Forward: Escape the Fold

Category

Description of App

FORWARD: Escape the Fold was created to be the perfect bitesized roguelike dungeon crawler.

Choose your champion and face a relentless crawl through the card-based dungeons, collect items to power your abilities and defeat the gruesome monsters facing you. But keep going FORWARD!

**2022 Megamigs Award Winner**
**2022 Tiny Teams Fest Nominee**
**2022 DemoNight Nominee**

Forward is an innovative game in which you will progress through a procedurally-generated dungeon in the form of cards. Move your character from one card to another and keep going forward while avoiding attacking enemies. However be careful, each card will have specific effects making each move important and strategic.

Your goal is to clear the 8 levels of a dungeon, each level getting increasingly difficult. In order to succeed, you will have to choose which move to make, which item to pick and use your skills. Each choice is critical.

Take advantage of many items combinations and build the best character possible based on your goal and the cards you’ll come across.

Features:

- 100+ item cards to improve your characters
- 9 playable characters with unique skills and game mechanics
- 27 unique active competencies
- 3 game modes

As Forward is a rogue-like inspired game, the features you’ll be able to find are :

- Death ends the game ‌
- Procedurally-generated dungeons
- Turn-based movements
- Resource management (health, armor, mana, gold etc)
- Many randomly drawn items

The game is based on the 2022 PC game Forward: Escape the Fold which was received very positively. Developed by Two Tiny Dice, its success prompted the developer to bring the game to mobile.

Version

1.2.7

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

No

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

16

Accessibility Comments

the game is currently playable, but has accessibility issues. if you can deal with them and are whilling to put some effort in the game, it'll reward you with a extremely replayable experience. I’ll try to explain how all screens work and how to play below:
when starting the game, I recommend going to the settings and changing the quality to high by using the > button. This will add an extra sound effect when moving between available choices, and it’s a useful feature.
Then configure the sound effects and music volume to what you prefer. You can also go to the accessibility tab and increase the size to the maximum. I’m not sure if it changes anything, but it won’t do anything bad either.
When you choose new game, the tutorial is currently hard to navigate because voiceover can’t find the next button, unless you use screen recognition to find it, sometimes it works.
To change the mode from the tutorial to classic,you can either double tap and hold and drag your finger a bit to the left and release it. If you hear a sound, voiceover will say item 2. Then you’ll be at the main mode, which is classic. The other option is to turn off voiceover and use the same gesture like turning a page moving one finger from the center to the left.
The rules of the game will be explained later.
During character selection, you don’t have to mess with any buttons at the start, because you don’t have new powers or characters unlocked, so just press start game.
The layout of the game works like this:
There’s a board with three starting cards. To play, you’ll have to move your character to the right place.
At the bottom of the screen, from left to right, you have your stats: health points, which in this case is 14, then the second item is your armor, mana, gold, skulls and equipment.
When you start a level, your character will aalways start in the middle, so if you explore the screen, from the bottom up, above your stats you’ll find an image which lets you use your special power when you get enough mana, then if you move slowly you’ll find your character represented by your hp, which as i said is 14.
To move, you always have to double tap and hold this number and drag it to the desired choice. To understand the board, explore by touch and move your finger slowly. Let’s take an example: above your character let’s say there are gold coins. If you move a bit upward, it’ll say image. Ignore it. If there’s a number above the gold coins, there’s probably a monster there. If you move to a card next to a monster, it’ll automaticaly attack you. That’s why you always need to plan your next step, and be warned you’ll die a lot until you learn how to feel what’s around you.
Since the monster names aren’t spoken, it always says a number, but there’s a trick to read all incoming messages. They always appear at the bottom of the screen.
So let’s say you want to see how many gold coins are above you. You double tap them, and tap the bottom of the screen with four fingers to move to the last item.
You can read the info and dismiss with a double tap.
After some time this all becomes second nature.
Since the game is turn based, you don’t have to worry, you can take as long as you want to plan the next move.
Sometimes you’ll be presented only with one or two card choices instead of three. That’s why the choice selection sounds can guide you to the right spot before you lift your finger.
Later on when you’re experienced, it’s possible to play a complete game in less than 30 minutes. It’s just a matter of learning how to read your surroundings.
Remember, your character is represented by your hp number and will always be located below the choice. So if you’ve moved right, the hp number will go to the right as well. You can only move one step at a time, and if you’re at the right and would like to get a card in the left, you can’t, because you would need to move to the middle first. You can’t move back.
When you move to a card, you automaticaly trigger its effects.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads most page elements.

Button Labeling

Few buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some accessibility issues with this app, but it can still be used if you are willing to tolerate these issues and learn how to work around them.

Other Comments

For those interested in the game, i’m always here to give help. I’ve managed to beat the game once and already unlocked all the characters and 142 item cards, i’m playing for more than a week. I’m just saying it to encourage you it can be done!
I’ve already contacted the developer, it’s just a matter of waiting to see if the accessibility will be improved in the future.
If you want to understand more about the game, just search gameplay videos on youtube and reviews, there’s many videos and info available.

Recommendations

3 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by matheus rheine 1 year 4 months ago

Options

Comments

By Brad on Friday, June 23, 2023 - 23:54

They're also in touch with the dev and things are looking good.

I can't tel you what things are going to be accessible in the latest update or when it will be but I'm looking forward to it.

This game is fun and once you figure out how it works it's even better, so imagine what it will be like with voiceover support.

By matheus rheine on Friday, June 23, 2023 - 23:54

exactly! Lirin is in direct contact with the developer and he will see if it's not time consuming to work to improve screen reader support, because he's already working on his new game.
it should be pretty easy to implement though. i'm hopeful, and believe this is one of the best games on mobile, and recommend every fan of this genre at least to try the game as it is.

By Daniel B. on Friday, June 23, 2023 - 23:54

When I am going through the tutorial, on the scree where it says shield, and other stuff, at the bottom it says next and all the other next buttons worked but this one did not. Just before that next button it says welcome to your first play game of forward. Before that it has some different number 001 000 14 0/d. Nothing is clickable on this page. Need help progressing. Can't even get started.

By matheus rheine on Friday, June 23, 2023 - 23:54

hey <daniel! please reade my comments in the accessibility topic in this entry as well as the other comments. the tutorial isn't currently much accessible, because you'll have to use screen recognition to press the next button. the game is fully playable but requires dedication and patience. please reade my comments more than once to try to understand how to play, if you have other issues just ask.

By Zoe Victoria on Sunday, July 23, 2023 - 23:54

It took me a while to figure out how to play this game but once I did, I love it. I think that the music and sound design is awesome. I especially like the sound effect for the heart card.

By Harmony 36 on Wednesday, August 23, 2023 - 23:54

Hi i downloaded this game yesterday and don’t even know how to get started.is there a podcast on how to play this???