Audiogames.net Monthly Digest - January 2023
Welcome to the first audiogames.net digest of the year! Are you just as excited to see what 2023 brings to the gaming table as we are? I hope so!
So far, while January has been a slower month in terms of releases, it’s been full of updates, featuring both new games and muds as well as some old loved classics getting some love!
And if you want yourself kept up to date with these digests when they come out, you can subscribe to them here so you don’t miss the next one!
New Releases
Dominion of Darkness (Web)
“Dominion of Darkness” is a strategy text game in which the player takes on the role of a Sauron-style Lord of Darkness with the goal of conquering the world. He will carry out his plans by making various decisions. He will build his army and send it into battles, weave intrigues and deceptions, create secret spy networks and sectarian cults, recruit agents and commanders, corrupt representatives of Free Peoples and sow discord among them, collect magical artifacts and perform sinister plots. Note – one game takes about 1 hour, but the premise is that the game can be approached several times, each time making different decisions, getting different results and discovering something new. Feedback is very much welcome. Very, very much. Maybe You played in my other game with the same premise - >Malefactor”. I want You to know, that “Malfactor” was just a prototype, demo. This version is much much more elaborate, nave more content and mechanics.
Nations at Risk (Web)
Nations At Risk is a free text-based persistent massively multi-player online nation simulation & war strategy game. Create a country, choose your government officials, build and level up various constructions and wonders and recruit your army to conquer your enemies. Mould your national politics in the national parliament and your international reputation in the Planetary Union Organisation. Join or create an alliance and team up with other players and decide your path of diplomacy or war together.
- Player-driven economy & global trade system
- Developed war feature, with specialised military units
- PvP and PvE options available
- Weekend events
- Unique citizens
- Global political parties, parliament and elections
- Various buildings in various provinces available
EchoVis Quiz (iOS and ANdroid)
Welcome to the EchoVis Quiz game. We hope that it will help you improve your hearing sensitivity - and its effectiveness. It will increase your skills in the field of recognizing sound propagation in various environments, its reflections, distortions, and the knowledge of the echolocation phenomenon. The main objectives of the game are: - Improving the ability to use the hearing organ - Learning the skill of using echolocation - Providing entertainment through competing with other players - ranking
The game essentially targets anyone without a significant hearing dysfunction. You can play it with, and compete against your family members, friends or yourself. Its educational aspect is also vital in the case of the blind and visually impaired. The game makes it possible to get accustomed to sounds in different spaces: at home, in the forest, between buildings, on busy streets, inside such structures as train stations, etc. All the above can be achieved in the safe and peaceful surroundings of your home. You do not have to go anywhere. We will “teleport” you to many interesting places. All you need are your headphones, a smartphone, and our app. Each of the questions and the suggested answers relate to a sound recording. Questions are illustrated using various audio recordings: classic stereo, binaural recordings and other. This is why we strongly recommend using proper headphones that enable receiving stereo-quality sound. In the light of the above, correctly putting the headphone on the proper ear - right and left - will be crucial. More advanced users can also use adequately spaced speaker sets for this purpose. Some of the recordings were made in a specially prepared space using reflective or sound-attenuating walls and clickers that emit waves of various frequencies. They enable testing yourself under highly demanding acoustic conditions and learning to focus on very specific aspects of various sound phenomena. The game contains packages comprising 50 recordings. The number 0 package is free of charge. You will have to pay a small amount for each subsequent one. The first edition contains packages 0 and 1. We plan to deliver successive ones in the future. We wish you productive learning and high-ranking records.
Game Updates
- TextSpaced 1.1 introduces the ability to capture wildlife which you can then use as companions, the ability to send your crew on away missions as well as many other smaller changes
- Sanctuary in Time is now at version 0.3.3. THe new version adds more side story events, the ability to perform surveillance on your followers, various tweaks to exercising and to character personalities, and accessibility improvements. You can read the full changelog here.
- SoundRTS now at version 1.3.6 introduces bug fixes to some units, improves the spoken unit descriptions, fixes various things involving water squares, as well as makes it easier to host multiplayer servers both on your local network as well as on the internet. THe full changelog can be found here.
- Fantasy Story now at version 2.7 improves the text to speech support on Windows, adds map and item search functions, options to customize sound effects and more. THe game also received an official Vietnamese translation as well as support for over 100 other languages through Google Translate.
- The Classic 6Dragons mud has been revived by its developer and is once again receiving updates. If you’re a fan of muds which have a lot of sounds, this one might be worth checking out as it includes very extensive MSP (Mud SOund Protocol) support
- Upheaval ALpha 0.6.6 greatly expands goblin encounters, with a much more terrifying prison experience as well as more goblin related events.
- SayTheSpire 0.4.1 introduces the localization feature started with the previous version as well as fixes various bugs related to the map.
- Hearthstone got a major update with the launch of Battlegrounds Season 3, which introduced a new undead minion type and a new Hero to go with it. The continuation of the Hearthstone Access mod,, which you can download here, has also received numerous updates throughout January, which implemented support for viewing and claiming achievements, made some fixes to deck building as well as added a few extra hotkeys in the main menu. The download package now also includes a handy readme listing all the changes in case you don’t want to follow the Discord.
- Alter Aeon, which coincidentally turned 28 this year! Continues receiving regular updates. The ones in January focused on character appearance with various hairstyles, diseases changing your eye color and complexion as well as being able to get tattoos, though there have also been other smaller changes like various new types of wood being added. Players also have some brand new procedurally generated areas opening up soon to look forward to
- They’ll come from the moon! Received a small update which added sounds when you throw rocks and eggs as well as swapped out the font for a more scary one.
- The staff of ErionMud posted about all the updates that have been made since June, and there’s been a lot of them! A few highlights include new missions, skills and achievements, a skill/spell combo system, many updates to the sound pack and much more!
- 4X4 Archipelago now at version 1.2 adds a menu to select a few parameters while starting a new game, including your class as well as giving yourself some money and XP to make the early game easier.
- Pocket Reality was just updated with a new optional “Nocturne” expansion that introduces 8 new types of scenarios.
- The various Pontes Games for Android - including Justgammon, 4 in a line and Pontes Game Zone, are back on Google Play after being updated to work with the latest versions of Android. You can read the developer’s announcement here.
In Other News
The GAConf Awards happened on January 25th, hosted by Steve Saylor and featuring other such recognizable voices of our community - SightlessCombat and Ross Minor. On top of that, this ceremony was audio described by another of our community’s very own, Brandon Cole. Our congratulations and thanks go out to all the nominees and winners, notably Santa Monica Studios, Naughty Dog, GuideDev, As Dusk Falls and much more! Here’s to another great year of mainstream game accessibility!
Authors
This edition of the digest has been written by:
- Piotr Machacz (@pitermach on Twitter and pitermach@dragonscave.space on Mastodon)
- Jack (@jackf723 on twitter, @jackf723 on Mastodon)