AppleVis Extra 102: In conversation with the creators of Dawncaster, Winner of Best Game in the 2024 Golden Apples

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, David Nason speaks to David Janssen of Wanderlost Games, the creators of Dawncaster: Deckbuilding RPG, winners of Best Game in the 2024 AppleVis Golden Apple awards.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by Aiko, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Hello there and welcome to the AppleVis Extra podcast.

My name is David Nason.

Really excited to be bringing this episode to you.

We are celebrating the winners of our 2024 Golden Apple Awards.

So the Golden Apples are a set of awards given out by AppleVis and the AppleVis community every year to mark excellence in apps for blind, low vision, and deafblind people.

We nominate a series of apps in four different categories and the community votes on the winner.

And today I am delighted to be celebrating the Best Game Award.

There were 10 nominees in this category and they were Adventure to Fate, Lost Island, Audio Cat, Asmar Quest, Brailiance, Conjury, Don Castor, Eldrum Untold, Home Quest, Idle Adventure, Land of Livia, and Round Logic.

So great list of nominees there and congrats to all of them for being nominated.

Absolutely brilliant.

And a range of different types of games as well, just puzzle games and RPGs and all different types of games.

So absolutely brilliant.

The runners up getting an honorable mention were Brailiance and Audio Cat.

So congrats to them.

But the winner was, as we announced at the end of 2024, Don Castor RPG.

And today I am delighted to be joined by David Jensen from the Don Castor team to talk about the win.

Hello, David Jensen.

Thank you for joining us on the AppleVis podcast.

Welcome.

Hello.

Also David.

Yeah.

This won't get confusing for people at all.

No, definitely not.

I mean, I mean, maybe they can tell us apart from our accents.

Yes, that is very true.

An Irishman and a detriment.

So, no, we're absolutely delighted to have you on.

You're here to represent Don Castor, which won the AppleVis Golden Apple Award for 2024 in the Best Game category, which is fantastic.

So congratulations, first of all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And thank you for the invite.

Cause I mean, I personally felt very honored, but the rest of the team as well.

And that's, it's not something we, we expected.

I mean, it sounds kind of generic to say, but it really was like that.

It was like, Oh, Oh, wow.

Okay.

That's very cool.

Can you tell us a bit about the game?

Yeah.

So Don Castor is a, is a tech builder card battling game where you go through a RPG storyline where you like, try to like save the world by defeating the big demon king.

And along the way you can talk to NPCs.

You can bring them all onto your adventure.

You can have a huge variety of RPG like builds from a poison rogue to a raging barbarian.

And it just allows for a lot of creativity on how you approach the game.

Yeah.

Sounds very interesting.

And it seems to be a category that's of game that's really popular at the moment.

Like there were a few other RPG type games nominated even this year.

So they're obviously making a bit of a splash there.

They're popular very at the moment.

Yeah.

So like, I mean, um, then the Don Castor, I was not in the original team.

I'm not part of the founders, uh, but I believe Don Castor was in production around the same time that Slay the Spire was and Slay the Spire is obviously like a huge hit.

Uh, and I think they released around the same time.

Okay.

And it's, it's not, you know, designed.

And I think that's this one, the interesting things about it.

And especially as being a winner of an Apple Wizards award, that it's not a game that was designed for blind people.

It's a mainstream game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Definitely.

It's, it's not, it's not something, I mean, like I said, um, the, the original founders were only two people.

Uh, so it was a very small team and they just wanted to make something that they were passionate about.

And they didn't really have any contact with the like accessibility community.

Uh, so that wasn't really like a thought that even popped up before Matthias sent us a message about it.

So it was just from the ground up, not designed for that at all.

Which makes it a great story because it's one of those where, you know, as users of accessible kind of technologies and screen readers, you know, it's obviously frustrating for us when we find something we really want to use or a game we really want to play and then we download it and we can't play it.

And so often it's difficult to, to break through that.

I mean, people are busy and it's people haven't, they didn't set out to make an inaccessible app.

They just didn't know.

But the fact that they were so responsive is amazing.

And it's something I'm sure is massively appreciated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's, it's like been a really like enlightening experience for me, uh, because I'm, I'm very new to the industry because this is also my first job and I actually made the accessible tool, um, or like I made the game accessible during my internship.

Um, as the, as the programmer, uh, yeah, I lost my track of thought.

Um, yeah, no.

Yeah.

Just that, that great that, that the developer would, yeah, would be that responsive.

And yes, yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's, that's a good thing.

Yeah.

It's Matthias to send us, send us a message like, Hey, uh, I, I, I hear a lot about your game.

Like I, I heard people playing it and I'm really interested and I would love to, uh, like have it be accessible.

And here's some things on how you can do that.

And like in the beginning, you're like, uh, and we, we don't know if that's something we can do.

So it was essentially, so, oh, hey, you can, uh, Rick, my boss, like, oh, hey, you can see if you can make that work.

You can probably invest like three weeks full time to it.

See if you can get something going.

So then I offered discussions with Matthias on like, what would even be needed to make that happen.

Uh, and he did point us to like a great unity asset, which I think is made by Michelle Martin.

I believe her name is rings a bell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, and I, I, I, uh, we use that asset and then we just heavily modified it to work for our game, um, which was, it was just a really good base.

Uh, and then like through testing with Matthias, we kept refining things and then we released, uh, and it was very well received.

Uh, but I mean, with a lot of feedback, of course, cause it was like a quick, quick development time.

I think I did it in like a month full time that I made the entire game accessible.

Wow.

That's, that's very quick.

And I think it's fair to say the fact that you've, you know, won the best game award would suggest that you didn't just do the basics and make it accessible like that.

You did listen and you did tweak it and you know, you didn't just, it wasn't just the bare minimum.

You really wanted to make it.

If you're going to do this, you wanted to do it well, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there's like two really good examples to show like our quote unquote dedication to that.

Um, I think the first being the choices of energy because for sighted players, they pick up the card and then they swipe lay, they move it to the side of which energy they want to use.

Um, so, so I had to design a system that would also allow that for like screen reader users.

So then I, from scratch is like, all right, we first had a system that would just, uh, like prompted every time.

Um, so for, for, for people that don't know, Don Castor, you use energy to play a card and we have like different types of energy.

Um, so if you have dexterity energy, um, that, that you can also play a neutral card, which might use dexterity energy, but that means you can't use that dexterity for another card.

Uh, but that had a lot of downsides because if you get prompted, like, Oh, Hey, which energy do you want to use every time you play a card, that's just really going to slow down your gameplay.

I get you.

Yeah.

So then I design a system like, okay, first is going to check, okay, does it require any of these criteria?

Like, do you even have multiple energies?

Uh, then I took a step on that and a step on that until the system we got today, which I heard a lot of good feedback off.

I think people are very happy with it.

Uh, and the other one is very simple because that was just adding visual descriptions for everything.

Um, every monster has every monster and every player character has a visual description.

Okay.

Which obviously makes a big difference to a lot of people.

So yeah, yeah.

Cause I mean, yeah, you can read like, Oh, the spider matron, um, like as a name, you know, it's a spider, but like, what is the feeling it's supposed to get?

Is it, is it a spine spider?

Is it a scary spider?

Is it demonic?

Um, and we hope to alleviate that with, uh, the visual descriptions and like for that as well, we add a lot of good feedback.

That's great.

You probably get people who, you know, some people are, have never seen and some people have lost their sites.

So especially for people who have seen and played games visually in the past, having those very visual descriptions are probably very, uh, very important to those people.

Yeah.

And we recently also added, uh, localization for, for a bunch of languages.

We're still adding more.

Uh, and I also made sure that that worked, uh, with the, um, with all of the accessibility so that everything accessible was also made localized.

Did this all happen in 2024 or when, when did this go?

So the, it, it, I think everything happened in 2024.

Yeah.

Uh, I think I don't even remember the regional release date of the accessibility.

Uh, but, um, uh, I can actually really check it real quick because we made a post about it.

Yeah. 2024, 16th of January.

So almost like a year ago to the dates, uh, accessibility was released.

It's really, it's a really funny.

So that's, um, yeah, that's brilliant.

Um, are you, um, are you a fan of these kinds of games yourself?

Do you play them?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, I was a huge, like, I was a rogue-like fan.

I was a card battler fan.

Uh, I'm a card builder fan.

Uh, so I played a bunch of Slay the Spire.

I played Don Castro on mobile cause it's mobile exclusive.

Um, so then the process that went here is, uh, uh, I was, I was doing a study.

Uh, I still am, and I needed to do an internship.

It's like, oh, hey, I love this game.

I just found out they're Dutch.

So I'll just ask if I can, I can like help them do an internship for them.

Uh, and I got accepted.

That's weird.

So you, is it, yeah, you're a coder as well as I don't know what's the right word or what?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Coder programmer.

It's a, it's the game developer or whatever you want to call it.

It usually works out.

Very cool.

Um, and you, you do that at college to do, or did you?

Yes.

So it's, uh, yeah.

So, so I, I did it in college.

Uh, the Dutch education system works a little bit weird cause you have different levels of college.

Uh, so I started at the lowest level, which takes four years.

And now I'm doing like a university level college for a bachelor, not university level.

I'm doing a bachelor now and this internship was for my bachelor.

Um, and I'm still finishing it up.

I'm actually in my, which I'm working on a personal project with my, with my own team, aside from the work I do for Wanderlust.

Oh, very good.

Um, and do you think you'll, you know, take this accessibility stuff forward into your career, you know, as accessibility, something that now you'll always be kind of aware of anytime you're building anything new.

Yeah, it's it's definitely something I'll be aware of.

Uh, and I, I do think it kind of depends on the genre of game.

Cause right now, uh, we're creating an, or like with my own team, we're creating an RTS, uh, a real time strategy game, which is a lot harder to make accessible.

Uh, so I don't really see how that would be something I can do with the small team we have.

Uh, but if I, for example, make another like guard battler or something that I like, oh, okay.

I, I can see how I can make this accessible.

That's definitely something I want to do because it's, it's really nice to see how and engaging, uh, the accessible users are where the game and it's really motivating, like on a personal level as well.

Um, and I'm, it's something I also want to push for in, in like any upcoming projects where I can see it happening.

Yeah.

Oh, that's brilliant.

It's definitely a growing area because I think games is an area where for a long time we were kind of a little bit locked out, um, aside from kind of maybe basic puzzle games or, you know, word games and stuff, which are fun, but you know, um, the bigger games and consoles and stuff, even we haven't had a, you know, a role to play.

And now you've got, you know, big games, you know, like last to us too, even like a massive game, obviously on console, they made acceptable, you know what I mean?

So it's, it's brilliant and having advocates like yourself out there in that development community.

I, I, I, I do hope that I can see like other games, uh, that this is applicable for that also gets held.

Like, like I said, I'm still, I'm still at school and I do talk about this stuff with, with people like, Hey, you know, consider doing this.

If, if, if your game is, is like, has the possibility for it.

Yeah.

Um, and luckily there's also like a lot of other advocates starting to pop up.

Uh, like, like the one example is like around me is Mel.

I know he does a lot of stuff with, uh, uh, gaming accessible with the able gamers.

Um, yeah.

Yeah.

Do you, and do you program on particular platforms or do you, uh, yeah, I mean, like most, uh, most of our projects are, are, are unity.

If that's what you mean, like on the, on the game engine unity, uh, with C sharp.

Okay.

And does that allow you to have games on, you know, not just mobile, but console or etsy, everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's basically just like, Oh, it's, it's a baseline and it allows you to easily export it like every other platform.

Uh, I think our, uh, my, my personal current project is like mainly aimed at PC, but it's also going to be easy to port on console when needed.

Um, yeah.

And a really interesting part of what you said was around that kind of user feedback as well.

Like how, how has that mostly happened?

Is it people emailing you or would you be on Apple Viz yourself interacting with people or do you have a forum for the game or how does that work?

Yeah.

So I was, I mean, we do also have our discord, uh, which we're getting a lot of, uh, by direct user feedback from, uh, like also from screen reader users.

Cause we do have like a role to easily like communicate.

Uh, but we also like our primary source was, um, uh, audio games.net.

Uh, cause that is the, the, the site, uh, Mateusz made us aware of, um, and Mateusz also made a post on there.

And I think that post has just been the go-to source for me to like, Oh, Hey, what's needed.

So occasionally I also go on there.

It's like, Hey guys, what do you think is still needed?

What are you missing in the game?

I get some responses left.

I actually didn't find out about Apple Viz until like one to two months after, uh, Doncaster was made accessible.

Okay.

So, uh, I suppose games, like I say, it's a growing area even for us as a site probably.

So hopefully, um, you and the game developers will start hearing more about us, but yeah, there are like audio games that matter fantastic as well.

Um, and there is, there's a Doncaster app entry on the site and it's got, I think it's over 150 comments on it.

And there's other threads as well as that one, you know what I mean?

So there's lots of interaction about your game.

Yeah, that's great.

That's great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think like the, the, um, the forum on audio games.net currently has like 52 pages.

I think like by myself, I have already like commented over 200 times, just responding to people.

Wow.

That's brilliant.

Well, you're always welcome to, uh, to interact on Apple Viz if you want.

Yeah.

I'm definitely planning on checking it out.

I got a bookmark now, so if anything comes by, I can respond to it.

Brilliant to throw more work at you.

Yeah.

Uh, I, I can handle it.

It's all right.

And is there anything, you know, planned for the game in the future?

Is there more extensions coming for it or expansions coming for it or anything like that?

Yeah.

So in the year ahead.

So, so, uh, through the way we work, uh, it's usually like we, we release a free card set, uh, I think like one or two a year.

And we also release like one or two expansions a year and expansions are paid for and they're primarily like, uh, made to add more like areas and zones and that kind of stuff.

And the card sets aren't just to expand the type and amount of cards you can use.

Um, and I think our new expansion is coming out pretty soon.

I think it's somewhere this or next month, uh, that that's coming out.

Brilliant.

Um, and is there any more accessibility enhancements or are you kind of happy with where it is on the accessibility front?

Um, there's some features that I have been working on, uh, but nothing I have revealed yet.

Uh, but I do have a, like a huge list of backlogs because I just write everything down.

It's like, all right, what is the most important thing going on right now?

Uh, like the biggest thing we had is we had a bug with localization, uh, which was really frustrating.

Uh, but I did manage to fix that, which will be in the next batch.

Uh, and other than that, it's just constantly trying to like add quality of life features.

If I noticed like that something is like really bad, uh, or, or that's just not nice to work with.

But another, like, uh, I think sometimes you do got to filter stuff because I think, uh, certain stuff is really just like user preference and you can't like add every preference because then your set, your settings will just end up like being a jumbled mess.

Uh, sometimes you do got to make some choices on, on what to leave out.

Uh, but yeah, in general, uh, if anything like quality of life wise comes our way, uh, then I, I do tend to take that up and try to implement it as quickly as I can.

Yeah.

No, that always makes sense.

Absolutely.

I'm sure that's the case with any app.

And I suppose as well, like if you're adding, you know, there's new features coming along or you're adding anything to the app now, whereas when you came in, you had to almost retrofit accessibility onto an existing game, whereas now you can think about the accessibility from the start of each, you know, section of the project, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like, I think like the biggest thing we now have to do, cause I made everything.

So it's like deeply integrated in how all of our systems work.

So everything works like be a pretty automatic.

The only automatic thing we have to do for screen reader, uh, users is the visual descriptions.

Everything else just automatically works now for, for screen readers.

Well, yeah, well, it's a great game and, uh, clearly a very popular game, um, inside and outside the accessibility community.

Um, so we're absolutely delighted, um, to have you on today and delighted that you, you won and accepted the award.

So yeah, thank you so much and well done.

Yeah.

Likewise.

It's, I mean, yeah, it sounds a bit cheesy, but it's, it's, it's been a really like honoring experience.

Uh, uh, yeah, it's really nice to see all of the comments that we got as well.

Uh, it did kind of, um, uh, makes life worth living, so to say, uh, to put it in the extremes.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Absolutely.

Um, yeah, well, here's to many more players discovering the game and having lots of fun with it this year.

Thank you.

Yes, I hope so too.

And thanks everyone for listening.

Bye bye.

Goodbye.

Thank you.