September 3, 2023

Audiogames.net Monthly Digest - August 2023

Welcome to the last audio game digest for the summer of 2023! Hopefully you enjoyed a good vacation, regardless of whether you had a school break, took time off work or something else entirely. August did not disappoint in terms of new game releases, which we had quite a few of. Fans of story based games will not be disappointed this month, but we also have plenty for those who enjoy other kinds of mental gymnastics. Plus, as always we have a number of exciting game updates and some absolutely massive accessible mainstream releases on the horizon for both September and October. If you don’t want to miss those, be sure to subscribe and tell your friends!

New Releases

Random Ballpit Maze Challenge (Web)

TBH, it feels weird posting this in new releases, and not just because it's originally from 2007 and all I did was 2020s some of the code so it works again. Anyway, this game throws you into a randomly generated playground/maze-thing, and there are 3 special items you're supposed to find: some beeds, a heart, and an apple. You can play against randomly generated kids, or by yourself, with whatever time limit you choose. Some things missing from the startup instructions: - The "h" command lets you interact with fixed objects, like levers, passages, etc. - When you go through an exit, you'll have to get through a certain obstacle, in a supposedly straight-forward guess-the-verb situation. For most of the paths, there's a list of possible verbs, so it's somewhat forgiving. For tunnels, though, I apparently never bothered actually adding the obvious "crawl through climb through squeeze through" that would have taken all of 5s, so the only way to get through a tunnel is with "go". - The tiebreaker message annnoyingly repeats every turn until the tie is broken. - The "t" command does not work. It will ask if you want to try and trade items, but then it won't actually do anything if you pick "OK". - There may or may not be a bug if someone throws a ball at you. This happened to me so rarely ... 16 years ago... that I don't remember for sure, but it actually did happen to me as I was testplaying before posting, and it felt like it got stuck or something. Umm, if this happens to anyone, please report how it goes? :/ So, uh, have fun, I guess. I probably shouldn't take much time to fix / improve it now, but some fixes or additional room descriptions could be done quickly enough I might go ahead and do so at some point.

Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out (iOS)

Life after myths. Death, disaster, despair.

This new installment in the Six Ages series is a stand-alone survival-storybook combining interactive fiction and turn-based strategy. The world is ending, and your small clan’s survival depends on how you manage its relationship with the remaining gods and their followers.

Whether you’re dealing with angry ghosts, clan policy, enemy gods, or squabbling advisors, there’s rarely one “right” or “wrong” answer, because the deep simulation makes your particular situation unique. Your choices have socio-economic impact, and some consequences might not be obvious for decades, and could affect future generations of a character’s bloodline.

Your clan struggles to survive in the world of Glorantha, the setting of games such as RuneQuest and King of Dragon Pass. This bronze age world is facing an existential crisis. Ten generations after the events of Ride Like the Wind, some gods have already perished and humanity itself seems to be on the brink of annihilation. Here, the laws of physics themselves are subordinate to the whims of the gods and spirits.

In Lights Going Out, you can continue a game you began in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind, or start a new story in this Great Darkness.

Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out is immensely replayable, thanks to over 600 interactive scenes with multiple, system-driven outcomes. Short episodes and automatic saving mean you can play even when you only have a minute or two. The built-in saga writes down the story for you. And advisors with distinctive personalities help you track your promises (and your cows).

Miracles have always required sacrifice. Now, your people need them more than ever, but the costs are higher, too. Is it worth aiding the destructive gods of Chaos to ensure your own survival?

Rock Paper Shotgun: “Another solid entry in a unique story-generator series that rewards a fascination with human cultures, but demands acceptance of failure and misfortune.”

Pocket Tactics: “From engaging storytelling to juggling various resources and appeasing the gods, it takes a bucket of simple tasks and ties them all together in a spiderweb of difficult decisions, making the end of the world appear more and more appealing the harder these choices become.”

TouchArcade: “A truly unique blend of civilization sim and choice-based narrative adventure, a fantastic experience for existing fans and newcomers alike.”

The game is completely accessible via VoiceOver.

Rettou - Island management game, by Aprone (Windows)

At the time of posting this, the game is still in a primitive beta state, and testers are helping me decide how to tweak and change things to make it more enjoyable. Rettou is an island management game, where you work to grow your archipelago. Each island has it's own economy, and eventually you will set up automatic transports between islands. Your island takes place on a 26 by 26 grid, with land types being water, land, forest, stone, and a few rare extras (iron deposit, gold vein, fruit trees). Only land can be built on, with the exception of ships. Nearly every struture in the game relies on, or supports, it's neighbors. Resource gathering buildings, such as a lumber yard, need to be within 3 tiles of a storehouse. The lumber yard's efficiency depends on how many forest tiles fall within the 8 neighboring tiles. Every structure drains cash at a slow rate, as maintenance costs. Homes, on the other hand, generate cash as taxes. Besides 5 Cabins you can place anywhere, other home types must be within 2 tiles of a Market. These homes will pay higher taxes if fish are available at the moment they need to pay. As a home meets more of it's desired neighbors, it will work on upgrading itself automatically. Your Cottages around the Market will upgrade to Houses when also within 2 tiles of a Church. They generate even higher taxes, so long as they have fish and bread to eat. This pattern can lead homes through 6 steps of advancement, bringing in significantly higher taxes if their needs are met. The trick to all of this is keeping your economy from crashing down. If you are careless and put Storehouses everywhere, their maintenance costs can be too much for your tax income. If you plan carefully, you can run many buildings off of a single Storehouse (or only a few). If you have several high-paying Citizens in their fancy Villas, everything can fall apart if Bread production falls behind. They simply stop paying until bread is available, and that might put you into a downward spiral. Once you are able to build Settlement ships to unlock new islands, you will find that your cash is the only resource shared between them. You can make more costly changes to one island, when the incomes from 2 others keep you financially afloat. One island may need wine but has no fruit trees, so another island produces it and you set Cargo ships to automatically deliver. Your vast empire will end up being an interconnected web of islands, exchanging resources with an army of ships.

Firebird (Windows, Mac)

Travel around the steppes of the Great North with your truck. Pay attention to its condition and gas level, and choose the best route. Will you manage to get your truck to its destination without succumbing to the dangers of this hostile land?

Your adventure will vary according to your decisions…

• Experience a short but richly layered narrative.
• Make various choices with many risky obstacles and useful resources.
• Meet around twenty colorful characters.

The more you care about your resources, the more peaceful your progress will be!

• Manage your resources to progress smoothly.
• Keep a close eye on your gas level, truck condition, and money.
• Collect these resources as you visit different places on the map.

Dive into an original universe, inspired by Slavic legendary figures…

• Explore picturesque landscapes depicting the magic of the country throughout the map.
• Discover the Slavic folklore behind FibreTigre’s writing (Out There, Game of Rôles).
• The hand-drawn art style of Quentin Vijoux will immerse you even more in the universe.

Stories of Blossom (Windows, Xbox coming soon)

An accessible point and click adventure that joins Clara as she brings to life three short tales told by her nurturing grandfather.

Embody the role of an adventurer, astronaut, and pirate.

Explore 25 colourful storybook illustrations, from the sunny countryside, to an unexplored planet full of little fungi people.

Befriend cute creatures in odd situations.

And help solve all their problems along the way.

Game Features

From the very beginning game accessibility has been our main goal. We have work closely with those from the disabled and neurodiverse communities to help us remove barriers from our game.

A lot of this work has been baked into the experience itself such as the readability of each dialogue line, the design of our puzzles, and how we layout information and our menus.

We also have a large array of accessibility options, that you can use to tweak the experience to your liking.

Audio:

• Fully voiced characters
• Volume controls for master, ambience, music, voice over, general SFX, UI SFX, text to speech, and audio descriptions channels
• Text to speech (toggle, three voice types, speed, pitch, input instructions toggle)
• Audio descriptions

Input:

• Point and focus navigation (point with analog input or tab through elements)
• Minimum input required (2 digital buttons or 1 analogue with 1 button)
• Additional input actions provided to navigate menus faster
• Double select to instantly exit a scene and increase character movement
• Input remapping
• Input delay
• Stick sensitivity (Controller only)
• Invert Y & X axis (Controller only)
• Stick deadzone (Controller only)
• Trigger presspoint (Controller only)

Subtitles:

• Dialogue subtitles toggle
• Dialogue manual & auto progression
• Audio captions
• Interaction Labels
• Subtitle text size
• Text outline
• Hint highlights
• Speaker names
• Speaker intonation
• Body text colour
• Speaker text colour
• Background colour

Visuals:

• Windowed mode
• Brightness
• Global text size
• Highlight icon toggle
• Highlight colour

Assistance:

• Accessibility onboarding on first launch
• In-game tutorial
• Goal tracker
• Hint system
• Narrative recaps
• Manual & auto saves
• Menu access during gameplay and cutscenes

For more info about these features, please visit our 'Accessibility Features' page on our website.

Escape from Norwood - An illustrated text adventure - Free Steam demo (Windows, Mac)

Explore a city that lives without your input in this illustrated text adventure. Observe the lives of its inhabitants behind the veil of your invisibility magic. Find items and combine them to solve intricate puzzles. Set your own pace as you control time and move freely in an open fantasy world.

Synthesis Mostly text-based, but showcasing detailed 2D backgrounds for its many locations, Escape from Norwood lets you free to explore the world and try to combine hundreds of items in any way you want, to trigger unexpected effects on the lives of its vast cast of characters. By using the uncanny abilities of invisibility magic you can protect yourself and learn intimate and state secrets alike, in this story-rich game. This freedom comes with simplicity: no text prompt ever shows up, simply click on someone, something or somewhere to see the possible interactions and choose among them… for dozens of hours of play and discovery. Synergy Escape from Norwood combines 80's text adventure imagination with 90's point and click streamlined interactions. Add a pinch of 00's open world and 10's forgiving gameplay to live a unique experience that feels both classic and modern. Synopsis Cursed with a magic which does not fit within the five cardinal aelic callings, 13-years old Lecia has to hide from the guards and find a way out of the city. Yet this magic will allow her to sneak into places and observe plots and schemes that could shake the foundations of Magistan, as the Empress’ progress approaches Norwood. What secret ties her family and an empire where the only discrimination is based on the order of birth?

Features - Interact with every character and every object: the depth of a classic text adventure with a unique gameplay and modern UI. - Journey through the city and explore every nook and cranny on your own terms. - Everyone has their routine: what can you learn through observation? How can you help them? - Combine items in unexpected ways to solve puzzles and move the story forward. - Master the powers of a Shroud to move unseen and espy secrets. - Keep track of your missions to do them in any order. - Screen reader support: the game is fully accessible and can be played entirely via keyboard and text to speech. Type F12 to activate accessibility.

Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain (Windows, Mac, Linux)

It's a world of heroes and villains, masks and capes, and Penny Larceny -- grifter, con artist, catburglar -- is barely scraping by. Life's hard for a young mask trying to make it big, but now she's gained access to Crimr, the gig-economy service for henchpersons looking to help supervillains with their evil, evil schemes! Guide Penny through her new career, pull off daring heists, and unravel the conspiracies which allow the rich and powerful to maintain their profitable status quo. Featuring: - A Gigaverse of Timelines: With multiple paths and endings, every playthrough is a new adventure. Will you save the world, or will you rule over it? - Play Your Way: The power's in your hands -- choose your own pronouns, your sneaky alias, comfortable naughtiness levels, and even whether you want romance or not! Accessibility options abound as well, including OpenDyslexia fonts and text-to-speech for visual impairment. - The Rogue's Gallery: From your allies to your enemies, meet a diverse cast spanning good to evil and all between. Forge friendships and realize relationships! - Pet a Cat and/or Destroy Capitalism: I mean, you'll probably do at least one of those things. Join Penny in planning and executing daring heists across the city, and navigate the intricate web of alliances and betrayals that makes up the criminal underworld. With snappy comic book artwork, a swinging soundtrack of electro-jazz and a multiverse-spanning storyline of victories and disasters, Penny Larceny is a must-play for visual novel fans. Are you ready to embark on the heist of a lifetime?

Brave Brain (iOS, Android)

Quiz game with a travel theme.

Brave Brain is a fun knowledge game that lets you look at familiar and unfamiliar places on the world map, test your knowledge in quizzes, and learn lots of interesting facts! Choose a country and a location and try to correctly answer the quiz questions. You have 30 seconds to answer. One of the four choices is always correct.

The correct answer will earn you additional coins for the game. Wrong answer? Redeem yourself using diamonds. The more correct answers you get, the higher you climb on the ladder of those who aren’t afraid to think. When do you win? Whenever you get something right! The game has no definitive end, just like knowledge of the world. You can go back whenever you have a moment and expand your horizons.

Game Features: - Enjoy playing solo or compare your knowledge with others in leaderboards. - More than 10.000 questions from all continents and fields of knowledge. - The game is completely barrier-free: you can play without sight or hearing! (VoiceOver is supported) - The game is fully playable in the free version: with money you can buy in-game currency, personal avatars and other bonuses.

Quiz topics: - Geography - History - Politics - Culture - Sport - Science and inventions - Technology and engineering - Demography - Personalities - Lifestyle and trends - Art history and facts - Architecture and landmarks - Food and cooking - Fashion and popular brands

Got five minutes? Stop scrolling and send your brain on an interesting journey!

minigames (alexa skill)

THE GAMES: POWER PENALTIES Shout out loud to score goals. FART GAME Put your flatulent matching skills to the test. NUCLEAR WAR Lead your country to victory by protecting your 3 cities and nuking the enemies. NUMBER SNAKE: Feed the hungry number snake by recalling each digit. RAP ROBOT I'm the best in the rap game. Just throw me a couple of words. Choose a beat. And I will show you why Eminem is scared of me! SUMO WRESTLING Use your charging and dodging skills to defeat your Sumo opponent. SOUND SNAP Listen to loads of funny sounds in this super fun number matching game. MOUSE TRAP Compete against your cute yet evil buddy squeakers in this squashingly fun cheese guessing game! REINDEER RACING Choose one of Santa's reindeer and lead them to victory in this festive racing game, earn crunchy Christmas carrots to try and top the leader board! BRIDGE OF DOOM You need to cross a bridge. Simple! Except this bridge is the bridge of DOOM! The bridge belongs to a cackling witch and is made of tiles. It has two sides. The left side and the right side. Only one side of each panel is safe. Choose the wrong side and fall to your doom. Choose all the correct sides and get to the next level. Good luck crossing the Bridge of Doom! WORKOUT WARRIOR Become the ultimate workout warrior in this game of silly workout moves. Our drill sergeant will put you through your paces and get you doing silly animal impressions. Copy the instructions and have a laugh. FIRE ICE WATER Battle a mystical wizard! Similar to the classic game of rock, paper, scissors except you choose from one of the elements: fire, ice or water. Take your pick and see if you can beat the wizard. HOTEL DETECTIVE Become a detective in this wacky hotel full of interesting characters and weird goings on. This game requires you to locate the hotel room the screams are coming from. To start with you will need to guess a number between 1 and 50. Alexa will then help you narrow down the correct room. Unlock hotels with more rooms and challenges as you progress. Warning: This hotel has some strange guests. ANIMAL IDOL Animals are lined up and ready to be catapulted into stardom. You control the destiny of which animal will make it. Your first challenge is to select the animal you think has the talent to make it. Some may say you are the salmon-cow-eel of the music industry. Your second challenge is to spend a small budget on gaining super fans for your chosen artist. Your third challenge is to choose a venue and price the tickets for your artist's first gig. You will then get your score for the game which will be the amount of money you have made plus the number of super fans you have got. CHOCOLATE FACTORY You have inherited a chocolate factory from your great uncle Wonky William. You need to get the factory up and running again in this tycoon style game. Create your chocolate factory empire and earn as much profit as you can. Listen as your factory produces chocolate buttons, chocolate bars or chocolate ice cream. Good luck with your new factory. BEAT THE BUZZER 5 True or False questions. One chance to beat the buzzer. Get an answer wrong and get buzzed. Beat the Buzzer and join the elite players who have beaten today's buzzer. DECISION TIME Compare your answers against other players in hundreds of silly questions that you may struggle to decide an answer for. All questions have yes or no answers. It's Decision Time! More games are coming soon. Getting Started: When you first play Mini Games you will be asked to select a team. Team Fire, Team Water, Team Electricity or Team Grass. These teams are in a monthly battle to get the most coins and need your help to get as many coins as possible every month. You earn coins playing any of our games in this Alexa skill. SHARE WITH FRIENDS! You can share Mini Games by saying: 'Alexa, share with friends' when playing. Enjoy. Hugo FM

Game updates

• Wave of the Undead 3.0 introduces a new campaign with 20 brand new levels, as well as a few new features, balance changes and bug fixes
• Hearthstone Patch 27.2 begins season 5 of battlegrounds, which introduces 40 new minions and a “anomalies” mechanic, where everyone in a match gets to play with a game modifier which completely changes the strategy for a round. In addition, a new “Caverns of time” expansion was released introducing 34 new cards. This is the first expansion to launch specifically for the wild mode rather than standard, as well as the new season of Twist. Separately from the game itself, the Hearthstone access mod was updated to support the new patch. It also now has the feature to let you review the board while in a card discovery menu by pressing tab.
• The Classic Six Dragons Mud has had 2 updates in August introducing 2 new areas, an enchanter class, streamlining of the crafting system and more
• Sanctuary in Time 0.3.9 includes an overhaul of the tattoo system, as well as bug and typo fixes
• August updates to Erionmud include many new areas, a mob killer leaderboard, a new mission, new achievements and more
• August updates to Alter Aeon included many changes to various skills and weapons
• The Android version of Bitlife has also become accessible. However, unlike the iOS version where the accessibility can be turned on with a 3-finger double tap, Android users will need sighted help to open the game’s settings menu and enable accessibility

Other News

• A Hero’s Call from Out of Sight Games was made Freeware by Ian Red, with permission from the rest of the team. The freeware release of the game removes the need to activate it as well as includes the translation cache for all languages, so it no longer requires an internet connection to play. It also gives everyone access to the unique items previously reserved for Kickstarter backers. If you’ve never experienced this wonderful game, or wanted to revisit it but had troubles with the activation servers, you can read more and download it here.
• Fans of Mortal Kombat had a lot to be excited about after it was confirmed that two blind consultants - Brandon Cole as well as Carlos Vasquez aka Rattlehead (a professional MK player who participated in multiple tournaments) worked on the game. When the pre-order beta landed in August, it revealed that the game not only includes a host of audio queues for fights and customizable sound settings, but also has a complete Screen Reader and audio descriptions for all cinematics including fatal blows and fatalities. Needless to say we will be returning to this game when it officially comes out in September.
• The store page of Marvel’s Spider Man 2 gave us a glimpse of some accessibility features we can expect from the game. As mentioned in this article on Can I play That? the game will build on the accessibility features in the previous Spider Man game, it will not only include a screen reader which will read all dialogs and menus but also audio descriptions for cinematic. We don’t know any additional details, like whether the game will also include extra audio queues, however it’s looking very likely this will be another very blind friendly hit from a Sony-owned studio. The game is scheduled to come out in October, and we’ll be sure to let you know if we hear more.

Authors

This edition of the digest has been written by:

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