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A jam submission

SaserView game page

Blind accessible (hopefully!) videogame about navigating levels using a sound-based laser
Submitted by Henry Giles — 6 hours, 3 minutes before the deadline
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Saser's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Blind-friendly and good use of audio#232.1222.188
Fun gameplay#232.3042.375
Setting, story, characters, and world#231.4551.500

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Developer

It seems the menu I made (sort of on autopilot) is not accessible. I will try to fix this at some point, but for now if you can get into the game I'd still appreciate any feedback! 

Thanks!

(+1)

The music was jamming!

(+1)

This is a neat concept, but without voiced menus or full keyboard access, this is not going to work well for the vast majority of blind people.

Developer

Understood! I was hoping a screen reader would deal with this and made the fonts as legible as I could, but I didn't have time to get a  proper voiced menu going.

Thanks for the feedback!

(+1)

I hear you. But don't worry, you can always try again next year. I still think your concept is cool, and the music was awesome. Learning how to make stuff accessible for screen readers can be quite challenging at first.

This is a neat concept, but without voiced menus or full keyboard access, this is not going to work well for the vast majority of blind people.

(+1)

As a sighted person I found this game confusing. Instructions or a tutorial in game would be really helpful and I felt like I was constantly making a mistake by the constant noise. A beep at regular intervals or a button to press to "check" current position or closeness to the item would be better than a constant piercing sound. I tried looking/navigating around but I couldn't complete a single level.

(+1)

I'm very sorry, but I've had to leave one-star ratings all the way. The menu in this game is not accessible for the blind, meaning I've got no way to even try it. There are pluggins such as the unity access pluggin, and I think Unity even have a blog about how to make games accessible with screen readers. Don't give up though, as this means you'd still be able to develop this concept further post-jam. If the music is anything to go by, it's very cool. If you do another project for the next jam as well, I look forward to what you come up with.

Developer

Thanks for the honest feedback, and I'm sorry you couldn't access my game. I was hoping a software-based screen reader would make the menus navigable. Turns out I have much more to learn about the blind community than I thought! 

Given more time I would have expanded accessibility on the menus and maybe this is something I will try in the future.

(to be honest, I left the game too last minute to figure out all this stuff, which is also a lesson to me for next time!)

(+2)

I don’t expect much out of a menu in an accessible game, but it should at least be accessible. This one isn’t for me, either with self-voicing or with NVDA. It is fortunately possible to start the game with OCR, but if that’s how it’s meant to be, I would have appreciated a note on the page. What software was this game tested with, and did it work?

This seems like a neat concept, but one I am having a lot of trouble visualising – and unlike the lucky sighted players, I cannot just turn blind mode off and take a look. What kind of environment are we actually in? Does the laser’s direction change if we move left, or is it still pointing forward? Why is the turning so damn slow? This game left me with a lot of questions, and even finding the objective – which I did with guesswork more than anything, because just turning towards it and walking forward certainly didn’t wor – didn’t answer them.

Over all, I believe this would have worked better with a tutorial, as well as more sounds. Right now there do not even seem to be any footsteps, which left me confused as to whether I was even moving at times.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback. I agree this game is not very fleshed out, lots more could be done with respect to gameplay and accessibility.

I've tried to address the menu issue in some other comments (I didn't get much of a chance for testing) but aside from that, I think I could have absolutely explained the controls better. I can see where you have gotten confused and I understand, I will try to fix this in the future.

Regardless, thank you for taking the time to play and review the game. It genuinely really helps me to get better at game dev :D

Submitted(+1)

I like the experimental nature of the game it but I found it quite hard to both follow where I am and aim the sound laser. I completed the first two levels and was lost on the third one. I like the idea and would surely play it if you continued the development.

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for the feedback! 

I definitely think this game concept is very difficult and I struggled to make it easier without reducing blind accessibility. Regardless, thanks for the support :)