GoldGun Episode 1 finally released!

i won the all episodes. when they come out, how do i get them?

How do I start a new game? Voiceover doesn’t read anything

You should follow the directions. When you first open the app, Voice-Over tells you that your phone has been switched to landscape mode with the home button to the left. It then, very clearly, tells you what to do.

Yes, but the poster said VoiceOver wasn't saying anything in the first place, not saying the instructions and remaining silent.

When you first start the game, wait for the music. Whether you have voiceover on or not, it will work in the game. I haven't tested regular swiping gestures with voiceover, but the only user interface aspects you need to worry about are at the title screen. There there is new game, a help option, continue and settings. Note that the settings has all the scenes for the episode, and that they are not locked to your progress. So you can spoil yourself if you're not careful. David, it might actually be helpful, especially as the episodes get longer - for your team to label the scenes with the location too. As it is there are already ten scenes in episode one. Even though it's short, if a person wanted to jump to a particular scene, they sort of have to guess.

Swipe up and down to navigate options. Double-tap to select one. Explore a little.

Goodmorning! The game is also in italian?

I am surprised nobody has mentioned the blindness stereotypes in the game, things like touching peoples faces, hair etc then all the nonsense about eating food, dreams etc. Seriously, I get that no harm was intended by the developers, but lets say someone sighted decides to play this game, is it going to give a good impression of blind people? and OK sure I get this is supposed to be fantasy and I can suspend disbelief as much as the next person but I have never met anyone blind who feels people's faces, and even if they did I can't ever see that being done in a professional situation, I mean according to the game story the main character is fairly new to being blind so he is going to want his colleagues to take him seriously.
also, when the game first starts it gives no guidance about how the phone should be orientated as in landscape mode you can either hold the phone with charging port on the right or left, it took me a while to figure out what orientation I needed to use. also, the stereo panning for footsteps when following various characters around seemed poor to non existent.
I agree with one of the reviews on the appstore which said one of the characters was hard to understand, think his name was hugo, and as for the American guy who your supposed to be playing he sounded totally lifeless.
I haven't decided yet if I will get the remaining episodes, I might wait to see what other people think of them, its nice to see more audio games being made, but at least from playing this first episode it felt more like a radio play than a game.

Hi,
I totally agree with Alex. The american guy you are playing definitely sounds depressed. If all else fails, maybe do the game in the original language, say polish, russian, etc and then have someone professional do english dubbing, perhapse like in the inquisitor games? Just my two sense observations from barely playing. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the tilting aspect. Does anyone know if that can be disabled or is this how the game is supposed to be played? Believe me, I've heard voice actors who are great, and others who could do with coaching, for a first effort I'll give it a 7/10, i don't like to get down in the dumps, lol!

I will read the comments, and well done for directing us to where we can read other people's thoughts on the game, that shows your sincere, as you say its only episode 1 that has been released so far, so there is lots of room for the game to get better and be very enjoyable. One thing I am not clear on is how does purchasing of new episodes work? there doesn't seem to be an inapp purchase option. as its your first game of course your going to learn from it and I am sure it will only get better with practice when you make future titles. Unfortunately I know that the blind community can be quite harsh sometimes but hopefully in a constructive way that helps you to improve and to make the best games possible.

I just downloaded Gold Gun today and found it quite entertaining. I think the game mechanics are really good and I look forward to seeing the engine used in future episodes and other games. I agree with the previous poster that it would be nice to have an option to use either swipe gestures or tilt to move your character. Personally, I didn't have any real concerns/objections to the blindness references in the game, other than the feeling the face part. I thought it was a clever approach in the story to make the plot need a blind person, since sighted folks before him had failed. I actually didn't mind Hugo's voice, but do think the voice of the American player could use some improvement. +1 for the idea of giving each scene a name, and having that announced at the start of the scene.

How will the additional episodes be released? Will there be an update that enables in-app purchases for the subsequent episodes, or will each episode be a stand-alone app? Looking forward to the next one!

hi their, I would love to give this game a try, but the problem I have like many IOS users is when the music starts and I have talkback disabled, and flick up and down nothing speaks. all i get is silence. this isn't a very promising start to a game from a company who sold us on how great this game is.

Hello, I just had a few thoughts after following this post for a little.

First, blindness. I think taking blindness mensions out of the game entirely is the wrong direction to go. While I did think the chicken or banana reference was wierd, and the face touching a little stereotypical - even though the actual blind person you have working there does that - I thought there was nothing wrong with the question about dreams. it's a good question - one I as a mostly blind person have asked totally blind people before even. it was a nice little bit of banter which gave us a little introduction to the two characters. You could have simply cut that hall walking sequence, but I felt it was a good opportunity for us to get comfortable with the controls, and more importantly for character development. He is blind, he is newly blind. Obviously references to that are going to come up. That's all pretty normal. I guess for me, the issue with the face touching came out of nowhere. He'd already felt her hair, which considering everyone was talking about it, made sense. But it sounded like he already knew who she was too, but then after touching her face he says he knows her. I don't know. It's not a terrible thing I guess, just a little odd.

As for poor hugo, I actually don't have trouble with his accent. He clearly doesn't have english as a first language, but I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, it makes him distinguished. For me the problem lies in the delivery. A lot of the voice actors have no real emotion, and that definetly includes your lead. I'm not saying you need A-list voice talent, but it might not hurt for your existing pool of actors to have a little directing. Maybe watch some voice acting videos on youtube. There's a really good channel from Mona Marshall who is a pretty well-known voice actress which might be helpful. There are also voice acting courses on udemy.com which could be very helpful. Prices for these often go down to $12, so their prices are very reasonable. They have sales ALL the time. Just a thought, because I like the idea of this game and really want to see it succeed. I totally understand not having the budget for things. But if playing indie games has taught me anything, it's that even a modest budget can make a great game.

how did the character go blind?

Actually I love the voice acting. In fact, I read a lot of leena lehtolainen and Kati Hiekkapelto, so it was kind of nice having Finnish accents because I could feel like I was in a similar adventure to those that I love so much.

Something that voice actors often do to practice is take a scene from a movie, tv show or game they really like, and record themselves doing the lines. Try to get as close to how the actor or actress sounds as you can. That sort of practice can really help. There's also an absolutely amazing voice acting podcast by Krispin Freeman called Voice Acting Mastery. There's a lot of information in there, but it's all really good information. I too like the various accents. Like I think I mentioned before, Sonata Arctica and Nightwish are two of my favorite bands. Because of them I've really gotten an appreciation for the people, culture and speech of the country. It's great to have accents. With a little coaching and practice, I think the guy voicing Hugo could actually do quite nicely. He's got a good voice, he just needs a little practice in using it.

Someone mentioned that they had a heck of a time figuring out which way to position their phone. Someone else mentioned that they could not start the game due to a lack of instruction by voice. I find this odd, because on my iPhone 8 plus using iOS12.1.3, the first thing I heard was that the phone was put into landscape with the home button to my left. The next voice I hear says "new game". This, of course, is as it should be.

Hi,
I haven't had any issues with the gameplay and now that i've had time to play the game more, it's growing on me. Remy, great suggestion on watching a movie, and trying to emulate your favorite line/actor/etc. I personally used to do that a lot quite a while ago, and everyone got a kick out of it! Anyway, the game is growing on me. To those who are having issues flicking/gestures, do this with Voiceover enabled, maybe you're running into conflict with the Vo/game elements? I'm not sure on this.

Hi the problem with landscape comes with phones that don't have home buttons like the iPhone x, because with this phone all the game says is landscape, meaning that you have no idea which way the phone should be pointed in landscape, e.g should the lightning port be on the right or left of you.

Okay, just a few thoughts now that I've actually finished it:

-- Still love the intro music. Got a real Deus Ex vibe (A fantastic Cyberpunk game from the early 2000s which has spawned a few great sequels over the years).

-- I've already commented extensively on the voice acting, so don't have much more to add. I will suggest that some of Hugo's issues might come down to annunciation. he's hard to understand, but not because of his accent. It's that he says things so close together. That is a pretty easy thing to fix with a few vocal warmup excersizes though. Also, particularly with Hugo's voice, when he's panned to the hard left or right, he's a bit harder to understand.

-- The gameplay actions are easy to perform, though my idea of rotating the phone and the games are at odds. That's my own problem though. I will say it would be nice when Soron doesn't have to say "Just double tap to do that". It's helpful for the tutorial, but probably unnecessary as the game progresses.

-- I'd also suggest a different voice quality for Soron's internal tips and thoughts. You do a good job making it sound like he's in a location - a vent for instance - but when he's speaking internally it still sounds like he's in a vent. A gentle reverb would perhaps distinguish internal thought with external words.

-- Some sound effects are still missing, such as when Soron sits, or pulls out his gun.

-- The music during the walking conversation is almost a bit too low now. it would be helpful to have a balance between music, sound effects and dialogue. Sometimes it is just a missed opportunity, but other times it hinders gameplay. During said walking section, I had a hard time hearing which direction Maria was walking in order to follow her. Sometimes it was easy enough, especially that one section where she was talking, but other times I had to guess. You don't need to have these huge clomping footsteps reverberating off the walls or anything, maybe just a bit louder. it can be tricky to strike that balance, but once you do, you will see - sorry - hear the difference.

-- There is a phantom breath sound happening near the end of the seaside section where Soron is both breathing deeply and talking at the same time.

-- The ending of the episode is super abrupt. There's no real hook to keep the player wanting to continue. We get in ... and then are booted to the To be Continued screen. Obviously the next episode will pick up from there, but it might have been good to have some small interesting thing to segway into the next episode. Just a thought, because while this first episode is free, you do eventually want to make some money.:) And a good way to do that is to ahve the player think "What's going to hapen next?"

At the end though it's an alright first episode which certainly could emerge into something potentially interesting. It's more like a tech demo at this point, but a tech demo with possibilities. the idea of a virtual world tied to the deep web is an interesting one, so despite my comments I am curious to see where you all take it. We do need more narrative-driven audio games.

Hi, I've just finished the game and my impression is good. Unfortunately I do not understand English very much and this made it completely impossible for me to understand the story of the game and the dialogues. My idea, even for those like me who do not understand English well is this: could you transcribe all the speech of the game in text format? In this way it will be enough to paste it in a translator like Google Translate and start the translation. Another idea would be to find voice actors who translate the whole game into the other 3 main languages, French, Spanish and Italian, maybe even a voice actor for the German language. But maybe it would be easier to write the text in the text so everyone can translate it as they want. The problem, however, then would be that the surprise effect would vanish, once translated the game in text format would already know the end of the episodes before even playing. I do not know, at this point you might really have to find voice actors to translate the game ... Please, could you include a part of the game where we can practice shooting and doing all the action scenes? It would be nice to have a section where we can train to shoot at a target and be able to use minigames outside of history.

Hi! A few days ago I played episode 1 of GoldGun, and I must say I like the game so far. I can understand why this game has come in for a lot of criticism, but I personally think that, in spite of its imperfections, it has a lot of potential, and I'm glad to see that the developers are ready to listen to players' opinions on how it can be improved; But what will happen next? I know we have to wait a few months to find out, but, speaking for myself, I'm looking forward to episode 2 when it's ready. No spoilers, please! Those of us who like the game and want to get episode 2 will just have to be patient. Thank you to the developers for producing this game and listening to people's feedback about it!

Personally, rather than seeing his voice as being bland or dull, I seen him as a no nonsense, focused, let's get the job done kind of person, instead.

Another poster mentioned that, after the tutorial, the blind character didn't have to continue to repeat, "Just double tap to do that". I agree with this. Inside the tutorial, this was a necessary step. After the game starts, however, I felt it was no longer essential. After all, if a person forgot what to do, then the tutorial is always available for a refresher.

Keep up the great work. Yes, there will be those critics, no matter what one does. Use the criticisms that will help and ignore those that don't apply. It is your game. I appreciate that the developers are interacting with their players. In a way, it becomes a collaborative of sorts.

Can't wait for the next episode.

Hi,
I agree with Roxan and Remy on this. Keep the double tap hint in the tutorial, but omit this in the rest of the game. The accent now that i've gotten used to Hugo isn't that bad, and everything is interesting. For those having landscape issues, turn on Vo's hints option in the rotor, then it'll tell you where the charge port needs to be, in this case on the left. If you lock orientation in portrait, the game will automatically switch to landscape with charge port to left. When you quit or exit the game, you'll be put back into portrait mode.
HTH.