New Indie Game Dev Introduction and Questions

By nsomniart Crew, 15 April, 2014

Forum

iOS and iPadOS Gaming

Hi everyone! My name is Jo and I am about to graduate college with a BA in Multimedia art. I am also an indie game developer with my company "nsomni-art". For my senior project I would like to make a video game that is tailored to visually impaired gamers! We are new to the game dev community, as well as this community, so I would love to learn as much as I can by being active in this forum. You can find me on twitter and say "hi": @notjoordinary. You can also email me at J O at nsomniart dot com. It is like "insomnia" minus the letter "i" in the beginning. And the word "art" finishes the end of the word: "nsomniart". I've begun brainstorming an idea of an audio adventure game but after doing a bit of research, it seems that many of these games already exist. At the same time, I am aware that many developers don't really consider accessibility in their games so there is a significant lack of them; so perhaps another one of these games wouldn't be a bad idea? I'd like to have opinions from everyone! Should I make an audio-based adventure game? If so, is there a genre you'd prefer or a genre that you're tired of? If not, what kind of game would you like to see available to you? Also, what devices do you prefer to have it in? I have also prepared a tiny survey of questions that I wrote before considering making a game that wasn't an audio adventure game. If you would like to help me out and take the survey, please comment with your email address! Sorry for the long post. Thanks for taking the time to read it! I'm looking forward to hear from everyone. Sincerely, Jo.

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Comments

Re: video game development

Hi Joe, I am sure there will be a lot of different opinions on the kind of game people would like you to develop. My personal favor are action games with simple plots but great sound and audio effects. You may want to check out the work by Something Else, in particular, Papa Sangre series as well as the Nightjar. There is also Sixth Sense and a bunch more. If you want to taylor something for blindness community, you probably don't want to stress too much about the video side of things, unless your goal is to create a universal game that can be enjoyed by anybody. Hope this helps. Best, Victor

Hey there Victor! Thanks for

Hey there Victor! Thanks for the input! I am definitely doing my fair share of research and those titles seem to pop up a lot. I haven't had the chance to play then yet, but a common theme, I feel, is a sort of horror or thriller genre. Honestly when I first had this idea, I was also steering that direction. However, I would prefer to innovate and give players fresh experiences. Hopefully this won't be my downfall, haha. My game will not have any video or breath-taking graphics. Although I am an artist, I am limited with what I can do for the time allotted for my senior project. Also, I would like to make a game that focus's on the visually impaired demographic and it doesn't necessarily have to be a "universal" sort of game. Besides, anyone can enjoy audio books so I don't feel there is a need for me to appeal to all audiences. I am not making this game for money. :) Also, for anyone on twitter - it turns out that I've reached a limit on following users so please follow @nsomniart if you'd like to talk about games. Otherwise, @notjoordinary is my personal account. Hehe.

RE: New Indie Game Dev Introduction and Questions

Hello Jo: I agree with Victor's comments regarding his choices for games. I would also like to see some military-style gaming. For the visually impaired community, we are very audio-focused so the richer the environment the better. Personally, I really enjoy an action packed movie, especially when there is enough smart dialog to support the action sequences. I think something military-based would lend itself nicely to a gaming platform. Hope this helps to stimulate those brain cells for you. Roxann

I prefer a new setting

Hi, first, I want to thank your for your idea to make a game for visually impared users. I'm sure everyone will appreciate that and look forward to whatever you finally make. Now for the type of game. Honestly, we really have too many horror games already. It seems every game on the iPhone with an audio invironment has to do with zombies or something like that. Papa Sangre I and II, Sixth Sense etc. Zombies and horror everywhere! I'd really like to see another setting. What I would love is some kind of fantasy setting, since we don't a real audio game with that on iPhones. There are a few simple RPGs like Solara, but they are simple, with not so much plot and more casual to play. I'd like to have something with more story. Some kind of fantasy action adventure would be cool. But the same goes for science fiction settings, I'd like a game of this kind as well. But please stop these horror games everywhere. Thanks Tikki

games

I would like to see a game in which you can run a submarine or ship and hunt the enemy or play against others. Think a game in which I could hunt for another submarine and destroy it before it sent it's rockets to blow up a city. Or you want to blow up something and somoen is hunting you down.

Comment

I would like to see a game with text adventure as well as puzzles and tasks. My email address is dpound@austin.rr.com

I think we have the horror

I think we have the horror audio games covered pretty well, and something else is releasing another zombie game very soon. In general, not just on mobile, there are a few genres that haven't had many audio game releases. RPG's for one, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is entombed which is a rogue like for Windows PC's. However no one made anything in the style of final fantasy with a turn based battle system and a complex story. It would also not require as many sounds or voice acting as many things could be communicated through speech. Another genre that could be explored are racing games, which could be quite interesting with accelerometer controls and there's no accessible racing games on iOS apart from one which has a very inaccessible interface, hasn't been updated in many years and doesn't feature any other drivers apart from yourself. Another one that could be interesting are tower defence games. Again, this was done only once as a Windows game, but I think that the touch screen would be very useful to show the path of the enemies. I'd also like to offer my help with sounds if you ever need any. I have a rather massive sound collections and helped with sound design for audio games before for http://dragonapps.org for an idea of what I have access to.

I agree, horror is great but overdone

I'd love to see an accessible game in the style of Grand Theft Auto...I've always wanted to play a game like that. Another cool idea would be something like baseball, or bowling, or even a racing game of some kind. If you did a baseball game you could even set it up so the player could have the option of swinging their iDevice like a bat or something. The possibilities are endless. But please please as much fun as they are, the horror genre is overdone.

Fantasy Action-RPG ... Plea

Hello, just thought I would share my two sense on this topic! I would totally love to see a game in the Action-Adventure RPG arena - similar to a Legend of Zelda (NES)/ Secret of Mana (SNES) or even a more traditional Adventure RPG like Dragon Warrior (NES)/ Final Fantasy II (SNES). Yes, I'm an old-school gamer from the late 80s and early 90s - who happened to lose my vision during the mid-to-late 90s -- so, my tastes stem from memories of the games I loved growing-up! None the less, much respect for your efforts - and best of luck with the development process!

suggestion for a game

Hello, I would actually like an RPG game, or a science fiction game. Anything but a horor game. We have enough of those. A multi-player game would actually sound nice as well, since we don't really have many accessible multi-player games on iOS.

I agree

I definitely agree. No horror games. Like others have said, it's way to overdone. Racing games would be a fantastic venue to do, as well as military games. Honestly, I've played enough text adventure games during my days of vintage text games, but that's my view. and, I am sure you could get into contact with many people on this site who would be willing to do voice work with your game project if you need it. HTH

Another Category of Games That's Been Neglected

Hi Joe, First, thank you for focusing on the development of games for the visually impaired community. It's greatly appreciated. I want to suggest one category of games that seems to have been severely neglected, at least as far as accessibility is concerned. These aren't audio-based games, but I'm not sure exactly what they're called. Think of Farmville, build your own zoo, build your own restaurant, build your bakery, etc. They may be called resource management games, I'm not certain. I have searched and searched for any game like this, but so far, I've had no luck finding anything that's VoiceOver accessible. I would love to see some games that focus less on attacking and killing, and more on "gentler" themes for lack of a better word. Even if this isn't an area you're interested in, you might mention it to other developers. If you want to focus on the audio-based games, my vote would be for a military-style game of some kind. Thanks again for the interest in developing these games.

I would love a military style

I would love a military style game, or any type of sports game. Bowling, baseball, football, or anything along those lines.

Choose your own adventure,isn't really needed, either.

Hi Joe. welcome to Applevis first and foremost. Second, We have a lot of varying categories of games that have a choose your own adventure style. As in you're in jail, what did you do? Punched a guy, got drunk, lost a gambling debt, etc. So you chose one and it went from there. I may be a minority, but i'd like to see some thought put into the game itself. I'd love to see a game where the person have to solve riddles, a puzzle or something and the game through either himorous text or a voice talent conveys the next step. I think it's safe to say the horror genere is completely taken up. :) good luck and i'll ov course try out whatever you bring to the table. As for a device, if it's not to much work, I'd suggest a universal app, not many of us have iPod touches, and also another thing you'll want to factor in is compatibility. There are those on her who are jailbroken, those on here who for their own reasosn are on 6.1.4 or even 7.0 Just some thinks to think about. :) Siobhan

Thank you guys so much for

Thank you guys so much for your input so far! It's all been really insightful so far and I'm getting really excited for some ideas I have just from your input. I've received a lot of responses really quickly, and to be able to handle all the information I made a Google form. Sorry that you might have to answer some questions you already answered but this will be a great way for me to keep track of all the answers. Thanks again for all your help everyone! Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qcVoYRaJB3wk5-6GGMJu0kqSlu0o7xqSNQ_d2pnDcok/viewform

United Kingdom gamers

Hello Joe
I assume from your email address that you were American?
Many games only have American English in them and would like to have some using British English. I very much like games like beneath the steel sky see Drew mysteries. I would like an accessible adventure game which has good character and a good story. I gave up with these games because it gets too hard to see what is going on but I do have somewhat so would like a game where you can use some eyesight and some hearing I am also a woman is most games to be aimed at men. I don't want to shoot and kill things I want to use my brain I would be happy to test endgames