itch.io

Hi! Thanks for playing and reaching out about this. I’m very sorry about the inconvenience.

Unfortunately, this is a known issue that’s documented in the manual. It provides some troubleshooting steps. However, as you’ve discovered, the quickest and most straightforward fix is to give it a restart. The game is very forgiving with when it autosaves, and quickly boots back up within seconds.

That’s not to excuse the actual issue. The project reaches the limits of the Chromium audio engine. It’s very CPU-intensive and will not run great on all machines. I try to bring optimizations in every update, but it’s very difficult as JavaScript is single-threaded (for the most part).

That said, development for this project is winding down, and will soon cease with its final expansion. You will get that for free! I think further optimizations would be possible in some kind of sequel or successor project, where I have the affordances to start over from scratch.

Also, if you have any feedback about any specific things which might lead to issues, or any information about your system, that is always appreciated. Cheers!

Hi! Thanks so much for reporting this.

I’ve just uploaded a new build which fixes this. It will be version 4.1.7 or later.

My apologies for my delayed response. It’s truly been a long month.

Cheers!

Congrats on sixth place! Your submission was one of my favorites!

Excellent submission!

It’s a labor of love with ambition and heart. The sound and music is immersive. The dungeons are a treat to explore and vanquish. Yet, it’s all happening on a blank screen. And that’s all thanks to this creative team and their willingness to collaborate with our great community.

In the current build, I got stuck at the monster by Valencia and the tree. I got distracted and missed what to do next, so I just tried the bow a few times to no avail. Thankfully, the debug menu let me progress skip and briefly preview the later content. I gave myself bombs, ventured the mines killing bats and skeletons and pigs, and found some room with an enigmatic timed puzzle—that’s a nice place to stop for the night, thanks!

The Divining Rod is an excellent navigational system that had me constantly brainstorming while playing. Occasionally it gets tiring and would be easier to toggle with a button rather than needing to hold any trigger. And for getting unstuck from more complicated obstacles, a button to teleport to the target might be a nice feature.

Sincerely, I beg you to give this project a visual identity! Please work with an artist who can help you bring this to the mainstream. I don’t even care if it’s just a bunch of particles or billboards! That’s the only thing limiting its potential in my mind.

Please keep iterating on this. We’ll play every update!

Great submission!

As a disclaimer, I’ve yet to play Blue Prince, so I don’t know where the inspiration ends and the riffing begins. That said, the overall concept and mechanics had me hooked. The variety of rooms and how they’re placed lead to nearly endless replayability. They’re filled with sonic details like footsteps and environmental sounds that made me feel as if I was there. And they have intertwining systems and unique interactions that give the experience much more depth!

There are many great comments here that allude to additional polish to consider. My biggest blocker already mentioned was how my Xbox controller would navigate the menu and read speech unexpectedly—it forced me to switch to the keyboard to play. Were it fully functioning, I’d love for it to vibrate to emphasize certain actions and events too. And there are many opportunities to streamline how items can be used to interact with rooms.

Additionally, I was unable to get the built-in text-to-speech (TTS) to work for me, but the game worked flawlessly with NVDA on Windows 10. Once in-game, I noticed quite the missed opportunity to print the room descriptions onto the screen, so their vivid descriptions and backstory can also be enjoyed without TTS.

Unfortunately, I was never able to reach the end. I awakened the manticore in my third run, but ran out of steps and died by its hand. A few runs later, I’m both addicted and frustrated by the random number generator and how it’s kept me from reaching it again. This certainly has me hooked and wanting to keep trying, so I’ll try to update you if I have time to revisit this later.

Please keep iterating on this prototype and let us know when you make progress. There is so much potential here!

Excellent submission!

I played it through the end—what a twist and fun final puzzle! The voice acting and sound design were a delight! Beyond our inner monologue, I appreciated how it trusted me with its puzzles and barely held my hand. The atmosphere was unsettling, but the whole package kept this weenie glued to their seat!

The custom audio engine is solid. Perhaps I find the reflections to be a little bright, leading me to confuse the doors being in front or behind? I often wished the rooms had more flavorful sonic details to tell them apart, mostly to prevent me from feeling lost. For example, maybe there’s a leaky sprinkler or electrical sparks somewhere in the ceiling of corridor one? Hearing that would help orient and further immerse me.

I only encountered one gamebreaking bug which forced me to Alt+F4 and continue from my last save a few times. Either the audio crashed or I got stuck in a wall—it was hard to tell exactly—but the controls went unresponsive. Perhaps I was tapping my foot too often?

The minimalist graphics are effective and don’t need changed, but I would suggest a minimal UI for the title and menu screens. Perhaps a settings screen, controller support, and haptics would be nice? That’s all that I feel is missing from this for it to receive an official release.

Excellent submission!

The puzzles and sound design were satisfying until the end. I loved how tactile everything felt, from spinning the dials of all the radios to tune into their clues, to deciphering and executing them with the other buttons. It was easy to learn—and the right kind of lateral thinking for me.

My only complaint about the final puzzle is how one of them is not like the others. I loved how two of the three crossed over with their solutions, and wished the leftmost one had tied into that theme a little more.

My only other suggestions? Allow us to skip the beginning, perhaps by pressing Start or Select. I’d love for a little haptics for the interactions—if only diegetically when we knock on the door or adjust the radio’s switches. And I could really see this expanding into a fuller piece, so I’d suggest at least a minimalist UI to make it a bit more inviting.

Please note that you will have more success with receiving ratings in this jam if you consider providing a web build and alternative controls for the keyboard. Not all of our players are willing to download an executable, and not all of them have controllers.

More of this please!

Nice submission! The assets looked great, the attacks and their sounds were satisfying, and the sound menu and tutorials were very robust.

Thanks for the false sense of security in the first several levels of the campaign—I got completely obliterated once the enemies were at full strength. The power-ups and narratives between each level were a great touch! However, after that first death, you’ve pretty much soft-locked yourself without any health, so it’s easier to simply restart the level. But then you need to wait for everyone to get back to the frontlines, so maybe by this stage in the campaign it makes sense to start the level with things spawned in the middle of the action?

On the accessibility front, I couldn’t get NVDA to say anything other than debug in the current build, but it worked perfectly with Narrator. At times the audio was quite busy, which I suppose could be to encourage me to look around the map? The music slaps, but I wished there was a slider for that. For the allies specifically, I had difficulty at times determining whether I was in front or behind them—specifically I might make the frontmost one sound louder and more special.

This is a great concept that’s worth pursuing. The foundation is solid, but some things need tweaking. You’ve already let us know that you’d like to keep working on this, so please keep us updated.

Thanks for hosting!

Nice submission!

I explored the map, enjoyed the wildlife sounds and psychedelic visuals, and made myself an infinite fire! The version I downloaded seemed to be a debug build, so I’ll give most things the benefit of doubt—the most egregious? some errors in the console!

Time management is tough, and life always gets in the way. I’m very curious to see whether this project continues, so you may show us what was originally envisioned. There is surely room for an accessible multiplayer survival game in this space.

Thanks for hosting!

Nice submission!

Beyond the pathfinding system being its biggest strength, I enjoyed the writing and musical compositions, which were reminiscent of the name our protagonist wears on their sleeve. In general, the sound cues and their positioning were thoughtful and accessible, but I felt that bumping into interactive objects might benefit from a different collision sound.

This would benefit most from controller support, as I found that the keyboard controls would frequently interrupt NVDA’s speech, like the first lines when chatting with the townsfolk or when incrementing the counter. Should the room description also be read aloud when entering it for the first time?

Overall, it’s a great foundation, and with actual graphics it certainly has potential. Please keep iterating on this and let us know when you make more progress!

Great submission!

First, I owe you an apology. When we first received your submission, there was some healthy debate in our Discord server over its content. I suggested to our community members that they reach out and share their honest feedback. I’m sorry if this felt like a brigade or created unnecessary stress for you. We deeply appreciate newcomers who bring fresh energy and diversity to this community. And I’m thankful that you took this risk—even if it’s not one that I would personally take.

That said, I enjoyed the procedural sound design a ton! I could imagine the music being more adaptive based on your patience, independence, and sass? The main tool that I reach for is a little bit of amplitude modulation, to make longer drones that ebb and flow, which leads into other cool things with LFOs like modulating the pan or filter detune.

The writing was often witty as well, making me laugh no matter how awkward or disappointing the realistic situations felt. I was dubbed THE DIPLOMAT.

Here are some observations when using NVDA and enabling screen reader mode:

• Consider using role="application" on the <body> element so the screen reader knows that the arrow keys and S and H are handled by your application. Otherwise, they try to navigate around the page without changing focus mode via NVDA+Space.
• On the settings screen, there are a few enhancements that might be made. The toggles for screen reader or high contrast modes aren’t accessible with the arrow keys. They should also respond to pressing Space. When toggling them, they abruptly change focus to and read aloud the entire settings screen. And they might benefit from using role="switch" and aria-checked to indicate their state. Otherwise, an <input type="checkbox"> for these might be the simplest option.
• A similar behavior happens when making choices in the game. When refocusing the game container, its aria-label gets read aloud each time, creating unnecessary noise. I might also avoid auto-focusing the first choice, because it gets read aloud twice as part of the live region as well.
• It can be a bit slow when you’re used to reading fast. I imagine this is designed around the speed of the built-in screen reader. There aren’t great solutions for this on the web without rethinking some fundamental things of the interface, and I don’t think it’s super important for you to even address here.

Those observations aside, I do find that this is well-polished and well-implemented, especially for an HTML game. Submissions like these are precisely why I advocate using HTML for accessible games. Nice work!

Nice submission!

It’s eloquent, succinct, and deeply bleak—seriously, get Amatista some cognitive behavioral therapy! And the artwork was lovely even in its sparsest states.

Best of luck with the remaining chapters and rewrite in Unity! Hopefully that gives you the tools to make this more immersive and engaging. For example, I too noticed how my controller didn’t vibrate with the phone (or bumping into Paula). Or, in a more powerful engine, you might explore more robust environmental sound designs or scene transitions. Be sure to bring over and keep iterating on your number of accessibility settings, and please let us know when you have more progress to share!

It’s difficult to evaluate the story in its unfinished state. I have my own mental health challenges, and everyone experiences that differently. In the first two chapters, I felt trapped inside of somebody who hasn’t yet seen the beauty of life that exists outside of feeling invisible or bullied. I don’t identify with them anymore—it’s exhausting just being there again. Yet, perhaps this is going somewhere more uplifting for them?

Thanks for the update! And no worries, there’s no need to justify your design. The UFO game sounds like a pretty cool piece of your game’s DNA!

As you continue on your game development journey, one of the most important skills you’ll be practicing is how to process feedback. You’re going to get a lot of feedback like mine, which comes from a place that doesn’t fully understand your game like you do. As someone who makes pretty weird things, I encounter it every day, and find that a lot of it is mostly matters of taste. (Or bugs!) And here you succeeded in filtering what everyone is saying, incorporated whatever you found fitting, and released an update today. Congrats for your first update for your first game!

Thanks for playing!

That’s a good point about speech queuing up when using a controller. I mentioned this specifically in a discussion on the Discord server about the difference between aria-live="polite" and aria-live="assertive". This is an example where I made the wrong choice and will be fixing it in the first post-jam update. (I used polite but should use assertive.)

The reason it queues up like this with a controller is because, when using a screen reader, pressing keys will typically interrupt the speech, but the gamepad doesn’t have a similar mechanism.

Thanks for playing!

Try increasing the deadzone slider, as it sounds like your controller is a bit too sensitive. The default setting is a bit too low for mine as well, because I’m clumsy and tend to drop my controllers and get terrible amounts of stick drift. That said, I think there are some improvements to be found in the logic for it too!

Great submission! I love the ridiculously absurd theme! And be sure to tell Ethan that the graphics are lovely!

The audio was simple but effective. The screen reader implementation was solid except for some errant punctuation being read aloud. Ultimately, I reached my seventh shift before it seemed that I’ve experienced all the content.

The game design is fun and seems like it could translate well to a solo tabletop game. My only real dissatisfaction is how bad it feels when you draw a hand without bread and have to discard all of them—maybe when we discard a card, we draw the next one, so we always have a chance for bread? It would give cards that guarantee bread in the next hand a lot more power too. (Alternatively, why not discard the entire hand for us automatically, toggling all effects?)

I’m curious if you intend to work on this more? I could see there being more variety in card types and effects, like rare high-scoring ones (e.g. truffle oil) or one that shuffles your remaining hand back into your deck on play (e.g. anchovies). Unless I missed it, I could imagine there being more combos beyond the big stack, like an open-faced PB&J scoring double points (i.e. normally +1 point on their own). These are just random thoughts from someone with another food-related submission.

Nice submission! I love the game design and could see this being very fun to play physically with friends. It was very satisfying trying to construct a hand of all nines by the end of the game—even if I was playing against myself (Chrome with NVDA versus my phone)! Perhaps you could add CPU players who have different strategies or difficulties?

There are many opportunities for improvement with screen readers, even NVDA:

• Try to think of headings more as an outline of the document structure, rather than how big their font is on the screen. Hidden Hand is the main <h1>, and all others could probably be <h2> elements. You can use classes to make them look how you’d like instead.
• The sticky header could be a semantic <header> element so it gets a landmark region that’s more easily jumped to with a screen reader.
• The live region is far too chatty, reading out every line each time it updates for me. Try to get it to only read the most recent messages. I see that it uses aria-atomic, so that may mean that the entire contents are getting replaced, rather than new children being appended to it.
• Consider using Element.focus() to move the user to the right place after performing actions like drawing and discarding cards. Currently the user needs a pretty good mental model of the page and must navigate by hand between actions or when it’s their turn.
• The hidden cards are read aloud as clickable buttons but don’t have an accessible label or do anything when clicked. Consider using aria-disabled="true" to indicate that it can’t be clicked. Or you may consider using a generic <div tabindex="0" role="button"> for the cards—when a card is hidden, you could remove the role attribute. For the labels, I might use aria-label="Hidden card 2" and aria-label="Hidden card 3".

I think this is sufficient to enhance the screen reader experience. Take these tips, dig in with the screen reader, and you’ll find other things that I haven’t mentioned either. Please continue to iterate on this and share your progress, because it certainly has potential!

Nice submission!

It’s like an abstract and psychedelic version of the cell stage of Spore, which brought back my nostalgia of when it first released. I wish you would’ve had the opportunity to spend the entire month of the jam building this, because I can see clearly why this great concept excites you!

I especially appreciate how it can be played with audio or visuals alone, which combine into a very immersive experience. I’d love to have more feedback on things like my size or the edge of the level, and often the audio could use some compression to prevent clipping.

Please continue to iterate on this and let us know when you make more progress.

Nice submission!

I really bathed in the soundscape with this one, and felt that the general design was a uniquely accessible take on endless runners. It can become quite challenging as the adaptive difficulty starts kicking in—especially when you can’t tell some of the frogs and birds apart!

For me it’s missing some juice that could give us more feedback: give me a controller rumble when I fail, play a cute bug-like sound when I succeed, ramp in some wind sounds to convey my speed, and maybe play with color to achieve a day-night cycle.

Overall, it’s a great start if you want to develop this concept further.

Great submission!

Firing it up without reading your page or the instructions was a treat. It was very intuitive to find the bells in the room. Then I peeked inside the levels folder to find that there were more! So I modified the .bat file and tried them all out. The zigzag map was a fun challenge, but I got completely lost on the fourth bell in the cave—even while trying to keep a wall always at my right.

It sounded great on both my studio monitors and headphones! And it was unintentionally rhythmic enough that I often found my head bobbing or tapping my feet. Maybe this could alternatively procedurally generate IDM beats?

At this point it’s just missing some polish for me. It wasn’t obvious to me or my screen reader that the instructions are printed to the terminal. I’d love a way to select the level—or more simply a random one could be chosen after completing the level. The soundscape could also be filled out with footsteps, collisions with walls, and environmental sounds (or ambient drones if you’re me)—anything to enhance our connection with the space.

Overall, it’s a cool experiment that deserves to be explored further.

Good question. It’s an open-ended experience with no end. You can stop playing when you get bored and revisit it whenever you want. However, once you die in the cellar once, you have experienced all the story content. With the update, I would like to add a bit more story content for you to experience after that.

Thanks so much for playing! You have been a tough judge to crack over the years, so I sincerely appreciate hearing that you enjoyed this one. I’m planning on a post-jam update that will expand it with a bit more content, hopefully with more silly conversations with the shopkeeper and guests.

Thanks for clarifying! Maybe my description with the bug could help you find the root issue. When I would begin entering the sequence, it would accept inputs until I paused for too long. Do it quickly and it works great! Once in that state, it would sound like I was hacking, but no longer accept input until I let go of the hacking control. That’s what led me to suspect it might be a logic or timing thing? Give us more feedback when hacking fails, and that might lead you to the fix.

Note that I haven’t yet played the new version. I can try to come back to it once I get through my last dozen submissions.

By the way, how can we all give this more pressure? I’m not familiar with how issues are typically reported for Mint. Is there an open issue on GitHub to update these dependencies that I can upvote? I’ll need to try it for myself on the other machine, but I possibly might have some additional feedback to add.

That sounds like a terrible time, but your health definitely comes first. Get well soon! There will always be games to rate… we promise.

I’m glad you loved it! It was almost prophetic when we discussed it on our panel with Seattle Indies. It was great to meet you and participate in that fun exchange of ideas about this jam, sound design, and the future of accessibility in games. 🤘

Thanks so much for playing it! And—most importantly to me—finding it funny. 🤪

Upvoted!

Nice submission! My understanding is that this is a work in progress, and I appreciate you sharing both builds and the changes in your development log. While there’s not yet much to do, you’ve got the foundation in place and I see its potential.

Here’s some constructive feedback on v0.3.0 using NVDA:

• It installs great inside the sandbox of the itch.io app!
• Should there be a button to go back to the main menu from the settings and credits? I have a back button on my mouse that seemed to work, and it can be done in the right-click context menu, but it seems easy to get stuck here.
• When creating my colony and colonists, I hear additional descriptions for each field, but it would be helpful if they were displayed visually. The tab order might need some attention here too.
• What about Ctrl+Space (or Ctrl+Enter) to also right click? It would be easier to reach with one hand rather than Shift+F10.
• I was expecting to be able to click and drag the map. I hope this is still on the to-do list!
• I got trapped inside the Colony Manager dialog after selecting a colonist and choosing to locate them on the map. The dialog remains stuck open for me and I have to exit the game.
• My CPU is only okay, but the tick rate still seemed to stutter a bit, usually when the UI is animating. Unfortunately, this includes when you navigate between tiles with the keyboard or when messages pop up. Maybe there are some hidden optimizations to find?
• I noticed a few little ARIA details that could improve the screen reader experience, but I’ll assume you’re aware and iterating on those as you playtest. You mentioned a UI framework, so I imagine not everything is under your control anyway.
• Overall, I enjoyed the ambiance and RimWorld-esque aesthetic. I did as one does and built myself a cave!

Please continue to iterate and let us know about your updates. Hope this helps!

Ugh! Thanks for the heads-up and advice for which versions to target. The aforementioned machine is indeed running Mint. It’s a nice OS regardless.

I appreciate your kind words—and love that we both think of it as a toy! I think my to-do list has accumulated enough to necessitate a post-jam update. It will certainly include that tutorial toggle. But I also have a few new planets and mechanics up my sleeve!

Thanks for playing! The source code is available if you want to take a look. In my development log, I mention that I spent almost 200 hours on it. However—I will warn you—in the last week or so it started to turn into spaghetti code. If there’s a specific thing that you want to know more about, then I could probably point you to the right file?

The stab sound is so cool! And I love how the second night iterates on the design with new mechanics, as if it’s an entirely different game.

Thanks for the report on ORCA—that’s very interesting. I tried some new things with the UI this time, so there are likely some things to refine. Lots of dialogs moving focus and live regions compared to previous entries. Thankfully I now have a spare Linux machine, which I’ve been meaning to use to learn more about ORCA anyway. Should be a fun thing to troubleshoot?

Great submission!

I’ve mentioned in previous horror submissions to this jam that I’m a total weenie, and this is the perfect amount of unsettling to make me quit right away! The ambiance and sound effects and premise really drew me in—otherwise what’s the big deal about some random horror game?

I appreciate the option to normalize the sounds that I refuse to hear. My only suggestion so far is to add an option to adjust the speech rate, because the default was far too slow for my liking.

To be truthful, I’m about to watch PG13 play this here and hope they get further than me, so that I can leave my fairest rating. (I sincerely hope this reads as a compliment!)

Nice submission! Unfortunately, I’m not the target audience for this. Patricia raised a lot of good feedback which echoes my own sentiments as someone who also avoids horror and has never played FNAF.

I enjoyed that you voiced a lot of it yourself and made specific accessibility considerations like looping the main menu instructions—it’s a good workaround for not using text-to-speech (TTS). However, I was struggling to make it past that first jumpscare around 2:30 am on the first night. I believe it’s a combination of my unfamiliarity with the genre plus a clunky onboarding experience. So I’m very sorry that I gave up after my third try. I could hear them walking through the halls, but I couldn’t connect the final dots, and the tutorial seemed unskippable to quickly try again.

Perhaps there’s a zeroth night which acts as a horror-free prologue? Maybe it’s your manager explaining why you’re here and walking you step-by-step through how the cameras and doors work, giving you and the scenario a reason to exist? (I could imagine following them with the cameras and slamming the door in their face! It’s no wonder they didn’t show up the next day! 😈)

That said, I noticed that you consider this to be a work in progress. Please keep iterating on this and let us know when you make more progress. My hope is that you receive feedback from actual horror gamers in our community before our rating period ends, because it would be much more valuable than what I can give.

Cheers!

Wow! I had no idea this was only done in four days! Congrats on that feat!

To be clear, I loved how “extradiagetic” the tonal shift was! Consistency is key, and you nailed that aspect of it! And it certainly wasn’t boring—it just needs tightening up.

My RPG Maker project is finished, thank you! It’s nothing to call home about. I wanted to revisit the engine and write a character-driven story, which is outside my usual comfort zone. If you search for Super Friendship Quest in the Steam workshop, then you may find it. But honestly, the intention of the project wasn’t to explore accessibility at all, so please don’t feel obligated to check it out! (That’s why I published it under my personal Steam account instead of the “shiftBacktick” brand.)

You’re very welcome! Please let us know when you’ve made more progress.

Nice submission! On my first play, I cackled when the music suddenly changed and you said Welcome to your first choice! Expectedly, I chose the wrong first choice, sending me back to the menu screen. While there, I noticed that this was created with RPG Maker, which is super cool to me, because RPG Maker 2000 was my first game engine!

So I tried a more well-mannered second attempt. I appreciate how the third question subverted my expectations: you think this is a game about being understanding and asking deep questions like you’re also a therapist, but sometimes thoughtful questions might backfire!

I agree that the audio is far too quiet and could use some mixing, but I have a sound interface and was able to crank it up to play. My only other criticism is how the voice acting is too slow for my liking, so I lose attention quickly and have no way to repeat it when I miss an important detail. Yet, I understand how this is actually pretty naturalistic.

I think RPG Maker is a great engine, and—from about 80 hours of making a small project in RPG Maker MZ myself— I believe there are ways to make its text boxes accessible to screen readers, which you could still fully voice yourself when they display. This might be the best of both worlds. If implemented properly, it would let folks skip past dialog too—like the tutorial and other paths in repeated playthroughs.

To be clear, I think your panning logic sounded great to me!

I noticed that you’re using Howler, so you may have less control over the sounds as you would with the Web Audio API, but there are some things you might consider to make it smoother. For example, there is a version of each sound for each channel (left, right, and center) and they stop and start whenever the player changes lanes. I would try to keep them playing, associating each obstacle with a new sound instance of the centered version, and change the pan of the instance itself when changing lanes. (Maybe you’ll need to tweak other parameters like volume and filtering too.)

The nice thing about this approach is how it would allow you to have four or five lanes instead. There’s more continuity! That could open a lot more possibilities in your game design. (This is based on a second read of your code, but you know it much better than me!)