Hey everyone, someone over on Reddit r/blind said it would be worth chatting with you about our app, so here I am!
Basically we are trying to find out if our game would be suitable for the blind and partially sighted community.
We are an indie developer who are in the early stages of making a Rhythm Platforming game.
Early in development we realized that there was a real possibility that the rhythm and musical components of our game may make the platforming more accessible to the blind and partially sighted community. Currently we are testing the feasibility of this.
We are currently designing the levels to be playable by reacting to accents in the soundtrack. Obstacles, enemies and collectibles are all tied into these accents. Simply tap in sync with the accents to play.
Being a small team we don’t really have the resources to regularly test with blind and partially sighted players so we wanted to open up the game to you guys and get your feedback first hand.
We know there are currently challenges to using the menu system so some guidance may be required to actually access the 5 levels. (We are working on it - feedback for this element would be fantastic!)
* Give us feedback on where you have issues with either the interface or gameplay.
* How can we make the game even more fun for you!?
Every bit of advice you can give us will help us decide if our game is in fact suitable for blind and partially sighted players.
<a href="http://bit.ly/KrokoBongo">Game Link</a>
Comments
this game
hi their, I just tried downloading this game to play, and yes, it does need lots of work. for starters, when opening the game, when it puts you into landscape mode, you can't do anything. you get some music and seagulls but nothing else. when you try to flick left, right, up, or down, nothing happens. you can't move around and access the options with voiceover turned on or off. please do fix this.
I've not tried the game yet but thank you.
Thank you for trying to make your game accessible. If you'd like to find out how to do this, please look on the applevis site and you'll see a link called developers, click on that and you'll find an IOS link, click on that and you will be shown guides on how to make apps accessible with voiceover. Thank you once again.
thoughts
hi all, haven't tried this as need setup my new iphone but my initial thoughts after hearing the video on the app store is just wow! can't wait play this. not sure what it is written in, but have the developers looked at Crafting Kingdom? this has a plug-in available, to make the menus read to voiceover.
Game freeze
The game is a no start. The menu screen is frozen from the beginning I hope you fix it it looks interesting.
Unfortunately, not accessible yet
Unfortunately, none of the menus actually speak with VoiceOver enabled. I'm hoping you can add VoiceOver support to the game and if you're interested in blind/visually impaired beta testers count me in! I love making apps usable for everyone!
game feedback
Hey Brandon,
I've passed your experience directly onto the team. Thank you for taking the time to download the game and I'm sorry it wasn't a better experience for you!
Thanks!
Hi Brad,
Yeah, we are a little new to voiceover based navigation, but than you for the tip and resources. Things like this make our job a lot more straight forward!:)
Thanks!
Hey Will,
Haha thanks for the praise! Hopefully you can get a hold of the game OK. Game is written in Unity, and we will most certainly take a look at Crafting Kingdom. Thanks for pointing us in the right direction.
Feedback - Bug
Hiya!
Really sorry the game froze on you! Do you mind me asking what phone you have? This will help us track down and replicate the bug faster...and hopefully get it fixed!
Feedback
Hiya,
Yeah, we are just looking at some plugins now, very kindly pointed out by some other members of the blind community. Once we assess what works best in our game we will look at getting them up and running. Sorry about that. We are in the very very early stages of making the game accessible! Thanks for your feedback.
Unity framework doesn’t support accessibility
Unfortunately, since the game is written in Unity, it’s not possible to make it accessible without writing a self-voicing app. Unity framework doesn’t support accessibility, nor is it possible to interface with the UIAccessibility API.
As far as I know, the only games that are on based on Unity that are accessible are ones where it was self-voicing. i.e. you’ll have to write your own VoiceOver and Accessibility API.
Unity actually has a plugin
Hi,
The comment above isn't actually true, and people might want to do a bit of fact checking before they go replying. I.E Crafting kingdom is written in unity and can output either through tts, or voiceover using a plugin.
At the rest, you may actually want to read the developers initial post before you reply that the game doesn't do much for you, seriously is reading too much to ask?
The first post clearly states that the developer is looking for suggestions as to how their app could be made accessible and they are aware that their main menu where you access levels from and such isn't accessible at the moment and that they are working on it,but yet all the comments after go on to state the same thing.
@Kroko Bongo, Thank you for taking the time to design your game so that more players can have access to your game that is play it.
Audiogames.net's forum has a pretty good bunch of people who might could help you with suggestions and the like,as well, probably in the development section of the forums or perhaps new releases.
Look forward to playing this when it becomes accessible! and of course, if you are looking for beta testers or even alpha testers, I'll be up for it.
Interesting
This app sounds really interesting. Thanks for trying to make this accessible with VO.
Thanks!
Hiya,
Thanks for the clarification on the voiceover plugins - once again, passed this onto our chief head wizard programmer:)
As for designing the game to be accessible - it is really a interesting challenge for us and so far the blind and partially sighted community has been fantastic (yourself included) at supporting us in our research and testing. We genuinely appreciate all this help and I'll make sure to check our the Audiogames.net forums!
Thanks!
No worries, hopefully it all works out and we get things fully released in the not too distant future:) Thanks for the encouragement!
Have you guys been working on
Have you guys been working on this app? Make it accessible
You can't demand
I wish if some people would just read carefully before they post a comment like that. To Autumn, you can't just say make it accessible. The developer suggested that you describe problems that you're having with the ap and maybe give suggestions on how to fix it. So saying make it accessible isn't going to help over night.
Thanks for your comments
To Autumn, I appreciate your comment, but as Ornella very succinctly wrote, it will take time to make changes to the application. I'm sorry we can't get anything to you sooner, but please be assured we are working on finishing the game and accessibility is something we are taking very seriously.
Updates???
I noticed that there hasn’t been any posts here in over a year, what happened?
Not Available In My App Store
Hi,
When I tried clicking on the link in the original post, an alert told me that the app wasn't available in the app store for my country/region. I'm in the US, so this is extremely strange. Is this a short-term bug or is this link broken? If it is, how did the rest of you find the game?
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Maddy
only in US?
hi!
does this game only on the US's apps store?
not the other country ?
I can not get it on my apps store
Hello! I tried to open the
Hello! I tried to open the game page by tapping on the link but the page does not start! Maybe in Italy this game is not there? Maybe I try to find it on Appstore? What is the name of the game? Thank you!
Same deal
I tried opening the link but was prompted that the game is not available in the Australian store.
Germany
This Game isn‘t available in German Store.
Strange
If all of us haven't been able to access the link in the original post, how were the earlier commenters able to do it? What's the app's name?
This app is currently not available in your country or region
It seems this app isn't available in the U.S. store either.
I think
This app is no more.
I’m Not Sure...
If the app was taken down, the dev would probably have notified us about it beforehand, instead of being silent. Though that theory does make sense, seeing as the developer is usually active on this thread and hasn’t been posting lately. I guess we’ll just have to wait for a response.
I hope...
I hope it will be on apps stpre again soon!
and it is available around the world...
Only just noticed the date this
Ony just noticed the date this was posted, 17 August, 2017. Which means two years ago.
It's probably been taken down before someone replied to it.
any new update?
any new update about this games?
False hopes
Hello everyone,
the original poster wrote:
"[...] please be assured we are working on finishing the game and accessibility is something we are taking very seriously."
It is shady characters like this who disappoint us to the point where we hiss and lash out and project our disappointment on other developers.
If the game industry communicated transparently and on equal footing with us, I'm sure it would find most of us friendly, polite, and approachable. Fire begets fire, though.
Cheers Perry
i love excuses
I love app devs who want to reach out then you hear nothing out of them. take the girl who sold the world. what a sham that was, frankly I have no hope in some of the devs like that one ever making a game accessible. this right here is exactly why i really push for main stream gaming, not simplistic junk that can be made in five or ten minutes.
Game development takes time
Especially for indipendant developers who have other things and can't work on games full time. It's frustrating, but it's reality. I know that The Girl Who SOld the WOrld is still being worked on, and the game itself isn't done yet. The accessibility is also. I imagine this one is no different.