Help us improve accessibility of our game Idle Crafting Kingdom

By Michelle, 17 March, 2017

Forum
iOS and iPadOS Gaming

Hi everyone,

I'm one of the developers of the game Crafting Kingdom.
We just released the game today and we would love to know what you think, especially in terms of the game's accessibility.

The game focuses a lot on crafting resources, producing goods and then selling them.
You start out small, chopping logs in your lumberyard. Eventually you will work your way up unlock new products, buy new buildings and production facilities which allow you to produce more valuable goods.
You can also build out your own estate, if you have the necessary construction materials.

The game is incremental, which means one of the gameplay mechanics is that you need to restart your progress every now and then to get ahead. You complete quests and earn bonuses like faster production and higher sale prices for your next restart.

The game is free. There are optional ads, but no in-app purchases. The ads are voluntary rewarded videos, which will give you a powerful boost for watching (for example double log production for 10 minutes).

You can find the game here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crafting-kingdom/id1190611967?ls=1&mt=8

We tried to make this game as accessible as possible, but know that there are probably plenty of things that could be better. We would really appreciate some feedback on what could be improved. Any feedback is welcome.

Please note: The game uses Unity and the Unity Accessibility Plugin (UAP), so not all VoiceOver gestures are supported.

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Comments

By Ornella on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Agree with Alex. All the princess do is only give gift of only higher sale prices. For the castle when you flick down you could hear all the quests and if you swipe right to the one you want to know about you will get info. I don't think nothing needs to really be done to this game other than adding more buildings and products which I'm sure will happen in the future. One nice thing though, that when we enter the different buildings we could hear the different ambiances of the surroundings.

By Nolly on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

My main point was missed. When you have a portion of a 110 timer remaining, that's a lot of time spent logging back into the game just to clear out things I don't need. I typically only need to log in every 35 or 40 minutes. If I have an entire production line running that I don't need, it causes me to log in much more often than that just to keep the storage clear of things I do need. As far as selling it for the gold, I gain roughly 100 million gold every 35 minutes thanks to the boosts, so obtaining more is not an issue.

By Steady on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

for the few of us who have gone far into the game and getting million/hundred thousands production quests,it is very common that we have more than 40 slots. very often have to produce different materials and it's a long repetitive process. it will be helpful if there is an edit production button. when activated, we can select multiple slots and change them at 1 go, just like holding down the shift or ctrl key. also, the restart all autimation button becomes select all.

By Blind Adrenaline on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Hi Nolly, you said you get 100 million roughly every 30 minutes. What are you selling to average over 3 million gold a minute. Kelvin and Steady do as well as anyone I know of at this game and I don't think they are even scratching that number. Was that a typo, or am I badly missing something? Thanks.

By Michelle on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Hi Frost,
adding the flick up/down to these screens is fairly fast to implement. I understand that not everyone considers this an important feature, but I will at least put it on the TODO list for the next update or the one after that.

We also found the issue that under some circumstances would hide the boost duration quests. They are not gone, but they are not selected the way they should be. This will be fixed with the next update as well.

By alex wallis on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

any news on the space being eaten up by the game? that's a lot of books and music I can't fit on my phone currently.

By KE7ZUM on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I liek the idea of the moving and sorting of quests. Actually I visit the pricncess multiple tiems a day as for some reason when I put the app in the backroudn time stops and I have to wait an additional 12 hours for example to get my increase. This might just be a bug with my android phone though. I'll have to play with it on ios again to see if I can reproduce this bug.

By Taylor Brown on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I'm well aware all the princess does is increase sales prices, but regardless, for uniformity and ease of use so you don't have to swipe 5 times to get to the button or whatever it is, it'd make sense. Then it'd be a quick flick sequence of down, left, double tap, down, double tap, flick up, double tap and done instead of a ton of right flicks.

With quest sorting, it's also for convenience. If you're doing the quest in the middle, you have to flick down many times past quests that are essentially useless to you until you decide to check all the benefits you'll get on your next restart. It'll also stop people like me from accidentally missing a quest and restarting without doing it.

By alex wallis on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

OK I really don't get why you would want to flick down to the princess as she is second in the list above the estate, now as it stands clicking down will jump you from the castle to the estate, flick once to the left, and there you go your at the princess. Now inside the princess I do agree a flick down to take you straight to the open gift button that would be very helpful.

Now on to quest sorting, maybe an even better idea would be to remove quests entirely from the list once completed, and once all quests are done show all quests completed. I would also love it if VoiceOver didn't say quest before every quest name.
I think also maybe there should be a single help menu in the main menu rather than a help button on every screen, and also VoiceOver saying double tap to select after everything I really would love to get rid of that with a setting. But it all comes down to priorities and we are not the only people who play this game. Its fantastically playable already and it will only get better. I have now unlocked all buildings and products apart from diamond ring and I am working to unlock that.

By Nafisah on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Hello, does the blacksmith require any products from the mine? Thanks!

By KE7ZUM on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I believe it does. Looks like though it mostly uses the quary. Sorry abou spelling.

I just want to express my gratitude to Michelle and her team for having made this game so accessible for all of us. Thank you for having taken the time and for all the effort you have put into this game. Thank you for making it happen.
I just love and recommend this game to all of my friends. A few clicks upper down don't matter to me. There are far more important things that we should focus on. The fact that the game seems to be taking up so much space for some of us, as an example, is one of the most important things that we should all focus on.

By Taylor Brown on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I wasn't clear apparently. When I mentioned flicking down, I meant *inside* the princess tab, so you could flick down to upgrade in estate or whatever and open gift in princess.

I'm having no issues with my storage, but I also always buy as much storage as I can get my hands on since I hoard books.

By Taylor Brown on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

While aggressively touching my screen for the funsies, I tried turning the rotor just to see what was there. An option for "Direct Touch" came up, and once turned on, I can now use VoiceOver in the game perfectly. Not sure if this was mentioned before, I'm not going to read 12 pages of comments just to check.

By TamagotchiTune on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Hi. I'm trying to expand my estate. I need 500 metal and 500 woll. I got both products and the right amount of money but when i go to my estate to expand it says i dont have any metal. When I have 500 metal. Is this a bug? Or do I have the wrong product?

It's quite possible that the estate expansion asked you to produce metal parts, but you produced metal instead. This is an easy mistake to make, i made it myself when I had to produce metal parts for an estate expansion. Metal parts come from the blacksmith, but they need one metal, which comes from the furnace: I assume it is the metal from the furnace which you have been producing so far. Try producing metal parts and hopefully you will make more progress with your estate expansion.

By Melissa on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

In reply to by Taylor Brown

Oh man, thank you much for this. I also had not checked the previous pages and seen this. This helps me out so much…

By TamagotchiTune on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Yes i did get confused. Thank u for clearing that up. Well now I still have alot to do. Let me get back to that.

Ciair you just made me feel better. I was confused as well when trying to make the fishing rod. Oops? I heard metal parts but thought they meant metal. Now I understand. I did look at the black smith but just didn't click in my head. Lol! Thanks again for helping out here as well

By Frost on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Thanks for getting back with me. I'm really enjoying the game, and I'm looking forward to the next update.
I would like to throw my hat in the ring as well, and ask if there might be a more efficient way to change products when you have several production slots?
When changing 30 to 40 slots, it seems as if you'll never get done.
Also, is there a possibility of a "Start/Stop Production" button?
Oh! Oh!... gotta go, storage is full!

By Michelle on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Hi everyone,
I've noticed a few people here and via email asking for a button to change all production slots in a location at once. I wanted to post and ask what you all think about this and whether you consider this a good or important feature? It's hard to tell sometimes whether a suggested feature is really something many people would enjoy or benefit from. If it is, that would make it worth the effort of implementing it.

By Justin on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Hi,
Quick question, when I'm in one of my buildings and want to restart automations, there's a restart all automations button. It says that i've got to complete that quest, but don't see it anywhere in the quests screen. Could any of y'all please give more input on this?
Thanks!

By Ornella on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

To get the restart all automations you must have 15 slots in the required building.

By Paul Martin on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Sure there's a thing of having 15 slots to get the ability to use the restart button, but we really should note here that's only if the quest shows up in your castle. Just having 15 slots at one point in your lumber yard for example won't cut it if you don't see the quest saying you should do so for example.

hi michelle, if we look at long term, you will get more requests for this feature. when we keep having to restart automation, we ask for start all. when duration gets longer we ask for stop production. next time when more of them get large production quests where they have to produce different materials from the same location, you will sure to get this request. if you even get request for easier excess to the expand storage and estate and visit princess button when the button is actually on the screen with one touch and double tab, i can't imagine how much will it frustrate them having to change productions 1 at a time.

By Kelvin Tan on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

i' withutere steady. when u compare haei to change the product that u want to produce within a building with the availability to swipe down within the princess and the expend storage area, the priority should be the ability to change multiple production slots at a time to another product. trust me, when u are switching 55 slots from producing wool to grain for example, u will realize that having to swipe right a few more times in the princess or the storage expansion screen is really nothing at all. and if some of u are wondering, why do I need to create 55 slots for just 1 building? here are my quest list for now:

sell 1 million logs.
sell 5 million grain.
sell 5 million wool.
sell 1 million salt.
sell 150 thousand gold bars.
sell 150 thousand metal parts.
sell 300 thousand fabric.
buy 5000 automations.

so as u can see, if u were to only have say only 10 or even 20 slots per buildind, say my farm for example, I will take maybe a month to finish my 5 million wool plus 5 million grain = 10 million products just for the farm alone!

so, surfice it to say, change production button will definitely be more beneficial for everyone in the long term.

By Kelvin Tan on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

haven't been here for a while, and I read some posts back that one of u can make 300 million in 35 minutes just by boosting. I completed the have 250 million in the bank quest, which gives me the reward of bag of gold boost 204 thousand per minute. using this, I have 4 boost slots. so multiply 204 k by 4, and then multiply that number by 35 minutes only comes up to 28 million plus every 35 minutes. unless u progressed much much further than me in this particular quest line, there is no way u can earn 300 million in 35 minutes just with boosting. in fact, I think making 300 million in 35 minutes is not even possible after adding in all product sales with all buildings working and producing the highest priced products. not even with 50 slots per building in fact!!!! hahahah. so unless u have found a cheat or bug to exploit, I think u sure got the numbers wrong my friend.

By Frost on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I am voting yes for the "Change all production" button.
As you advance in the game and have more production slots open, I'm thinking a "change all production" button would be valuable.
I can't imagine changing 50 or more slots one at a time.
I'm still keeping my fingers cross for the "stop all" or " stop individual production" button
As for swiping inside the "princess" building and the ""extend storage space" page, I will also keep my fingers cross because Michelle said it was easy to implement.

By Bellsfurmama on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

If it isn't to difficult, that would be a nice feature. My hands are sore from swiping so much. Lol.

Also, Michelle, will there be more products and buildings added as the game progresses? Would keep everything fresh.

By Bellsfurmama on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I will admit that the more slots you have, the more challenging it becomes to switch them over from producing one product to another. But I also don't want Michelle to feel overwhelmed. I think I can safely say I speak for everyone when I say we are more appreciative than you know for all the hard work. I play this game all the time.

By Steady on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

In reply to by Bellsfurmama

hi, spend some time explore the screen and need some getting used to. you will not only have much less swiping to do, also more efficient. right at the bottom is the scroll down button. above it are your production slots. you can get to whichever slot much quicker. same for the castle.

By KE7ZUM on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

In reply to by Justin

You will need to wait until you get the quest to activate the start all button. Basically it's 15 slots in the properties but you need to wait until you see those quests.

Actually, for us android users who are plsying the game, there is really no way to explore the screen, the game lags a bit so for now we have to swipe down a lot. I do also voat for the change multiple or change all slots button

By Frost on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

When using voice-over or the on-board speech for the game, I find that exploring the screen by just touch is useless.
I have yet to find a scroll down button anywhere on the screen.
So my question is to anyone who does not have enough usable vision to play the game:
Do you agree with my assessment or does steady know something we don't?
I am all for exploration, and encourage it, but I do not believe that any amount of exploration in this particular game will yield many results.
If anyone has ever been to sheetz to get a MTO sandwich, no matter how much you explored that touch screen, I'm betting you didn't get what you wanted.
So sometimes exploration just doesn't work.
In saying that, it is still a great game and well worth the price.
I did purchase this game, and urge you to do the same to support the makers of this game.

Hi, Sabrina;
What the poster before you was talking about is the fact that he made a payment so that the boosts will be available without having to listen or watch ads from the App Store.

the accessibility feature put into the game is designed to be done by swiping. touch screen although is quicker but is unorthodox way so you just carry on doing what you do. voiceover doesn't say the word scroll down when i touch that area. it is considered not accessible so don't use it. if you think you can't find it means it is not there, if it doesn't work for you means it is not working, just forget it and continue to feel good about yourself.

By Kelvin Tan on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

agreed there steady. this is definitely nothing to do with the accessibility feature. i'm going to try to describe best i can on how you can somewhat scroll down, remember, if you can't get this to work, please don't complain and start demanding a scroll down button or something. please please. if you can't get it to work, it's because you can't get it to work, not a bug in this game.now for those who still don't mind trying and failing. when you have something like more than 20 or so slots in a particular building, first choose that building from the world map, say farm for example, double tap on farm to get in to the farm, you will hear the game say farm. now, find the home button and then place your finger at the screen just above the home button. you may not hear anything other then some clicking sounds. if you can see, you will see the slots start to scroll down. if you were to keep your finger on the part of the screen just slightly above the home button for 1 or 2 seconds, you will hear the game say how much it costs to buy the next slot. you have actually reached the bottom of the screen without having to swipe down multiple times. if you want to go to say slot 15 or so, just don't hold your finger on the screen for too long. basically the longer you keep your finger on the that area of the screen, the further it will scroll down. so, to scroll down say a building with 50 slots will take quite a bit longer than a building with 25 slots. just play around with the duration your finger is on the screen area just above the home button and you should get a hang of it. of course please please remember if you cant do it, it's not because there is a problem with this game. please do not start demanding for this and that again. just keep trying if you have the patience and i believe you should get it. if you can't, then just continue using the swiping down method which is actually made for blind people. i am getting a little fed up with a few of you who just because of a few more extra swipes which you are not happy to do, you start demanding for pretty much useless features to be added. michelle has already done a lot for us, we should learn to appreciative and not just complain and demand for features just because some small thing inconvenience you a littlefor those who still love this game and appreciate michelle and team, continue to enjoy this game like i am still doing. thank you once again for a great and addictive game michelle and team.

By charles on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

After hearing about this game for so long, I decided to give it a try near the end of May. Well, there goes all of my spare time! What a fun game, especially for the price. I have used the in app purchase that is available.

As for those who want a button to quickly get to the bottom of the slots, I totally agree with who said how unnecessary it is, and that we should appreciate all of the work and the replies to our game thoughts and suggestions. The efforts on making Krafting Kingdom Voice-Over accessible are very much appreciated by me. You are giving superb customer service. I sure do have a long way to go, as I have only created a simple building, although I have gotten to the $500,000 amount in the bank, so the bags of gold are fuller than they were, and the Princess gave me a 20 percent increase yesterday. I sure don't see how millions are being racked up within an hour or so, but I am still fairly new to the game.

By Ornella on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I agree with Kelvin and others I don't have to swipe down too much. I just put my finger by the home button and I find the end of where it would tell me the cost of how much a production slot would be. So just because something doesn't work for you means its a bug. I say leave it as is. If we have to make plenty money in the game we would want to sell things so having a stop all production may not be useful for some people. Just keep selling products. Isn't that the game it self? To craft and sell?

By Taylor Brown on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I asked for the button to be able to be flicked down to in the Princess and Estate tabs as it'd be a cleaner UI instead of feeling like I'm just wading through information I don't need to hear.

The rude replies implying that I said it was the most important or more important than anything else are unnecessary. Regardless, I think it'd be a reasonably easy fix, and I'd also appreciate the stop/change production buttons for when I'm trying to line up numbers of products, for building metal or ladders, for example, which have materials that wildly vary in build speed.

By Frost on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Kelvin, thanks for explaining how the scroll down works. After reading your explanation, I immediately tried it, and it worked like a charm.
I want to thank you for giving this description. It helped me, and I'm sure it will help others.
The following isn't directed towards you Kelvin.
As for people demanding feature request, I don't recall seeing one single demand.
I do recall, however, Michelle asking for our input to help shape this game accessibility wise.
Getting things done in a quick and efficient manner is part of accessibility to me.
Therefore, asking for a "Change All Production" button and anchors at the bottom of certain screens, to get things done quick and efficient is not an unreasonable request especially when we were asked for our input.
I too, think Michelle has done a wonderful job with this game, and she has given us countless hours of entertainment, for which I am very appreciative.

By Sunshine Daisies on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Hi, I just recently finished expanding my estate, and I now have a castle.
My question to the developers is:
Are you guys going to add more expansions to the Estate in the future, or is that going to be the end of it?
I guess right now, all I have left to do is to finish my quests.
I'm really hoping you guys will add some more to the Estate because personally, it's going to be too repetitive for me if all I have left to do are my quests.

By ashish on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I want to thank the developers of this game. I am fully addicted. I have a suggestion, I do not know how to develop applications so I am not sure it can be done or not, but if possible please make some arangements that if I uninstall and reinstall the game I should not loose my progress. thanks again for this game.

By hllf on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Michelle,

This is in response to your question about a change all production slots button. I am fully supportive of this feature, and I believe it would be extremely useful. Even when changing over 15-20 production slots, it's rather time consuming to have to change each slot one by one. When you have 50+, it takes a very long time. If you really want to get creative, a way to specify which slots are to get the change would be wonderful as well, but I'd put the change all as priority. For example, what I mean is you can hit a select button, then scroll through and select each slot you want the change to apply to, such as slots 5-10. then you make the change, such as produce leather strips, and then all those selected slots are changed over.

There were only two main things in this amazing game that I have found dawnting and that I kind of dread doing when the time came. First was having to manually start all production slots, but you already addressed that, so thank you very much for that! The other is having to change over so many slots when switching quests or for whatever reason.

Regarding some of the other recent suggestions, here are my comments:

Sell all button: I personally would like this, as often I like selling everything, and when you are producing 7-8 things, having to flick 20 times to sell all items is a bit time consuming, but I would not consider it high priority. That being said, it's probably a 2-minute feature to implement, so that is up to you if you wish to do it or not.

One other thing I would say regarding a sell all: it could also have a disadvantage where you do sell all the prerequisits for a product, so you will temporarily stop production until the prerequisits are again produced.

Flicking: I personally have no issues with the flicking as-is, and I think this is one of those cases where there isn't one formula that will please everyone, so it is easy to get bogged down in something that is very minor and pretty much will please some and annoy some no matter what you do. That being said, a flick to the open gift button I guess would be nice, but in the grand scheme of things, it's one extra flick right once a day, so I find it a bit, well, unnecessary to bring up. In the time it has taken people to ask for the feature, they could have flicked to the open gift button 50 times already.

One slight odd thing I have noticed is that when in the selection production screen for a slot, the back button is at the very bottom in terms of flick order, but everywhere else, the back button is at the top.

Another flick idea that I personally would like is when flicking up and down in the city, it would be nice if the flick could land you on the sell all button, rather than on the item heading. When selling 10 things, it doubles the number of flicks to sell all, as you have to flick down, flick right, double tap. It could be nice to hear something like this when you flick down: "Logs, sell all button", "Timber, sell all button", etc. But again, these are very minor things in my view.

Another idea I have is that it would be nice to be able to have a boost apply to all four boost slots, so we don't have to activate the same boost four times. Again, pretty minor thing, but a nice to have.

Lastly, I still find double tapping to be a bit iffy. In the game's first version, flicking was iffy, and you fixed that perfectly, but double tapping still often fails for me. Often may be too strong, but at least 10-20% of the time, when I double tap, especially in a list of production slots, it thinks I tapped a slot instead of double tapping, so it shifts my focus. So when I have 50 slots, and I'm trying to flick and start production, or change what is being produced, I constantly lose my place, as it thinks I single tap and shifts the focus up or down a few slots. I think this is a simple matter of how the application is interpreting the double taps. I have noticed that if I double tap very fast after a flick, that is when It often seems to miss it. When you are doing 50 slots, you tend to flick and double tap very fast. That is, I don't flick, then wait a second before doing the double tap. If you could look into that, I'd really appreciate it.

That's about it for now I think. Thank you again for a wonderful game and for your commitment to accessibility.

By SoundSchemer on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

I just purchased the boost unlock, and I'm making 5 logs in 3 seconds. How much more amazing can this game get?

By James on Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 16:23

Haven't posted in a while, but I'm up to requiring a million lumber and meat, so I'm definitely in agreement of a change all production button. One thing I'm curious about though, do your quests change upon restart regardless of if any quests have been completed or not? For example, you restart your game after completing some quests. You then realize you don't particularly like any of the quests that appeared. Would they change if you restart again, or are you stuck with those quests?