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A wonderful question! We are super active on the discord so do stop by if you want faster feedback and even, but I'm glad I saw your question! 

The simple answer is audio. Screen reader for text, position audio, then specific sounds for actions.

Through that, TONS of games can be made accessible. Here's a list we made on our wiki of accessible games you can learn from. You might be suprised on what games are blind accessible! https://gamesforblindgamers.miraheze.org/wiki/Category:Example_Games

Like this is how god of war can be played while blind:

Would be awesome to have you! Starts in 26 days!

Hmm yeah the movement thing makes sense, just difficult when I'm already trying to stuff so much data via audio that putting in a "Is moving noise" felt unhelpful, but adding in information about your movements based on which quadrant you are in would help give a feeling of movement/speed to player that you feel is missing and give important info. Could also modify the sound of the boss as they move around terrain! So you could quickly figure out "oh I'm on metal, they are on wood, so they are diagonally across from me and moving in pattern (x) because they were on gravel a second ago"

Yeah I wouldn't really be able to do "walls" of bullets if I did that, it'd become pretty solid sound of "There are bullets!" for a bullet hell. Despite how hard it is currently, if you could see the amount of bullets they are putting out you'd think this was a pretty sad bullet hell with how few bullets there are. While I could do "dodge one bullet at a time" that's pretty common for audio games and was hoping to go more bullet hell. "Figure out what pitch means collision/on target" is a game I've played in far too many audio jam games and not always a huge fan of! I've yet to find one with more than 3 enemies/bullets at once not be audio mush with it being really hard to tell which one is actually closest/lined up (But granted, I am no blind gamer, so perhaps its just experience)

I could combine the ideas though! Have it be that a bullet audio is significantly different if it is on direct collision course, but it still be directional, but all bullets  could have audio. So that way if a bullet is coming directly at you from the right and is on a collision course, you'll hear it in your right ear (instead of in stereo currently), but if you go down below it it'll get a very different sound, but still audible, but be higher pitched, then lower pitch if you are above it. Same if it's coming directly below you, it'll be lower pitched. 


I think I like that as that would actually allow you to be like "Okay, I know a bullet is coming from my right that will collide with me because I hear the alarm in my right ear, and I hear high pitch tones as well from the right, meaning that bullets are above me and to to the right and if I don't move I'll get hit, so I need to go down and to the left"


Thank you for feedback! It's always a struggle to balance audio games for me since I have so much more info than anyone else.  So figuring out what is actually fair and feels good is always hard.  It's part of why I've moved more into turn based stuff for most of my other accessible projects, but I really wanted to try something new for this jam and try to lab out how a different genre would work.

So I really appreciate not only your initial feedback, but expanding on it when I asked follow up questions! Most folks won't leave a nearly as in depth comment as your first, so elaborating your perspective after I expressed my perspective/goals of those mechanics is super appreciated! I do think I'll make some changes to try and implement these!

Thank you for the awesome feedback! I do have some questions though!

The sustaining bit I just 100% agree with, the sound guy wanted to show off, and I was like... sure let's see how pretty it sounds! But does make it all bleed together, compared to short blips of all different keys.

But I am curious, what information do you think the foot steps would add? I understand it's common feedback, but when we had player footsteps it didn't add any information, since it would just say "is moving", which if you are holding keys and not hearing impact, means you are moving. 

 I did think about breaking the arena into 9 pieces, and each of those pieces have a different sound when stepping on it so you get feedback on where you are in the arena. Or stepping on the path of a boss give feedback because you step in "oil". Maybe I should have added that simply because we are so used to hearing foot steps.

As for bullet thing, this gets into an interesting bit. Having all the bullets make sound positionally  in a bullet hell would always lead to just an overwhelming useless wall of sound. If a wall of bullets were approaching from above, your brain would just go "Lots of noises." So I didn't like that much at all.

The "idea" behind the bullet alarm was:

1.Boss sound was the direction all bullets come from, so you should always know the direction shots were coming from

2. Alarm was saying you were in danger. So in theory moving diagonally and away from the boss sound whenever you hear alarm should let you  dodge most things once you get an idea of the bullet pattern. 

Since I couldn't find another traditional top down bullet hell/heaven audio game, I kind of had to guess. I did find ShiftBackTick (who is a friend and part of the Game for Blind Gamers Dev discord) made one for a jam, but it wasn't traditionally styled. So I'm still debating if there was a better way.

But I 100% understand it probably has insane developer difficulty. Because the people who played it were me (I knew what movement would dodge the sound from each boss. Couldn't remove that sadly.) , my sound guy, then blind players from the discord. Adding the score mode was my "I have no idea how to balance this in a short period of time" so I'm glad it let you try it a bit more!

If I were to continue working on this, I honestly probably would need to have it setup where I can get a recording of how people react to different audio, without them being able to see so I can get a better idea of how people are doing, and try out different audio setups. 

For some reason it won't start for me sadly. R, 1, and enter being pressed and nothing responds at all after the voice stops. 

Pretty good AI voice, I do wish the sound guide was separated out or written so I could reference it more easily. Having to listen to the full intro get those again is rough. Hopefully I get a chance to play it fully though!

There are a million AI ones now days you can google for, but here are some that you make some with more control but still have good randomized presets. I like these because you can use a preset, then adjust the length etc. to be perfect. 

https://pro.sfxr.me/
https://labbed.net/software/labchirp/

I love doing game jams like this so super excited and 100% going to be submitting! 

Oh I forgot I never ported in the code for my NDVDA screen reader into this game! I need to do that. 

Hey! I'm an admin for the games for blind gamers game jam 4 and wanted to let you know we are doing another one! Also so cool that it recently got an update! Hope you keep working on it!

Hi everyone!

The fourth iteration of a game jam all about accessibility is now open for registration, a month long jam about creating blind accessible games that starts in February! The page was just created today, so if you want to join a team they are just starting to form so you have plenty of time! 

Sign up here!

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-4

Over the last 3 iterations we as a community have created over 70 blind accessible video games, and we would love if you all signed up and helped make this the most successful jam yet!

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3/entries 
https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-2/entries 
https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers/entries

Never considered making a blind accessible game? Join the discord linked in the jam pages, where not only do we have accessibility veterans, but blind community members who are happy to help people putting in the effort to make more accessible games.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you sign up to Help make gaming accessible for all! 

Hello! Yes, still working on it. Slow and steady, but still on going. I got a little caught in the weeds on implementation, but I'm not giving up and coding is still happening weekly.

I have a discord where people are able to leave their thoughts and give feedback, or message me directly! 

https://discord.gg/X48VgMWd

Oh I'm sorry to hear that! I thought I had that working! Thank you for playing, I'm trying to fix all the TTS issues. 

I'm sorry I can't get the error to happen! If you get the error again, could you take a screen shot of it, then send it to me on discord? I'm in the games for blind gamer discord. I understand if your PC isn't set up for screenshots though, so will keep trying to figure out the error either way! 

Oh I'm so sorry to hear that! I'll check why save files are failing! Thank you for playing! 

I'm so sorry to hear that! I thought I fixed that, I'll look into it right away. 

Oh no, what happens? 

Oh it's been forever Mayana!
I'm glad you liked it! I'm really happy with the game play loop, so I plan to fix a lot of the bugs. Game jam things where I ran out of time to fix things. 

As for keys, yeah I'm thinking I'll switch to Ctrl = cancel, space = accept, then WASD/Arrow keys for movement. 

I'll look into all these issues and see what I can do! Thanks for playing! 

Yes! I'm taking a small break because I'm participating in a game jam about making blind accessible games, but updates are kind of paused as I'm doing a massive rework making it in python so it is even more accessible. But work is still being done! Just a slow process. 

Thank you for the kind words!

So I got a lot done because I stole large parts from old failed projects (my itch.io profile is a graveyard of half completed turn based RPGs). But it led to a lot of weirdness that you experienced, because I was stitching stuff together. 

I had a wonderful team mate help with music and it all around turned out super nice!

Those are a lot of issues I didn't even consider because I'm sighted, so I'll for sure revamp the inventory, monster selecting, and shrines! I'm glad you have fun, and I'll for sure let you know once things are even more accessible and balanced! 

Oh I'm sorry to hear you ran into so many issues! I stole code from previous projects, and it led to a bit of a frakenstein.

But I'm so happy to hear you managed to have fun! Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm going to go through and try to fix all of it over next month! 

If you go to edit your game then "meta data" then scroll down to "Accessibility " it looks like you have blind accessibility tagged there. 

Hi, when I try to open the game it doesn't do anything.

Also this is tagged as blind accessible, but the screen shots make it look like it might not be.

Make sure to join the discord if you haven't! Lots of discussion about forming teams/ideas going on there. 

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Hello! Just letting you know the third jam has been announced and would love if you participated again since your entry was so amazing! 

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

Sorry to hear that, are you on windows and do you have .netframework 7 installed? 

Oh thank you! Hopefully you were able to get a good distance in it! 

Cool! Now just get it 21 more times! You can do it!

So the narrator uses the built in windows TTS (called SAPI) if you don't have a screen reader like NVDA open.

So for whatever reason the two decided they were pointing different places. Which is funny and not something I've heard of, but they are two different applications technically, so totally possible. 

Thank you for the kind words!

You can always make your own levels XD

But yeah I'm thinking I'm going to work on it more and make it have more features.

Then despite being bad at the game, you understand :D

You can cheat by looking at the map in the game files if you like, or you can even edit them to add more platforms.

But yeah audio games take some getting used to. Despite playing a decent amount their are certain games I've tried to play where my ears just refuse to make sense of all the information. I don't even dare try to play any of the audio game FPS games, cause I'd get farmed.