May 1, 2023

Audiogames.net Monthly Digest - April 2023

Welcome to the April 2023 audiogames.net monthly digest, bringing you all the hottest releases and news about games of interest to blind gamers! Join us for quite the April shower of goodies, including a game jam, a ton of updates as well as some very exciting news from the main stream gaming world! And as always, please let your friends know they can also receive these digests to their inbox or RSS reader as they come out!

New Releases

Games for Blind Gamers 2 Jam

Welcome to the second Games for Blind Gamers jam! The goal of this jam is to build awareness of blind gaming (and accessibility in general), as well as making games for blind players. We welcome developers of all types (beginners and veterans, sighted and blind, etc.) and encourage you to learn about blind gamers and accessibility to create interesting and creative games! - What: A 30-day chilled jam where you create a game that blind players can play, too. - When: From April 1st to 30th, 2023 (inclusive) - Why: Blind gamers have their own set of challenges when gaming. We hope to build awareness and create interesting, creative games that they can enjoy too! - How: It’s a chilled jam, so the community will vote on the winners! Anyone with an account on Itch can vote (public).

As of writing of this digest, 18 games have been submitted to the Jam. Have a look at the submissions page, try all of them out and vote for your favorites!

• Hear you again by UrbanZero — 3D audio immersive experience
• MemTones by Raconteur81
• Lifeforms by the Wrong John — Blind accessible planet exploration. Search for life!
• Fishyphus by shiftBacktick — Sisyphean fishing horror roguelite
• Headphone Hero: Jam Edition by Perfect C Games — Guitar Hero with no visuals - requires headphones
• The Woman in the Cave by Eibriel — Interactive Fiction
• Audio Missile Command by keolinsk
• Sentience by Konstantinos ‘Tall Guy’ Vasileiadis, Karavas and Chris Wratt — Guide three newly sentient kitchen appliances through the darkness towards freedom
• Midnight Echos by Bowman — You are a Bottlenose Dolphin who must echolocate their next meal
• Luna: The Lost Child — A fantasy narrative walking sim with a flying winged bunny who can echo-locate
• Repeat the Sounds by Kethram
• Cowboy’s Chorus by Zclipse — Your ears are the only ones you can trust ‘round here…
• Shadow Caverns — Sound is your only guide in your descent to the abyss
• Honeycomb Festival
• Hybrid by NightBlade
• The Blind Gladiator by Choollol
• The Fourth Dragon by Ericbomb — Turn based RPG where you adventure with the Fourth Dragon, a newly born dragon off to save the world and meet allies.
• Greene Bean - GFBG 2023 by Fullmetalashley — A very short visual novel style experience!

Project Dark (iOS, Android versions are accessible)

Close your eyes, and see. Project Dark is a narrative-driven, immersive audio game that draws on the classic “choose your own adventure” genre to create a unique and compelling interactive experience. The game’s impactful choices and its sophisticated binaural audio allow players to become so immersed in the experience that they can play with their eyes closed. Players will enjoy Project Dark for its rich and vibrant worlds that examine the breadth and depth of darkness. Simple mechanics make this a game that can be played by anyone, and we look forward to seeing where this exploration of darkness takes you! Episodic Content Play six episodes in settings ranging from a medieval fantasy adventure to a blind first date in this first anthology. In Project Dark, you’ll meet characters, learn their stories, and make impactful decisions for them all with the swipe of a finger.

Wave Of The Undead (Windows)

Face down the oncoming zombie hordes! Buy defenses, prepare yourself, and take down the zombies! A turn-based game filled with strategy, skills, and a little luck! Contact support if you have any questions about this game. Good luck, now go fight those zombies! Place your defenses, start the wave and prepare to take on the zombies that are constantly getting stronger. Features  - A unique style of gameplay that will put your skills in strategy to the test. - Battle endless waves of zombies and see just how far you can get. - Frequent updates to keep things interesting.

Two little games, Kakuro and Sudoku (Windows)

Hello, These have been hanging around my hard drive for a while, gathering up dust so I cleaned them off and have thrown them up on the website for everyone to enjoy. I’m 90 percent sure everyone knows what Sudoku is, but for those who don’t it’s a puzzle game in which you have to complete a (usually) 9x9 grid where each number from 1 to 9 appears only once in each column, each row and each grid. My version of Sudoku also allows you to change the board size and the amount by which it is filled for added complexity. Kakuro is a bit like Sudoku in some regards. Kakuro is a math puzzle game where there is a grid on which are set a number of sums, either vertical, horizontal or both. You have to complete these sums in the number of squares provided. I’ll admit to myself that I’m not over the top happy with Kakuro’s sum generator, and I may come back and rewrite it some day, but for now, it’s working, it’s a fun little game to pass the time, and maybe someone out there will think so too! I’ll be honest, I’ve marketted both as commercial (each costs £5) but the demo versions are actually full copies of the game just without board size and in the case of Sudoku difficulty choices. It’s more a way for you to support my development of future products if that’s what you would like to do, but I totally won’t be offended if you just use the demo for the rest of days :) You can find Kakuro and Sudoku on my games page, as well as the other small games I made. https://nathantech.net/products/games/ I hope you enjoy! Nathan Smith Managing Director of Nathan Tech

Mortal Kombat (iOS)

Note: THe accessibility support introduced in this version is still being worked on, and there are parts of the game where memorizing control positions and/or turning off VoiceOver may be required. Given the Because this is the first big mobile game we’re aware of with accessibility features we thought it was worth including, but before playing check this forum thread for more details, workarounds and known issues discovered by the community.

MORTAL KOMBAT MOBILE brings its trademark Fatalities to mobile, with stunning graphics, and over the top moves! Assemble an elite team of Mortal Kombat warriors now and prove yourself in the greatest fighting tournament on Earth.

FIGHT IN BRUTAL 3 v 3 KOMBAT Create your own team of Mortal Kombat fighters and lead them into battle to earn experience, new special attacks, and powerful artifacts. Team up warriors with unique synergies to get an advantage over your enemies such as Team Ronin, Team Nightmare, and Team Day of the Dead!

BUILD A MASSIVE ROSTER Collect over 130 Mortal Kombat characters including veterans like Scorpion, Johnny Cage, Sub-Zero, Cassie Cage, Ermac, and many others. Discover the newest additions to Mortal Kombat Mobile such as the bloodthirsty Vampiress Mileena, soccer champion Kombat Cup Sonya Blade, mysterious Klassic Reptile, and warrior princess Ronin Kitana.

COMPLETE DIFFICULT CHALLENGES Prove yourself and complete a series of matches to bring new Mortal Kombat warriors to your roster! A new challenge begins every week!

MULTIPLAYER FACTION WARS Compete with other players in Faction Wars, an online competitive mode where players engage other player teams. Rank up in your own Faction’s leaderboard to earn weekly prizes.

PERSONALIZE YOUR GAME Unlock unique character customizations in Feats of Strength. Win battles to show off your mastery with limitless combinations of action packed Victory Stances, insulting Victory Taunts, and champion worthy War Banners. Unlocking Feats of Strength also boosts stats for characters!

JAW DROPPING FATALITIES Mortal Kombat Mobile brings its trademark Fatalities to mobile, with stunning graphics, and over the top moves that will punch you right in the guts.

EARN REWARDS ON EPIC QUESTS Send characters on epic Quests to earn special rewards! Begin your journey in Outworld and make your way to NetherRealm!

NOTICES: * Mortal Kombat Mobile features high quality visuals. Performance is not optimized on devices with less than 1.0 GB RAM. * 64-bit devices are required to download from the App Store. * Mortal Kombat Mobile is an online only game. * A minimum of 1.1 GB of free space is required on your device. Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. Contains intense violence, blood, and gore.

Game Updates

• ErionMud continues receiving regular updates throughout the first quarter of 2023. THe sound pack now comes with an updater, more timezones have been added to help players not miss out on daily events and many new spells and craftable items have been introduced.
• Brok: the InvestiGator’s accessibility continues getting improvements. Patch 1.3.4 made it possible to have the game’s spoken messages sent to the system clipboard rather than spoken with samples, making it possible to play the game in other languages or by using your Screen Reader’s voice. Additionally, an option was added to align all clickable hotspots making them easier to navigate between. As well as these, numerous other smaller improvements have been made both in this update as well as a subsequent 1.3.5 patch. The game now also has demos on all platforms it’s been released on if you want to check it out before buying
• Warsim received 2 big updates in April. Version 1.0.2 — the Empire Mode update added a Quickstart, the ability to invade other factions as well as new buildings, quest items and more. A subsequent 1.0.3 update allows you to execute your staff if you don’t like them, introduced a number of events related to Goblin Sceptres, champions and fixed various bugs related to the features introduced previously.
• The Classic Six Dragons Mud received a number of revamped tutorials, a number of new sounds in the sound pack and reintroduced the Necromancer class
• Sanctuary in Time is now at version 0.3.5. In words of the developer, “Love is in the air at the citadel, and we’ve got major changes coming to the game because of it. We’ve got infatuation, romance, love, and yes, even marriage! And a whole host of new side story events to support them. Plus, bug fixes, balancing updates and more!”
• April updates to Alter Aeon included the usual new items, this time focused on tailor skills, new areas as well as updates to existing ones, as well as certain shop keepers getting updated to generate random items which they can sell to you
• Textspaced just had a major 1.2 update. Your character can now join one of several guilds, each of which will give you unique skills or abilities. In addition, you can now enter additional biographical details and traits about your character to enhance the role-play experience. As well as this the game received more content like new ships, building upgrades and more..
• Like the previous 2 titles, blind quest 3 is now available on both iOS and Android.
• THe first entry in the TImecrest series has been rewritten. The game now includes over 120000 more words, and the quality of the writing in general was greatly improved.
• The previously announced expansion to Hearthstone, Festival of Legends, is now live. It features new music themed cards for all classes, including new finale and overheal keywords, new weapons for each class and more.
• System fault received a major update which introduced a new, more realistic audio engine, options to pause the game if you leave its window, more robot dialog as well as numerous AI and physics improvements. A second smaller update was released a day later further tweaking the new features.

Other News

• Turn 10 Studios surprised the blind community with an announcement that the next game in the Forza series, simply called Forza Motorsport, will include a set of “Blind Driving Assists” - features making the game completely playable by totally blind gamers. Developed with the assistance of Brandon Cole, who you might remember from his efforts on the accessibility of the Last of Us, the game will use stereo panning of the car’s engine as well as additional audio queues to let you know where the car is on the track and when you should start turning to navigate a curve. In addition, the game will also include audio descriptions of all cinematics as well as detailed customization options of both the audio queues as well as the interface screen reader. For more details, check out this audio described video, the official announcement from Xbox detailing all of the accessibility features, as well as this article from The Verge which gives more background information.
• Meanwhile, on the competing Playstation platform, Sony has introduced accessibility tags to the PS4 and PS5 stores, allowing developers to indicate what features are supported by their games. There are over 50 tags available covering every disability. Of note to blind and visually impaired gamers, developers can indicate if their games include a screen reader, additional audio queues or navigation assistance or different visual customizations like text size, high contrast, color filters and more. At first, these tags will be offered on first party Sony releases, though some 3rd party games like Brok the InvestiGator also already include them on its store page. You can read the official announcement from the Playstation blog here.
• Finally, all of the “Baribari games”, including Racing, Futsal and Baseball, have been released as freeware by the developer due to them no longer having time to continue working on the games. So, if you are interested in deep sports simulations or cart racing, you can download all of their games here.

Authors

This edition of the digest has been written by:

• Piotr Machacz (@pitermach on Twitter and pitermach@dragonscave.space on Mastodon)