Audiogames.net Monthly Digest - July 2024
Welcome to the July 2024 audiogames.net monthly digest. This month saw a lot of activity. The releases section sees a couple of big previously announced projects finally seeing the light of day, while the updates section just keeps growing with every digest with more entries. Lastly, in the other news section we look to the past with 2 beloved projects shutting down while also looking to the future at an upcoming release.
As always, a quick reminder that you can tell your friends they can get these digests straight in their inbox from this page.
new Releases
Marvel Realm (Windows)
Marvel Realm is a suite of mini audio games developed from scratch and published by Sonorous Arts. It uses the Sage framework to implement mechanics and gameplay suitable for audio games, without compromising the excitement and small details expected from any game in general. The suite includes several series, each containing a number of connected/related mini games for you to enjoy. Although in theory these games are considered mini games, all of them have hours of work backing them up, implementing a plethora of small details and precise mechanics. As such, one could safely stop using the term "mini" for them. Our team works hard to deploy the most suitable and up-to-date technologies for audio gaming in the software, hoping that you can enjoy your gaming session more than ever, for instance, with your favorite set of peripherals! Marvel Realm is integrated with our online service, ensuring a stable and unified experience among all users. Using the online service, all clients are always kept up to date, and many new additions may be added to the suite without any extra action by the end user. This allows the player to focus on enjoying their gaming session and nothing else! Gaming with no unwanted hassle is always more fun. For more information on how to use Marvel Realm, please take a look at the documentation, available to everyone immediately after the first login in the main menu of the suite
At launch the suite includes 3 games - Chaotic Highway (a driving game), Endless Defense (an arcade style shooter) and Canopy Cafe (an arcade game where you are running a cafe and have to make your customers happy). You can find audio trailers of all 3 games as well as more information on the developer's blog.
Dragon Moon: the demo (Windows)
Description by Nuno:
The game is a Chinese-style RPG. In this world humans managed to break the barier between the real and virtual reality. Will you be able to survive in this strange world?
The game requires locale emulator to function. The game has an auto-update mechanism. If there's an update, it will auomatically download.
And a machine translated description from the developer:
This time we are going to share with you a single player real-time battle game (Dragon Moon) developed by a blind developer (Old Town Off West.). This is a single-player real-time battle game (Dragon Moon) developed by a blind developer.
Although the game itself is developed using easy language game situation price, but the game experience is very not bad, especially the sound effects are very to the point.
In particular, the sound effects are very well used, and the plot is also very informative, allowing the player to get involved in the main character's storyline.
The background of the game is a special police officer, because of the failure of the mission, lost his most important person, and then discouraged, returned to the city is the story of life.
After retiring from the army, he accidentally has a few scuffles with the heroine, and later discovers that the heroine is his top boss.
Later on, several major countries on earth jointly develop a virtual reality game, where once you put on a helmet, you can start a second human voice in another world.
What kind of story will the protagonist have with the female lead in this reality or virtual world?
Let's experience this game and see their story together!
fruit typing challenge (Windows)
Hello guys!
Here is a simple command line game I made after learning Python. This game is based on Typerspeed by Seediffusion. In this game, you have to type 5 words correctly, but they are all fruit names.
the discriptions is here.
Welcome to the Fruit Typing Challenge, a fast-paced and fun typing game that tests your speed and accuracy!
In this game, you'll be given the name of a fruit to type.
The challenge? Type the word correctly within a set time limit to earn points!
Game Features:
• Exciting Gameplay: Test your typing skills with a variety of fruit names. Each round presents a new word, and you must type it correctly before time runs out.
• Customizable Difficulty: Choose from three difficulty levels to match your skill. Easy gives you 15 seconds per word, Medium 10 seconds, and Hard only 5 seconds.
• Looping Music: Stay motivated with background music that loops indefinitely throughout the game.
• High Score Tracking: Compete to beat your own high score and see how well you can perform!
City of Division (Windows)
City of Division is a multiplayer game that offers many unique features not yet seen in audio games. Besides the tactical and interesting fights, it also features a skill system, storylines, destructible objects such as windows, and the ability to loot objects.
Additionally, there is no tracking, which makes the fighting even more exciting and realistic, forcing you to focus even more on the sounds around you. But don't worry, there are other ways to find players that are nearby.
desolate, text version of a single player card game (Windows, Mac, Linux)
This is an adaptation of the Desolate boardgame by Grey Gnome Games. The creator has kindly given me permission to distribute this. You can find an official print-and-play edition of Desolate on PnPArcade.
If you have previously played Desolate then this is a one-to-one translation of the game to digital text-based form so there shouldn't be any surprises.
I have implemented it as a text-based game which runs in a Windows terminal. Input is via keyboard in order to enter choices for what to do next.
Description of the original board game:
There was no communication with Station 4 on the distant moon, X483. You were part of a rescue mission to investigate the silence. Upon arrival your ship lost the use of its controls and crash landed but meters away from the station.
Once inside you realized something terrible had happened. The station was occupied by aliens!
Stranded, you must make your way through the station to locate enough power cells to activate the escape shuttle. Will you be able to survive the horrors of the abandoned station?How to play
Your goal is to collect 5 power cells without running out of health or oxygen. The game has an exploration deck (a card deck that is part of the boardgame) that represents rooms to explore and encounters with aliens.
The game is split into "levels", which represent one use of the entire exploration deck, after which it is shuffled and a new level starts. Each level contains multiple "turns". Each turn consists of drawing two exploration cards. You are shown one and must decide whether to resolve that card or the unknown second card. When a level ends you consume 2 units of oxygen. If you reach 0 then you die.
Rooms provide you with the stated reward directly. Power cells can be found in Engineering. Conflict cards have an associated value, shown for example as "Conflict (4)". This value is added to a randomly generated value (1-6) to give the alien's health. When combat starts you automatically take a random amount of damage (0-4). You decide how much of your ammo to use in each combat round. Each unit of ammo gives you a dice roll, which are all added together to give the damage caused to the alien. If you haven't killed it then it damages you again (0-5 points) and a new round starts.
For those familiar with the boardgame, the random values are generated from a conflict deck that this game maintains behind the scenes.
Game updates
- LongevityWorld3.08 now includes files to support screen readers like NVDA by default and includes a number of new locations, each with new unique quests.
- Wave of the Undead 4.4 brings 4 new terrain tiles to use in your maps, 3 new defenses to implement into your strategies, and a quest system to help you earn more brains! And as always, a number of balance and quality of life tweaks.
- Mortal Kombat 1's July patch introduced Takeda and Ferra (the final character and Cameo respectively) of the first kombat pack, started the next invasions season, includes usual balance changes and more Screen Reader Improvements. Fans of the series have much more to look forward to however, with the announcement of a new Khaos Reigns expansion coming September 24th. It is set to bring more cinematic story, animalities as well as 6 new characters - Cyrax, Sektor and Noob Saibot from the MK universe, as well as T1000, Ghostface and Conan the Barbarian as guest characters.
- The next Hearthstone expansion, Perils in Paradise is now live. It features 145 new cards, a new tourist keyword allowing you to multi class in your decks, brand new locations and more. Naturally, Hearthstone Access has kept pace with these updates, with both the standard and duos test being updated. The new version of the mod makes the Dungeon Run and Monster Hunt adventures accessible, while in Duos if your team mate is picking a choice after discovering something you can read their available options.
- Forza Update 10's career mode is all about the biggest rivalries in racing. The update also includes a proximity radar on the HUD, various replay mode improvements and the usual bug fixes and balance changes.
- Warsim 1.2 includes new throne room encounters, new jokes for testers and new insults for gnomes to balance things out, new loot items and bug fixes
- The accessibility patch for Nine-Tailed Okitsune Tale has been completely rewritten which should allow for more rapid development. The new version already includes collision sounds as well as other new audio queues which should help with navigation and gameplay, with more changes planned for the future.
- FactorioAccess 0.12.1 adds filtering options for player and vehicle inventory slots, allows you to configure rocket launch automation and fixes some launcher bugs. 2 smaller patches followed bringing the mod to 0.12.3 fixing a few smaller bugs.
- Stardew Access 1.6 adds options allowing you turn off automatic reading of various dialogs, a new "repeat dialog" shortcut, makes home renovation more accessible, improves reading info about farm animals and includes other bug fixes
- Textspaced 1.43 now includes an extensive tutorial for new players, as well as Chapter 14 of the storyline.
- Trawel Beta 8 V12 allows you to enable cheats on any save file, adds punishment effects on death and enables node regrowth
- Advance Wars 1.1.9 adds Chapter 11 to the campaign, a new shortcut for faster history navigation and makes some tweaks to officer abilities.
- Transport World Simulator is now available in Spanish, the F12 key now announces the station you're stopped at, plus there's a usual batch of bug fixes and audio improvements.
- Simple Fighter had a ton of updates in July which enabled many parts of the map builder, shields have now been implemented and much, much more.
- Azmar Quest had some fixes for dungeons. For accessibility, a bug with stats not updating for screen readers during combat has been fixed and maps are now accessible
- Dawncaster 13.02 now includes detailed descriptions for all character portraits, and this is just the beginning, with the upcoming update scheduled to also include descriptions for all monsters you fight as well
- Fruitpot - received a major update which modernizes the game with new, exciting slots action, new minigames and much more. For those who prefer the original fruit pot gameplay the legacy version is also still available in the app.
- Executioner's Rage 2.0 includes a new more precise turning system, new areas, weapons and missions as well as much more
- Corruption of Champions 2 has had a number of new quests and scenes added to it
- Inheritance Alpha 94 includes a number of new scenes, the ability to increase your driving skill easier and a number of bug fixes and spelling corrections
Other News
- After an impressive 10-year run, Sam Tupy has announced Survive the Wild will be shutting down in a few months. The announcement blog post, which you can read here, cites multiple reasons for the decision including increasing technical debt making the game harder to work on, difficulties in sufficiently staffing the game and other personal reasons. The decision also allows him to dedicate more time to working on other upcoming projects more including the excellent NVGT game engine and other games. We wish Sam success in his future endeavors, and if you haven't checked out Survive the Wild yet or want to revisit it, there's still some time left.
- Unfortunately, Survive the Wild isn't the only beloved service shutting down, as the staff of Applevis announced it will also be closing at the end of August, with the site being put in read-only mode until then. Though not strictly gaming focused AppleVis was a great site for anyone looking for new accessible games to play on their iPhone or Mac. Many wonderful titles were discovered thanks to the work of Applevis contributors and developers advertising accessibility of their apps there, so it's a resource that will be missed.
- Nimble Nerds, the developers of Wave of the Undead, have announced their next project — Blades of Glory. In their words, "This will be a free for all fighting game where you can customize your loadouts, enter the arena, and take on other players! With over a thousand different combinations of equipment possible, this is going to be an awesome PvP challenge." The game doesn't have a release date yet but you can look at a demonstration stream of the game in its current state as well as follow development in the thread linked above.
Authors
This edition of the digest has been written by:
- Piotr Machacz (pitermach@dragonscave.space on Mastodon)