Introducing The Martian Official Game

By LittleLabsMLP, 5 November, 2015

Forum
iOS and iPadOS Gaming

The Martian: Bring Him Home is an interactive, text based adventure based on the best selling novel and blockbuster film. In version 1.1.0 of the game, robust labels and hints were added in the programming of the game to work seamlessly with VoiceOver on your iPhone or Apple Watch.

THE MARTIAN tells the story of Astronaut Mark Watney who finds himself stranded on Mars. Play as a NASA communications specialist and Mark’s sole contact with Earth in this engrossing interactive adventure game.

- Communicate with Mark in real-time using the Ares III messaging system. Guide him through crucial and difficult decisions to ensure his survival.

- Provide Mark with the right advice before time runs out. Remember, science matters! The wrong information could put Mark’s life in jeopardy.

- Keep Mark healthy, safe and calm by keeping a constant eye on his real-time vitals on your Apple Watch.

- Provide Mark with life-saving information collected from a diverse team of experts you unlock along the way.

- Your decisions affect the story outcome. Play again and again to experience different twists and turns.

Link to Game:
http://apple.co/1XCVQLo

Please let the developer know if there are any ways they can improved the accessibility of this app.

We'd appreciate being added to the list of iOS Apps for feedback and commenting.

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Comments

By LittleLabsMLP on Monday, November 23, 2015 - 00:24

Thanks for your comments! An update version of the game went live yesterday in the store which aims to eliminate the issues you pointed out. Thanks for the feedback and I hope you enjoy the game!

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Monday, November 23, 2015 - 00:24

The app is being downloaded. I'll give it a try and write my feedback soon. Not that good with text adventure games though.

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Monday, November 23, 2015 - 00:24

After purchasing the game, I found that the game would be really amazing if there are real seen from the movie or spoken texts rather than using VoiceOver to read the text on the screen. I'd like to use my imagination and experience of the game while playing, not just reading and navigating through texts on the screen. This is the first text game I ever purchased and played, so I'm not patient enough with text adventure games. Therefor, I suggest adding spoken texts or real sounds I can say to make the game more interesting while playing.

By David on Monday, November 23, 2015 - 00:24

I've been playing this game for a day now, and have encountered the problems mentioned previously and a few more.

1. Fairly often, double-tapping either of the choice buttons doesn't work. However, I've found that if you go into the NASA Messages section and back again, the buttons will usually start working again for a while. This is still inconvenient as this is a real time game and if you're trying to help Mark in an urgent situation, this kind of problem is a show stopper.

2. It would be a huge improvement if Voice Over would automatically read each message as it appears. This again is because this is a real time game, and having to wait for the screen to stop updating and then swipe around to read through them just takes too long, especially in urgent situations.

3. I've also been using the Apple Watch part of the app, and at the moment, it's fairly pointless with Voice Over. Partly this is because the notifications that appear just say you've got a message from Mark or NASA, but don't appear to show the message itself. Maybe it's just that Voice Over isn't reaeding it. But worse, if you double-tap the message it takes you into the app and places you at the beginning of the list of all messages. Since pretty quickly you will have hundreds of messages, it means that to get to the latest message you've just been notified about, you would have to scroll down hundreds of times to find it. That's just impractical. Double-tapping a notification or a message in the glance should take you directly to the message in the list, or at worst, the end of all the messages. But best would be to have Voice Over speak the message content itself in the notification and glance.

4. If you lose the game, you get the choice to rewind or restart. But if you choose the rewind option, there doesn't appear to be any active control you can tap on with voice Over to say where you want to scroll back to. The only way to make this work is as mentioned by another poster, to turn Voice Over off and randomly tap parts of the screen. Obviously this means you can't select the point you rewind to, and have to take pot luck.

5. When reading the NASA messages, Voice Over very helpfully reads the latest message out to you after double-tapping the NASA Messages button. However, this doesn't mark the message as having been read. To do that, you have to double-tap the message itself and this opens another window with the same message in it. the only difference is that now it's just this one message plus a close button. So functionally opening the message doesn't achieve anything other than wasting time because there's nothing extra for Voice Over to read to you. so it would be better if double-tapping the message just marked it as read, and didn't bother opening it as you've read it all already.

Other than these, I've actualy quite enjoyed playing the game. In some ways it's nice to have the real time element to it. But it does occasionally clash with real life, when Mark starts having issues in the middle of your work day. Still, it is just a game and so It's not a significant problem.

By Aaron C on Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - 00:24

I am a huge fan of both the book and the movie. Really love this game! Thanks so much for the efforts for making it accessible. Really appreciate it.

Aaron

By Toonhead on Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - 00:24

Hi. I did download this app, but gave up when nothing seemed to work. Some folks are saying that the newer version of the game works, and some are saying it isn't. I'd like to get a definiative answer if it does, in fact, work with VoiceOver running. If the developers are reading this, let me strongly suggest that if you haven't already done so, please, please test your app for accessibility with VoiceOver running. You should be able to perform all functions of the game. Remember, when VoiceOver is running, the gestures are slightly different. To confirm you want something to happen, or to pick a choice, you should be able to double-tap. Some folks choose to explore the screen by touch while others prefer to swipe across the screen and double-tap when they hear the action or element they want to act on. I hope all of this makes sense. This is an excellent game, and I would love to get back at it again once I know it's got VoiceOver support.

By brandon armstrong on Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - 00:24

hi all, personally I would like for the messages to read automatically when they come in instead of having to scrolling through them.

In reply to Toonhead, the game does work with Voice Over. It's not perfect, but I've been able to complete the game today.

See my feedback earlier for details. If some people are finding that it's not working at all, then maybe there's something device specific affecting things. I was using my 5S and apart from my previous observations, I was able to read everything I needed to.

as I said, the really difficult parts were the time-sensitive real time responses. ON three occasions Mark died because I simply couldn't read through the responses fast enough to work out what was happening and then choose an action. Howevr, by rewinding (a bit hit and miss as indicated) I was able to re-read stuff and then attempt the section again, either with a different choice or at least any choice within the time limit.

One other occasional glitch was that if you swipe from some items, instead of moving to the next one, Voice Over did occasionally jump to the status information. Swiping the other way allowed you to get back to where you were, but then swiping again jumped you back to the status and comms buttons. Oh and less often, a line or two of mark's transmissions wouldn't speak at all, unless you went to one of the other screens and came back again.

I've also just been listening to the audio book, and in some places it might be helpful, and in others it's a downright spoiler for the game. All in all I'd suggest not seeing the movie or reading the book before playing if you can, so that all the scenarios are new to you, as they've tried to keep fairly faithful to the book. In a few places they've switched some things around, and of course, they've eliminated that pesky 4 to 15 minute each way delay for signals and telescoped events to a few days, rather than the year and a half you'd have to wait otherwise.

It could be slicker, but it's playable in my opinion.

By LittleLabsMLP on Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - 00:24

Thanks everyone for your feedback! We've been keeping track of all of your feedback for future updates.
If you want specific support, you can email the customer service contact in the app menu and we can give you support based on your specific issue and identify what may be causing your specific issue - device, ios version, game version, etc.

Thanks again!
Best,
Little Labs

By Justin on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 00:24

Hi,
I think so. It's quite fun to play, and works well with Vo. It's one of the few, if not the only Nasa type rover space games I've seen before, so quite interesting.