First listen to the game available now!


Hello everyone!


The Game Jam I'm making this game for is now approaching the halfway mark, and I wanted to share what the progress is of everything!


First off though, here is a youtube video with me playing and talking about Symphony of Soil! 

For those unaware, Symphony of Soil is a game heavily inspired by two of my favorite games, Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley. But this game is blind accessible and done almost entirely through audio! So take a listen and tell me what you think!


Here's a list of all the features in the game!

You can now buy seeds

All keys remappable (I heard the complaints from TierraMon so going forward all my games will have remappable controls)

plant crops (6 crops total atm)

remove weeds

water crops 

sleep to pass the days

harvest crops after several days of watering

 cook food for energy

 sell crops

 buy upgrades for your tools 

Day night/cycle

Ability to "hear" crops. While holding the listen key you will hear directional audio based on the type of plant. So Bell Peppers will chime a bell like in the video, beets will give a drum beet, and the like! 

Lupe is finished with most of her voice lines in that will be in the finished project!

Oliver, the black smith, is close to completion but isn't fully able to be romanced yet! But he's still a good little black smith.


With two weeks left I feel like I completed the most difficult part of the game, the farm and ability to move by location!

So let's talk about what will be included in the final game!

5 Main NPCS, several non main NPCS

2 More regions with other sources of getting food and earning money. Fishing, and foraging.

 Along with these two new regions are two new main NPCs

1 more main shop with another main NPC that is critical to getting married to the character of your choice!

A blind accessible map! In a previous game people seemed to really enjoy having a map that is readable by a screen reader, so to help with that there will be in a separate file a map to help everyone. While I would love to implement it in game, given it's a jam it's just not feasible. But there will be a map.


Overall I'm very excited with progress and excited to get a version out that people can play by the end of the month! As far as I'm aware there aren't really any farm life simulator games that are blind accessible, so I figure this will go one of two ways!

1. Show that this genre is possible and encourage others to branch out in audio game development, or go further with this project myself.

2. A wonderful example of what not to do while making blind accessible farming simulators


Either way, I'll be happy with how it turns out!

Get Symphony of Soil

Comments

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Yeah, different music and a map might definitely help. You could also put in a key command that would tell you where you are such as town, farm, or wherever else. I didn't think of that before, but that would probably work too.

Yeah, the toggle actually sounds good. What I suggest is having a voice say that an action is done (like say you watered a crop) and then have one for navigational purposes that's actually a toggle. I also think you should still have something that tells you when you're entering a new area (town, other areas that aren't the farm or town, and then the farm itself) and just have the game say 'you entered the farm' or something similar. You could even go the shorter route and say entering farm too to make things easier.

Right now the plan is to have everything have different music, and a map will be included that is blind accessible! 

That's the plan at least. Hopefully that will work for navigation! 


Just finished watching the demo and whatnot. Looks pretty good so far. What I can definitely say for sure is maybe put some cues in to tell you certain things are actually happening along with the audio ones. For example, when you water a plant, you could have a voice say you did it or that it was watered. I understand what you were going for there, and what's in place is pretty good, but knowing something happened as well as hearing the voice might actually be helpful. 

On that note, the different sounds for terrains are very good and very helpful. I would suggest having something say that you're on the main road or the road that leads to somewhere that isn't town though. Hmmm, how to explain this in terms that would make sense for a sighted game ... So for example, if you have a sighted game and you have a sign or something that says where you just entered, your voice cue could say 'entering town road' or 'entering road to outside of town/are' for the road that leads to other areas that aren't town. Or you could think of it as when you enter a new area in some games, it says where you entered into on the screen for a bit and then goes away. This little thing I mentioned would cover either scenario. Or you could just put a sign when you get onto the various roads and be able to interact with that like you did with Tierramon. You could also have signs for when you get close to the npcs in town or even have them talk when you're approaching them to have them say hello or something as you approach. You can maybe also take cues from a game called the veil that uses similar mechanics when you come up to npcs as well.

You can find a demo for the veil if you go to blindhelp.net. You won't need to be blind there to find it or use the sight either. You can go to the link that says software, choose games for category lower on the page, then choose what operating system you wanted to use for the game. The part you want from the game is the part where you come to the first town. The movement system will be weird and somewhat confusing, so ignore that for now, what i want you to focus on is when you locate an npc. They talk to give you a general direction when you enter their area and then also there's a specific noise for say the blacksmith as well. I mention this game as something you can check out at some point for guidance or reference, not to insult you or anything.

I'll try posting the link here to the page where you can download the game just in case that works (had issues with direct links on other sites, but I'll try posting it here and hopefully it'll work).

Link:

https://www.blindhelp.net/software/vale

For a demo though, it does seem pretty good so far. Considering the time limit for this, you've actually done pretty well. My suggestions of course are from a totally blind person who isn't a dev or coder, so I have no idea how easy any of the stuff I mentioned would be to implimant.

I like the music and the voices you're using for npcs as well; Lupe's my favorite so far. Maybe like with Tierramon too you could add a menu option somewhere to help you get lead to either the town or the out of town road too (not cause we're not capable of finding it if we're blind, just in case we get lost cause it's a big map is all).

Wonderful feedback as always!


I'm glad you like what you hear so far! I'll consider what to do with some of that to make it easier. In theory my best option I think would be to have a toggle for on/off like with TierraMon having guide mode. So you could turn on/off if you wanted voice confirmation actions taken.


I'll have to see what I have time for near the end!