Very creative idea! I wasn't able to assemble the entire song but was able to make some decent progress. The UI took a bit of getting used to but was easy enough to use once I got a handle on it.
pitermach
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I would have loved to see the rest of the game the way you planned it in the cut scenes, because the acting and story were really cool. As for the game itself, I had no problems navigating. I agree with others that having a bit more audio and perhaps mechanics would have made the experience fuller but understand you weren't able to do everything you wanted. In regards to replacing the guard indicator beeps with vocal callouts, I would only do that with something that makes sense in-universe, IE the guards walking around and talking to each other so you can just hear where they are. Hearing them call out I'm to your right! Or something like that would probably get me out of the game more. Or you could just combine them with the beeps which I didn't find annoying.
This was one of my favorites this year, though for context I have a lot of time logged in Slay the Spire and various mobile roguelikes so I might be a bit biased because I really enjoy these kind of games. :) The UI works great. I didn't feel like I experienced information overload, I like that there are hotkeys to quickly assign dice or read the most important information and love the descriptions of the characters you go up against. The music and sounds go well together, though I think it'd be cool if we had separate volume controls for music and sounds. I too would love to see this game expanded further because I think there's a lot of potential for more dice types and perhaps enemies with special attacks of some kind. To end though this is a great example to show that some genres can be made accessible for blind players just by making them work with a screen reader, something you did really well here!
I loved the sound design and voice acting here and can't wait to face the other characters. The gameplay was simple but with the presentation worked really well. Like I said on the Discord I'd add an application role to the main game element if you want it to play better with screen readers without making people manually enter forms mode. I'll definitely be coming back once the other characters are added.
The sound design and voice acting in the game was adorable. The interaction system also worked really well though I found the cursor when using a gamepad a bit snappy and had to correct it a few times to focus the object I wanted to use. Other than that I loved what I played and would loved to have seen more, this is a good platform to make a blind-friendly adventure game on.
The game was pretty simple and not too difficult. Definitely the voice acting and sound design was a highlight, creating a very convincing atmosphere whether your character is alive or just died - the first time I discovered whatever the thing posing as your daughter was, it was pretty unsettling. One issue I found was that the footstep sound is way too long, when you press the key your character only takes 1 step while it sounds like you're still walking. I would either cut everything but 1 step, or if you want to make it more realistic cut up the sound into separate steps and have the game play one of them at random. That way it would feel much less confusing.
The story and atmosphere were great, I enjoyed discovering the story of the ship and its crew. The music, both the original compositions and using public domain tracks to fit the atmosphere, worked really well. For some reason playing on Windows the rate and volume sliders didn't quite workright - the volume I could adjust only from 10% to 50% so the voice ended up being very quiet, while the rate slider actually controlled the voice pitch without effecting the rate. But that didn't detract from the experience much because the atmosphere and story still made it worthwhile.
Even though the gameplay is simple the presentation is charming and amazing. All of the music is excellent, the sounds appropriately retro and even though the gameplay concept of repeating arrow key sequences itself is very simple and has been done before, you put a fun spin on it with the different enemies. That dragon trolled me so hard before the patch, I could only get it to 5 health at most even though I went into this game with probably too much confidence. :) At least I got the last laugh post patch
Can't add much more than echo what others have already said. Pretty fun game, the sounds that are there were nice and the sonar system seemed to work though the game is definitely not easy. I would definitely appreciate some keyboard controls. It's not a bad idea to have mouse controls for audio games, plenty of genres benefit from them, but very often I don't even have a mouse connected to my desktop. I ended up using a gamepad to simulate one to play, so if you're designing for blind accessibility it's a good idea to have mouse controls as one of the options instead of the only one.
Over all I liked the concept of this one and thought the audio was great. My main suggestion is agreeing with the people saying the game is a bit easy. I too was mostly able to play by listening out for the enemies and using the sonar, and so I almost never got fired at. Having the enemies try too find me whenever I fired at them, or perhaps taking the suggestions of the different speeds or limiting how many torpedos you can shoot would make it more challenging. You could also get rid of the levels featuring more stationary or not aggressive enemies, they are a good idea for a tutorial perhaps for 1 and 2 enemies, but after that I think you can just immediately give people enemies that can both move and fire.
I had an absolute blast with this game. You can really tell everyone working on it had fun creating it and I had just as much fun playing. Blind-friendly cooking games in general is something we don't really have so this actually fills a nich. The concept is also executed very well, with gameplay that's both simple to pick up but also taking a lot of memorisation if you want to do well. The audio is great, the voice acting and characters got many laughs out of me and the chill lofi music playing in the background fits the vibe perfectly. Definitely one of my favorites!
I had a lot of fun with this one. RPG's are one of my favorite genres and it was a delight discovering just how much there is with this game. First of all the menu system is very slick and works really well with NVDA, this is something that very few terminal UI's get right if they have actual menus with a highlight you can move. For the game itself I had a lot of fun discovering all the interactions. Having the wise old man following me around after I decided to attack him, thinking I can pick up these rocks later only to have the goblins bash me with them and then having more guards swarm into the king's chamber making me realise I probably should have saved more often. I'll be definitely coming back to this one to finish it.
THis is also a fun game. Obviously less to worry about than in SLATS, but it's still a challenging game that's sold by the audio that's both kind of minimal and retro but also really conveying a sense of speed, it kind of gives me 90's racing game vibes. I can imagine it'll only get even better when you add the features you're working on
Have to agree with what others said, this is a really cool concept. Using the keyboard to spacialise the grid works surprisingly well. The audio is minimal but does the job. I like how the displayed text tries to stay in-universe with the terminal booting up. I could definitely see this being expanded further with powerups, perhaps multiple creatures at once, etc.
I wouldn't worry about the annoyance of that initial message too much, doing things this way has become very common. Games like Brok the Investigator and Code 7 both have a spoken announcement how to turn on the screen reader with one shortcut on first launch, while games that initially launch to a more expansive accessibility menu like the Last of Us also come up with the screen reader talking until you either select the vision presets and leave it on, or close out of the menu at which point it'll stay off.
I had a lot of fun with this one, it turns out you can do a lot more with 1 button than you might think! The audio was a highlight, it all fit together really well and I thought the bells for how much time you had left and how far you had to go blended in really well with the sound scape. Also I didn't have issues understanding the food/ammo/drink indicators personally, but if I definitely wouldn't object if this concept were expanded more with an actual inventory management.
I love the concept and story here. It's such a cool setup for a small collection of games. Accessibility wise I like how there are a lot of options, not just for blind players. The ability to tweak the sound pan and pitch for multiple sounds is a really cool touch that I think I've seen done only once before. Being able to stop and look around, when looking at any text box, is a nice way to provide audio description. The sounds all fit together and the music is a banger.
My only small suggestion is the first time you start the game, perhaps have a spoken message to tell people how to turn on the screen reader mode if you can't detect if someone has a screen reader running. The first time I saw this game the friend playing it didn't look at the keys listed on the page at first, which for the rest of the game wouldn't have been a problem if not for the small detail of no speech after starting it :)
He did go back and figure it out and also had a blast in the end, but that's why I think such an announcement is important.
This game was amazing on so many levels. I love how the story does a pretty unique twist on the blind protagonist concept - for once you're not the one saving the world but you're a big part of the party that does. The voice acting, sound and music was spot on. The gameplay likewise was very interesting. Simple in practice, but surprisingly challenging and chaotic, you really have to make some quick decisions on what to prioritise. The targetting system seemed to work in so far as the arrow keys I pressed had an effect, but I didn't notice any difference in sound volume when selecting a target. Would love to see the story continued in this one.
The story and concept are neat. The audio is also not bad, though I agree with what others said regarding having a bit more ambience. The sonar system confused me. I assumed it scanned in all directions so I would repeatedly use it every few seconds, but I usually can't make it more than 20 seconds into a level before I'd hear multiple obstacles that I couldn't avoid and died. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how it's supposed to work, but after reading the help and playing the game with audio alone (I'm completely blind) I sadly wasn't able to get very far.
I suspected going in I'm going to enjoy this one and I wasn't disappointed. I have to echo the comments from others at how well the audio works, especially coupled with the controller rumble it really feels like you're riding the waves. The targetting system also works really well, I was able to distinguish the ports on their pitch though I mostly relied on the speech to figure out if I targeted the right one. What I found really helpful is that I could turn the targetting off temporarily if I wanted to take a detour to pick up a bottle or do some tricks without the soundscape being yoo cluttered.
Can't wait for the full version of this one. The music is beautiful and the audio is very cohesive and atmospheric. Between the city ambience actually sounding like it's underwater, all the musical fish noises and the dream transitions I think you really nailed the vibe you were going for. Plus, the story premise is really intriguing, when I started I thought my character was just having a dream turning into a nightmare but the rest of the demo is setting up something way more interesting!
Fun game, and I think the navigation method worked relatively well for me. I too think a few more sounds would have added to the atmosphere, at a minimum I think a sound for killing an experiment would be good even from a design perspective because as it is I had to look around again to see if it had disappeared or not. But there's definitely a lot of potential here.
There's not much more I can add to what other people here have pointed out already. The concept is nice, but using the arrow keys would definitely make the controls more intuitive. I also found on some keypresses the game would not speak the value in the cell, tested under Firefox on Windows and Safari on Mac. The music is nice and fitting and doesn't overpower the speech while also putting me in the right mindset for a logic puzzle. :)
Honestly, a lot of what I wanted to say was already echoed by Superfreq. This game, audio and navigation wise does just so much right and feels incredibly intuitive to play as a result, all while the soundscape is rich in fun details, and all the sounds musically working well together. The way the navigation assist works with playing more notes the closer you get to your destination is also genius!
The music, sound and writing was absolutely adorable and I loved every second of it. However, I unfortunately struggled to make progress due to the confusing sound panning issues which Stratifarm mentioned, as well as the invisible walls which I wasn't aware of until someone pointed them out to me while I was streaming the game. If they hadn't I suspect I'd sadly find myself walking in place for longer.
Very atmospheric soundscape. Both the sounds of the ambience as well as titular lifeforms work really well together. I would maybe not put as much distortion on the tutorial voice at the beginning because it was a little hard to understand with all the reverb and other sounds going on but otherwise it was great.
This is an awesome game and idea for a game engine, we definitely need more accessible RPG's. I'm sorry I wasn't able to get very far during the stream, but on my subsequent playthrough I built a full party and got into the temple where I promptly got wrecked by a vampire's AOE fireball.
Regarding suggestions, having to activate options with space instead of enter is something I have to get used to - it's messing with my muscle memory a bit. Apart from this, like I suggested during the stream changing the navigation so that you were told which directions arent blocked with sounds, with the arrow keys directly moving you and perhaps adding CTRL or Shift with arrow keys to look around the way you can now would make the game flow a bit faster. I'd also love to be able to get the status of other party members, either in battle or in the party menu IE if I press shift on a character while I'm selecting a target for healing, same goes for the enemies even if it wouldn't give me an exact health value and instead say something more vague like they are slightly injured, mortally wounded and so on.
I really hope you keep working on this engine or at the very least this game, because so far it's looking great!
I was unfortunately not able to get very far. The game's menus didn't seem to speak at all or be keyboard navigable, even though I saw a screen reader option which I tried toggling with assistance with no effect. In the game itself, I was stuck in the first scene where you're in the thunderstorm and you hear the main character crying, with the "use mouse to move camera" tutorial message. Eventually I moved to another screen after not sure what (I was trying both keyboard, mouse and gamepad input), but got completely stuck there. A shame, because from the few minutes of audio, music and voice acting I heard this game sounds very well made and I'd have loved to experience more of it
The voice acting was great, but the audio levels were all over the place. The voice of the soul was quiet, while in comparison the voice of your character and the other souls was uncomfortably loud to the point it was distorting. Also, it appears as though some dialog isn't voiced, but is also not readable by a screen reader which means a completely blind player could miss some of it. The choices also didn't appear to be spoken when you go to make a selection with the arrow keys. Over all the writing was pretty entertaining though even if half way through it felt like things were starting to drag.