Audiogames.net Monthly Digest - December 2022
Welcome to the last audiogames digest for 2022! It’s pretty crazy to think we’ve been doing this for a year now. What started as a project to bring some life into our news section has now turned into something a little bigger, with multiple people from our staff contributing both new content as well as making these digests available through Email (which you should tell your friends about, by the way!). Not only that, but the rest of you are just as responsible for making these digests grow. Whether you made a game and told your friends about it or found something worth playing and posted about it on the audiogames.net forum, you not only helped out adding to these digests but have also given all of us something more to play!
So, we sincerely hope you had a wonderful Christmas/Holidays, and here’s to more awesome releases in 2023! But before that happens, let’s see what happened in December.
New Releases
Mist World English Translation
Though Mist World isn’t a new release - it has been available in Chinese for a few years, the game has now received an official English translation. The game is a fully audio-based 2D MMO RPG offering tons of classes and content with a huge world to explore, as well as all the usual MMO features you’d expect including quests and dungeons, being able to group up with other players to form larger parties, joining gangs and so on. The first post in the above thread includes more details and background on the world as well as offers a few audio gameplay demos.
Katawa Shoujo re-engineered (Windows, Mac known to have speech support)
Katawa Shoujo is a bishoujo-style visual novel set in the fictional Yamaku High School for disabled children, located somewhere in modern Japan. Hisao Nakai, a normal boy living a normal life, has his life turned upside down when a congenital heart defect forces him to move to a new school after a long hospitalization. Despite his difficulties, Hisao is able to find friends—and perhaps love, if he plays his cards right. There are five main paths corresponding to the 5 main female characters, each path following the storyline pertaining to that character.
The story is told through the perspective of the main character, using a first person narrative. The game uses a traditional text and sprite-based visual novel model with an ADV text box.
Katawa Shoujo contains adult material, and was created using the Ren’Py scripting system. It is the product of an international team of amateur developers, and is available free of charge under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License.
And here’s the description of the “Re-engineered” version:
Accessible to All KS:RE offers a battery of accessibility features to accommodate players with disabilities. Using the tools available in modern Ren’Py, we’ve added quick access to self-voicing, two dyslexic typefaces, a special high contrast text box, and various optimizations to improve functionality with common screenreaders- and that’s just the beginning. We’re already looking into other ways to make KS:RE even more accessible. Fully Transparent Open source. No archives. No obfuscation. KS:RE doesn’t try to hide how it works. Anyone is welcome to peek under the hood and experiment, free of interference. The vastly simplified codebase of KS:RE allows developers of all skill levels to read, learn, and alter to their heart’s content. If you have an idea- a new accessibility feature, an improvement to a menu, a further simplification of the code- you have everything you need to make it happen. KS:RE is a community project first and foremost. If you can make the game better, our door is always open. Bells and Whistles KS:RE, under its default settings, plays exactly as you remember it. However, you have a few new options at your fingertips to tailor your experience to your liking. For a touch of visual flair, you can enable Parallax viewing, breathing a little extra life into your favorite characters. Sharing your experience has never been simpler- KS:RE seamlessly integrates with Discord’s activity bar, letting your friends see your excellent taste in visual novels. All of these features are completely optional, and can be toggled with a single click. The Complete Package KS:RE comes preloaded with Russian and French translations, ready to use with no extra effort on the player’s end. Every other official translation won’t be far behind. The simplified codebase of KS:RE makes creating new translations easier than ever, requiring virtually zero programming knowledge. We’re more than willing to port over any finished translation you create and add it to KS:RE- credited to you, of course.
Blind Quest - The Ivy Queen (Windows, Mac, with mobile versions coming soon)
In this sequel to the adventure “THE IVY QUEEN,” you must lead the mercenary Nathan into the world of Aetherna, now free from the icy grasp of Kyllius. This adventure will see Nathan as a prisoner of the tyrannical Ivy Queen, and once freed he will have to solve the mystery about Ivy Queen’s motives for wanting to establish tyrannical rule and exploit the mercenary’s services to defeat Kyllius.
Explore new locations like the Ivy Dungeon, and fight into the arena! This new adventure will have 86 new maps in 5 different scenarios to explore and interact with! An adventure audiogame for real adventurers!
Christmas game from Accessiware: ChristmasChaos - Endless Runner (Windows)
Ho ho ho. It’s that time of year again. The time for me to travel the world and deliver presents to all the good little kids on my list. And every year, I need a special little helper to travel with me, helping steering the sleigh. A helper, that can aid me in making this the most joyful Christmas for all the little ones out there. And this year. It’s you. So are you ready?
A christmas game from Accessiware.
- Funn little endless runner
- Build in tutorial level.
- Easy controls
- Build on the shiny new Accessiware Game System. Are you ready to save Christmas by helping Santa himself Steer the sleigh?
Upheaval A text-based open-world fantasy roleplaying game (Windows)
A text-based open world fantasy roleplaying game. Time moves forward with every choice you make. Explore the wilderness and seek out magical treasures. Disrupt or enable growing factions, and exploit knowledge gained in previous playthroughs. In 30 days, the Magician will arrive. Will you be ready when they do? Your choices matter! Interact with people and places you encounter however you choose. Change the balance of power and the fates of everyone you meet! Or don’t. You can stay in the tavern, go fishing, or ignore everyone and just do your own thing. The choice is completely up to you.
Features - Incredibly replayable! Complete each adventure in 30-90 minutes. Play multiple times to learn more about the world and explore multiple endings. - Big world! Over 40 unique locations to explore and discover. - Dynamic! Non-player characters (both friends and enemies) are living, moving people for you to respond to and interact with, not just static encounters waiting for you to find them. - Treasure! Over 15 magical and mundane treasures and items for you to find and use, each of which can be used in multiple different ways. - So many endings! Over 5,000 unique endings, depending on your choices throughout the game. What mark will you leave on the world when your adventure is over? - Mobile-friendly! Made to be easily played on your phone. Play for a few minutes or a few hours. - Accessible! Windows Console version supports screen readers and keyboard navigation for blind and vision impaired players. - Magic! In 30 days, the Magician will arrive. How will you spend your time until then? - Lore! A rich history surrounds your little village, its secrets hidden in the beautiful and treacherous landscape around it. Discover how magic has affected the land in generations past. How will your knowledge of the past influence your decisions today? - Fantasy! Goblins, bandits, spells, curses, undead spirits, faeries, visions, true love, and more! Early Access - Alpha New content is added with each release. Buy the alpha release today at a discount and own all future releases of Upheaval as well!
Sanctuary in Time (Windows)
A text-based, adult management game with a sci-fi twist! You’re the half-blood son of the recently murdered God of Time. And now his killers are coming for you! Using fantastic celestial technology, fill the halls of your citadel with beautiful female followers rescued from throughout history, add structures, upgrade them, and survive the forces that killed your father! To support development, visit: the Patreon page Features - A text-based, narrative driven experience. Features both a hand-crafted main story campaign as well as procedurally generated side story content that occurs randomly. - Turn-based action. Inspect and manage your followers, give them duty assignments to perform, then advance time to see the results of your choices. - Choose the path of strength, persuasion, or both! Train your followers to be well-muscled warriors who fight to defend your life, or guide them down the paths of diplomacy and the loving arts so they can serve as peace-making priestesses instead. It’s entirely up to you! - Customize your followers. The more devoted your followers become, the more willing they are to follow your instructions. Unlock new tiers of customization options (and intimacy) as your followers advance in your service. - Be the new God of Time. Use the technology of your Celestial forebears to pluck women in distress from the darkest recesses of Earth’s history. Save them from fates worse than death and earn their eternal gratitude!
Though the game was initially discovered back in November, it initially could only be played through use of OCR, however the developer is very responsive to feature suggestions and implemented full text to speech support in an update to the game, making it fully accessible.
Football coach, college dynasty is now out on steam for early access
Football Coach: College Dynasty is an all new college football management game. Build your legacy as a coach, starting at a small school and working your way up, or play as your favorite school, creating a dynasty that last decades. Featuring everything you love about college football, and deep customizability to play the way you want. Features - Call plays with a robust simulation engine, featuring 100+ offensive and defensive plays - Recruit HS and JUCO players to join your school, assigning pitches and scheduling visits to win recruiting battles against your rivals - Develop your players in the offseason to match your scheme and gain an advantage - Level up your coach and earn unique skills - Enhance your school by spending booster money on facilities, academics, marketing, and more - Stat tracking for every player and every team - View team and league histories, past game results, awards, coach careers, and records with just a click - Customize your league with different playoff formats and conference realignment options - Play your way with tons of different settings to change, including injuries, transfer rules, draft rules, NIL, and more BE THE COACH Control every facet of your gameplan, including strategies and practice focuses. Call 100+ unique plays on offense and defense, and feel the excitement of big college football games.
RECRUIT FUTURE STARS Scout and recruit players from all over the country, competing against other schools in tense recruiting battles. Pitch your team to recruits, schedule official visits, and even offer NIL deals.
EARN UNIQUE SKILLS Earn XP to level your offense, defense, training, and recruiting skills. Choose unique skill badges throughout your career, each granting special bonuses to player performance, development, or recruitment.
ADVANCE YOUR COACHING CAREER In coach career mode, each school’s athletic director will have expectations for you to meet. Exceeding them will make prestigious schools take notice, but missing expectations may result in losing your job.
BUILD A DYNASTY FOR THE AGES Every statistic and attribute is tracked and can be accessed easily with a click. Examine all teams, coaches, players, and games from previous years, so that legendary run can be relived over and over.
Elder Tale Online
In the wake of the malicious virus known as Pluto’s Kiss, the network of computers we humans became dependent on, ceased to function. Trust was broken. As the world’s channels of communication and technological infrastructure crumbled around them, humanity cried out for an answer. After eight painful years, the answer came; ALTIMIT. A revolutionary new Operating System designed to be free of all viruses, ALTIMIT was released to the public with an unprecedented level of success. With the ALTIMIT system, the world could begin again. Bundled with ALTIMIT was this game: Elder Tale Online, a universe apart from our own. It was created from the remnants of old programs long forgotten, previously small-time games overlooked during the original MMO craze merged with the wildly popular Elder Tale. Those fragments of lost worlds became one-third of the foundation of ALTIMIT’s success, and soon, millions of people became engrossed in the world of Elder Tale Online. And then, hundreds of thousands of people became trapped within that same world, amongst Monsters, Empires, and those original inhabitants known as the ‘People of the Land’. The day it happened would come to be known as the Apocalypse. A new expansion for Elder Tale Online, Homesteading the Noosphere, consisting of data from more long-forgotten games, brought with it terror and confusion as the world those people knew abruptly ceased to exist. Locked in this strange new world by unknown means, some began to panic. Some gave in to outrage and confusion, with fear ruling their hearts. Some gave in to their darkest sides, set free to do as they pleased in a world without consequence. Some few, however, chose to bravely take the first steps into a new world, pioneers of a frontier as of yet unimaginable. This is the story of Elder Tale Online. How will you change the world? Elder Tale Online MUSH is an Isekai MUSH within a VRMMORPG setting. It features major themes such as Sword Art Online, Log Horizon, and the .Hack series, and others are hidden amongst its expansive lore. Features • Collectable Cards: A unique Card-based Combat, Project, and Duty system, featuring Classes and interesting Power Paths! • Codex System: A special system allowing you to track secrets your character and their Guild have learned! • Scene System: Automatic logging and posting to our website. • Discord Integration: Channels accessible on the MUSH and Discord, as well as a bot to warn you when a scene you signed up for is about to start!
Game updates
- Players of Hearthstone experienced a rollercoaster of emotions throughout November when Guide Dev announced he would not be continuing to work on the Hearthstone access mod. Following this two things of note happened. First, the community was able to get Blizzard’s attention, and the Hearthstone community manager made an official post promising the dev team would look into making a more official solution. However, with a new massive expansion looming providing a brand new class to play, a couple of talented developers stepped up to maintain development of Hearthstone Access. Though this new version hasn’t officially been released, you can gain early access to it through the Hearthstone Access Discord (link can be found here). As of this writing, in addition to compatibility with the newest Hearthstone version, the mod now allows you to access the arena mode, unlocks access to additional single player adventures including books of mercenaries,, ashes of outland and the Deathknight prologue, as well as fixing some longstanding bugs with multi target cards.
- Say the Spire is now at version 0.4.0, which includes a number of under the hood changes to allow the mod to be translated into other languages. The new version also now allows you to press CTRL+P to quickly check your powers, indicates paths that require the winged boots on the map and includes other various bug fixes.
- Browser Quest - a Single Player RPG experience inspired by table top RPG’s, includes a new module of extra content for those who have finished the game
- They’ll come from the Moon! received a number of fixes to its Windows version to improve performance, controller support, SteamDeck compatibility and more
- TextSpaced has officially left beta and reached version 1.0. The developers highlight that over the last year a ton of new content and features have been added and the game can now support more concurrent players. The post linked above has additional details.
- Warsim just received another massive update which officially brings the game out of early access. The highlight of this release is the new Dunelands region with lots of places to explore and conquer, but a lot of other extra content and bug fixes have also been introduced in this version.
- Periphery is now at version 1.1 introducing a grappling feature allowing you to scale tall mountains in the game.
- Sidelines Football Manager received more accessibility improvements, making various popups in the game more accessible.
- December updates to Alter Aeon introduced a vulnerability and resistance system to various weapon types and mobs. Similar to different types of elemental attacks, mobs may now be more vulnerable to piercing, blunt or stabbing based weapons. In addition we got the usual array of changes to crafting and other systems. Lastly, the Winter Solstice event will continue running until January 3rd so you may still be able to get in on the fun!
- To the Dragon Cave is now also localized into Polish
In other News
- As reported on GameSpot the critically acclaimed Last of Us Part 1 remake is due to hit the pc in March of 2023. Current players may notice that the wealth of accessibility components in the game are all built into its engine as is the case with The Last of Us 2. Word has it that part 1’s new engine has been designed with crosscompatibility in mind. This all seems to indicate that the game should have unparalleled accessibility on both the pc and the Playstation. Needless to say this will introduce a major subset of gamers to the work that has gone into this major landmark release in the field of mainstream accessibility.