that probably feels like a lot of nits, but I actually really really enjoyed this game, and it's crazy impressive that you got this together and helped make the jam run as smoothly as you did. This is one of the few games that I might actually pull up post jam and play more of. Congrats on putting something awesome together, and thank you for everything you do to make this whole jam happen.

Congrats on the great submission here!

I really enjoyed the puzzles here and the controls for changing the different channels. I think this is very unique compared to entries I've seen in the past for this jam, and I thought it was super clever and well done. The voice acting was also great and appreciated.

My only feedback would be that I would have loved some audio feedback (just a short sound or something) when changing audio channels. I think also adding some kind of visual affordance (for sighted / low-vision players) would have been cool (but definitely not required).

All in all, I really enjoyed playing this game! Congrats again 👏

Congrats on the amazing submission here!

Everything here is so good, from the sound scape and music, to the controls for aiming and moving. It's clear a lot of thought and care went into this, and it certainly paid off!

Admittedly, I struggled a lot getting that third chicken, and I struggled to get to all the places in the village (even after having been to each spot once before). I wonder if there's a better village layout that would make it easier to not get turned around and lost as much. Potentially this was an issue of turning around too quickly, and I wonder if an audio affordance for turning would help?

I thought the controls on a controller were pretty intuitive, at least, as someone who has played a lot of Zelda games with target locking, it made sense right away. I think the dojo was really useful too as a way to learn how to use the rod.

I'm not sure if this is because I was on a browser or on Mac OS X, but sometimes when I switched focus out of the window, and tried to go back to the game, the TTS voice just completely stopped working (even when I hard reset the game). Additionally, for some reason, when I was in the dojo and using the divining rod, it didn't pick up that I was targeting the dojo master (after spamming left trigger it finally worked in browser). I ended up downloading the game for Windows and that worked fine. (Note I tested this again on Windows browser, Edge, and I'm still seeing this issue).

I'll echo Patricia's comments that I think the introductory pre-game dialog was a little much (especially when there are so many games to get through for this jam). I think a lot of that content would be better placed on the itch.io page, so players who start the game can get right into it.

All in all, this was an amazing entry, and I hope you and others game developers learn a lot from what's here!

Congrats on making a submission (even if it is a very early prototype).

Unlike others, I found the other sounds actually fun and silly, and intuitively knew them to be more distractions than anything else. Like others said, I do agree that some sound effect for the gun firing and whether you hit or not would make this more complete of a submission. Hope you continue working on this and other audio games in the future!

Congrats on making a submission, even if it is just an initial prototype.

I struggled to play the game using VoiceOver on Mac OS X - often the screen reader would lose focus on the game, and moving and interacting with different elements didn't give enough affordance or details on what I was focusing on. Some additional details about what the content on the screen is would help a lot here too. If you end up doing more testing and getting it working with VoiceOver, I'd love to give it another try!

Not sure if you have tested with VoiceOver on Mac OS X, but it looks like your document language was set to `es`, which uses a spanish voice when possible, making the content difficult to understand (because it assumes that it is in spanish).

Congrats on the submission!

Pure story games aren't always my jam, but I really enjoyed all the different sound effects throughout the game, that made the world feel more immersive. Like others, I think I would have enjoyed more options for dialog responses, but overall I think it was good. 

I think the one thing that would have made it feel more like a game would have been to include / read out the stats (Patience / Independence / Sass) as you make actions, or include that in each of the options descriptions.

Thanks again for participating and building something for the jam ❤️ 

Congrats on the great submission here 👏

I really enjoyed this one. I'm not usually a fan of pure story games, but the little interactions and audio made it fun and interactive way to really be in the scene. As others have already brought up, the voice acting and the sounds, were all great here, and made it clear what I was doing and what was happening at all times.

As others had mentioned, there is probably some timing that could be tightened up (making the noise and the callout happen more syncronously), but other than that, I thought this was great!

Congrats on the great submission here 🎉

I really enjoyed playing this game. The voice acting was great, the different puzzles were fun to play, and all the sound effects really helped build an atmosphere. I ended up having to play it twice (lost a lot of time to listening to the dialog, so I blew up the first time, and then won on the second run), but I enjoyed both runs. 

My feedback would probably be the same as others here. I think pausing the timer (even if you kept the bomb ticks going) would be a totally acceptable (even if it would be non-diegetic). You could also potentially remove the 10 second penelty for missing (you already aren't making progress, so I don't know that you need an additional penelty on top). 

Again, really great job here, so thank you for making and sharing this game!

Congrats on the submission and participating in the jam.

Like others had mentioned, I had trouble accessing this with a Screen Reader, so I definitely think if you hadn't before, test your game with NVDA or VoiceOver to validate that players can get to the game.

I thought the clapping was definitely an intuitive way to line myself up with the pins, but were a little too constant or frequent, and along with the new pins, made it hard to keep up or feel like I could make real progression. I think you could very easily turn this into a fun game of rounds where more and more pins show up, after already  successfully knocking some down. Alternatively, putting a timer on it and seeing how many pins you can knock down in a specific amount of time is one option (although that is definitely the more stressful route 😅).

Congrats on the submission 👏

I struggled a bit with this game, and couldn't get any points. I super appreciate the tutorial at the beginning, but found it challenging to line up to any specific target. I also felt like I lost all three lives pretty immediately, so maybe some invulnerability frames would make the experience smoother!

Also, I feel like I didn't totally understand the utility of the left-control ping, and it actually caused a bunch of issues (when pressing that with arrow keys, it causes other shortcuts to happen on Mac OS X). Potentially mapping that to a different keyboard key would be worthwhile.

Congrats on the game - very well executed 👏

Admittedly, I wasn't totally sure if I was making any progress (I was probably flying into a wall for a long time before I started thinking about the wind 😅), and I don't think I ever got the echoes to work correctly, but I was able to make it out, and I could definitely see myself going back to this!

Also, great job on the tutorial and making all the sound effects clear at the beginning. I know for a game jam that can be hard to fit in, but it is super appreciated when it is there, and made the game all that much more clear ⭐️

Congrats on the submission 🎉

Like others have said, I had a bit of trouble understanding the audio cues and knowing exactly what to do when (and in my three attempts I couldn't get any coins). Perhaps a starting level that slowly introduces obstacles could help introduce players to the different sounds!

Congrats on the second submission here 👏

Like someone else in the comments, when I was playing on Mac OS X I got some non-English readout which made the game challenging to play. On Windows I could tell there were two distinct Text to Speech voices, so maybe there is some testing and configuration to do there to make sure that all the voices are correct.

Congrats on the submission (even if its just an experiment). I really enjoyed the ambiance and all the different sound effects that gave the game a real aesthetic. 

Also agree with others that there might be too many sounds at some points - I feel like when I first started the game there were a ton of different conflicting noises, and it wasn't until I stopped (30 or or so seconds in) where it became much more clear and easier to understand, so maybe there is a bug in the starting setup.

Congrats on the submission. I found the timing to be really hard, and I wonder if the combination of moving the turret and moving targets make it too challenging - potentially there could be additional audio cues to help "lock on".

I'm also surprised at the different Text To Speech between the beginning instructions and in-game readout. The in-game readout for me was really hard to understand and sounded like a raspy wisper. The starting Text to Speech was so much clearer and easier to understand - it feels worthwhile to just have that one. 

Note: that was on Mac OS X, when testing on Windows, the default voice was easier to understand. There may be some settings or configuration to change there to make it easy to understand on both.

Haha, at one point in time there was an ability that would add the card to the hand, so you could chain abilities, but it felt very chaotic and hard to reconcile (and maybe too easy 😅). I still have the code for that, so maybe I'll introduce it back in a future version after the jam.

Thanks for compliments, and I'm glad you enjoyed the game ❤️

Do you have a screen reader running? It should work with whatever screen reader you already have enabled! If you are using one that doesn't appear to work, let me know, and I can try to replicate / test on my end.

That's super strange! I did test it with Narrator on Edge, and that appears to work fine, but yeah, also seeing the same issue with Firefox where it doesn't read off any of the text. I'll try to do more testing, thanks for bringing this up!

Wow - I'm stunned. I just listend to the new version, and I'm immediately blown away by how amazing the new audio version is. I really enjoyed the possible dice results (not just success and failure, but like, really neat ways to think about what the results could mean), and the subtle music in the background really set the tone!

I think this also does a really great job of explaining how people should interface with this kind of thing. Great job on the new edition 👏

I have a linux device, but haven't tried working with any screen reader there - it should work with any screen reader that works with your browser, but let me know which one you are using, and I'll give it a try on my own machine!

It totally could have been that I misheard the instructions, but I had tried making the espresso first, and then putting the ice cream in - in retrospect (since I've made them before in real life) I probably had that backwards, but there wasn't a clear affordance in the tutorial that that is what was wrong (if that's what I messed up) - rapidly pressing space for the ice cream just failed when I had the cup of espresso.

I guess, at least for the tutorial, having some sort of feedback on what I was doing wrong would be good - but that's definitely beyond the scope of a normal game jam. 

Note: When I went to run the game again just now, I discovered the pause menu with all the descriptions of drinks and machines - that is a super nice touch (even if it wouldn't have helped in this scenario 😅).

Great job on the submission! I really loved this game, and it was super fun to play. The Voice Acting all around was great, and while this genre of game isn't usually my go to, I really enjoyed it, especially when it got to the frothing on the second set of customers. I think you did a really good job with the tutorials and guiding players along (admittedly, I had some struggles getting the ice cream for the afagato, but everything else was really smooth). 

Good job on the submission! The controls were intuitive, and the sounds were great. Like others, I felt like it was very easy to run into a wall, and I wonder if there could be more affordances to avoid that when moving left and right. Otherwise the game was pretty good, and definitely could see it being expanded to something more.

Great submission!

Like others, I found myself spamming at certain parts to find areas / items, but I did love the fact that the audio cues were very much "part of the scenery". I also immediately lowered the volume, and like others found that the speech rate didn't seem to be impacted by the options. 

Overall, movement and interactions here were pretty straight-forward, the story was good, and while this is similar in nature to a lot of the other "explore and find things" type of games, I do appreciate how it all came together.

I really enjoyed the Voice Acting and atmosphere here! 

Like others I was stuck after getting the crystal and couldn't find my way back to the druid, so having some better audio cues for each area could help players know what areas they have and haven't been yet.

I also struggled with the movement controls - I tried keyboard and couldn't totally tell what was going on, but then when I plugged a mouse in and put on headphones I had better luck.

Overall great job on the submission, I'd love to see this develop more, and potentially a sequel in a future Jam!