[games_access] Ideas for accessible mobile games

[Ian Hamilton]

Open world RPGs are pretty consistently wished for. There are plenty of text based MMOs (MUDs) already, but something more in the vein of Elder Scrolls.


Something like that is obviously not remotely in the scope of what you're tackling. As far as smaller ideas go there are common cliches to avoid.. such as 'you're blind, you're lost in a maze, find your way out'. 'you're a blind samurai, ninjas are attacking you, hit them when you hear them' and so on. Cliched settings too, for some reason audiogames seem very heavily weighted towards zombies.


Again the audiogames.net forums are a great place to run ideas by, they'll very quickly tell you if your idea is a cliched one and will have good input for you too.


In general anything that's popular in mainstream is something that blind gamers want to play... Flappy Birds, Clash of Clans, Pokemon Go, Call of Duty, etc.


One of the most popular games of recent times has been diceworld on iOS. It's pretty basic stuff, just games like yahtzee, but one of the reasons it is popular is because it allows blind and sighted players to play together without any disadvantage, so that might be something worth exploring in the time you have available.


If you're interesting in seeing where blind accessible platforming is at, have a look at a game called Bokurano Daibouken, that's as advanced as they come at the moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEwkAq8L9Qk.


A key part of BD is being able to pause the screen and move a cursor around a grid to get a feel for what the layout of your surroundings is, you can hear that in action at around 13 mins in. It's desktop, but would be perfectly suited to adapting to touchscreens, running your finger over the screen to feel your way around what's around you... something to that level might be a bit much for a 3 month project though.

Again too much for a 3 monther, but on the topic of adventure games, there was a nice talk at last year's GDC about making Lucasarts-style point and click adventure games blind accessible on touchscreens (video of talk is available if you have a vault subscription) http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022934/Audio-Driven-Game

Ian

________________________________
From: games_access <games_access-bounces at igda.org> on behalf of Brandon Keith Biggs <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com>
Sent: 07 October 2016 06:23
To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [games_access] Ideas for accessible mobile games

Hello,
audiogames.net<http://audiogames.net>
would be the best place to ask this question (for blind gamers).
But I don't think the market has had too many Android games for blind users (probably because of the lag in accessibility of Android devices). But maybe something for the new Android device:
http://www.humanware.com/microsite/bntouch/index.php

that a massive amount of blind users are now getting would be a good idea.

In general blind users are missing 2d platformers on mobile and we are always looking for dungeon crawlers. But the most in demand is MMO RPGs. there is none, to my knowledge, that blind people can play. (You said non trivial ;))
Thanks,


Brandon Keith Biggs<http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 3:09 PM, Krzysztof Dobosz <Krzysztof.Dobosz at polsl.pl<mailto:Krzysztof.Dobosz at polsl.pl>> wrote:
Hey,

in the frame of my work at the university, I give course about mobile games development. In the practical part, next week I am going to start about 15 short-term (three months) student projects. The goal of each is to develop a small mobile game for Android OS, which will be fully accessible for blind users. So, I am looking for ideas for smart, fun, nontrivial games. I will be grateful for any assistance (topics, short descriptions, something what blind users want to play, etc.). Results (successfully developed applications) will be available for free.

kindly regards
Krzysztof Dobosz
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