Audiogames.net monthly digest - June 2022
Welcome to the June edition of the audiogames.net monthly digest, bringing you all the latest news about blind friendly games from around the forum and the world. With the holiday season starting in most of the world, there's no doubt the majoritty of the people reading this are probably thinking what to do with all the time they'd usually be spending at school. Well, we're here to help!
June has been a pretty busy month for mainstream games, with multiple accessibility mods and new releases that include accessibility features. And as always we have a bunch of updated games as well!
And before we get started, here's your obligatory reminder that you can subscribe to these digests through email to get them as soon as they appear!
New Releases
1428: Shadows over Silesia Demo
Back in March, we covered the significance of 1428: Shadows over Silesia and its huge accessibility breakthroughs. The official demo of this game has now been released and is ready for all to experience. You can read more about the game on its official page above.
VBA Pokemon Emerald Access
Though we already covered a script aiming to make this game more accessible in a previous issue, it wasn’t as fully featured as this one which is also receiving a lot more community attention and support. This set of scripts is heavily based on Pokemon access and includes many of its features such as a camera and path finder. More details and download links are in the linked thread.
New from Fighting fantasy project, escape the asylum, by Ulysses Ai
I am not mad! The voice repeats emphatically, as the bright blur starts to resolve into the details of a harsh white room. Fluorescent lights buzz in the ceiling of rough plaster. White paint is chipping off the brick walls. A small, barred window dark with night. A narrow bed, a depleted drip bag on a stand. I am not mad! I am not mad! Like the thudding of panicked heart it repeats, an awareness lifted from the refuge of unconsciousness to discover a reality that is terrifyingly familiar. It is always, endlessly, the same. The door opens, screeching on unoiled hinges. The orderly steps inside; non-descript, a large mass of impatient brawn. The syringe is already loaded in his fat fingers, ready to inflict chemical insensibility. But suddenly... this time something different happens: the orderly quickly drops out of sight... what? It takes several minutes for you to regain your sense of self. The voice repeating the mantra that you are not mad is your own. You vaguely remember being dragged to this place with false accusations of insanity. You had a life that was stolen from you, and now it calls out to you again from beyond the fog in your mind, begging you to return. Sitting up makes your head spin for a few moments. When things settle, you turn your attention to the floor beside the narrow bed. The orderly is lying on the floor with a large dark bump on his head. The soiled legs of his white pants draw your attention to a puddle of some liquid. Slowly it becomes clear what happened: the orderly slipped and smashed his fat head on the bed frame. Interrupted in his task, the door to your cell is still standing open. Freedom! Pulling the tubes out of your arm, you climb off the bed and carefully settle yourself onto the floor, the worn floorboards cool against your bare feet. You nearly fall over just trying to bear your own weight, but after many tries you are able to take a step away from the bed. Growing stronger by the second, you spy the full syringe and gently lower yourself to pick it up. You grope at the orderly's fat neck until you feel a throbbing artery and plunge the needle into it, expelling the drug into his system. Now he will be out for... well, you don't know. For long enough to escape... you hope!
Yu-Gi-Oh Access
Introduction by Forum member Shinobi whose also responsible for getting this project started
YuGiOh access is a client that allows the blind to play the TCG YuGiOh online with there friends or against random opponents on a server where hundreds of people duel online! It is a uI and is completely different than the MUD. This is not text-based, this is based on what some of you might know as the YgoPro client that was previously only accessible to sighted players. It has full keyboard support, and it works with NVDA and JAWS. Other screen readers haven't been tested yet with it. We are now in a public beta and are looking for people to use our client and report any bugs. We've fixed most of the major bugs, but there could still be some problems with the client, but it will be fixed starting sometime soon. Anyway, I'm very excited to show this to you all, and I hope that you have a fun time dueling! Who knows, maybe we'll duel sometime together soon!
Factorio Access
Hello all! I am a blind student and programmer, and for the past few months I have been working on an accessibility mod for the popular game Factorio. The mod is not yet complete, but the game is now playable with a screen reader, and I am looking for feedback to shape the future of the mod. "What is Factorio?" you may be asking! Factorio is a survival base-building game. The player is an engineer who finds himself stranded on an alien planet with nothing but his wits and the raw resources he can scavenge from his environment. You start the game physically mining for ore and cutting down trees, but very quickly you wwill be able to automate such processes. Automation, however, has a cost. The pollution from your factory is spreading, and the natives are restless...
The mod is under constant development and for now requires the game to be purchased direct from the developer rather than Steam. More details as well as how to join the Discord server where the mod can be downloaded and discussed are in the above thread.
Game Updates
- VG Storm Goes Global! With the addition of Stripe as a payment method, it is now possible for those in countries not served by Paypal to purchase VGStorm titles. Incidentally, this shopping-cart update has also introduced the ability to provide coupon codes and allow the purhcase of multiple different games in one cart. To celebrate, the promocode worldwide without the stars is available until July31st, which will score you a 20% discount on any purchase above $50.
- Beyond the Chiron gate, in addition to being available on PC also just got released on iOS and Android.
- Erion Mud received many updates between March and the update post from June. The full list is linked above, but you can expect new sounds in the sound pack, many new areas, a weather system and more!
- Stellar Aeon is testing a new universe, which will require moving some player data over. If you’re interested in trying this out before the updates go live for everyone, you can connect to a test server linked in the thread above
- Fight! got an update in June which allows you to spectate your friends as well as adding a crytical hit system
- June updates for Alter Aeon include a new area as well as various tweaks to the crafting system and the equipment that’s created with it.
- Audioduel got an update that adds more ambient sounds, adjusts the number of lives in single-layer and makes some tweaks to the text to speech
- Warsim got 2 updates in June. Now all factions as well as mercenaries use the new combat system. You can now also send in your monsters into battle which like everything else in the game is loaded with many new text descriptions. TO take advantage of this you can now also equip your monsters with armor. There were also a number of other updates to the mercenary system and bug fixes.