In-game text, subtitles, key mapping?

[NoelDeirrow]

I must say you have a nice concept here which is surely promising and exciting to try out (even though it's obviously not the first game with similar mechanics).

However, even if we are supposed to play with only ears, why wouldn't you consider adding an option to replace this horrific machine voice in the beginning with plain on-screen text? this also applies for settings - I can hardly see a point of listening through this if I'm able to just choose it myself on the screen.

Moreover, some phrases might be tough for non native speakers to understand and therefore subtitles would be a good idea as well, since there is seemingly no "rewind" button to be able to listen to the speech again.

On top of that, it would be very handy to always have on screen instruction reminding you which buttons do what. I'm not saying that all those things have to be forced to be obligatory, but that could at least be an option to turn on to make it less frustrating for those who aren't brilliant at hearing and want to have some kind of guide reminder they can always check anytime.

In addition, it's strange that we can't rebind key mappings and have to control both left, middle and right part of the keyboard (Shift/ctrl, "F", arrows and Enter) while it would be much easier to navigate within 2 zones, for example, arrow keys for movement and A,S,F or any other combination of close to each other buttons.

Plus, of course, I'd better just read a text on screen telling me what to do rather than getting through listening to such awful emotionless computerized bacchanalia. It is supposed to be an adventure game with deep immersion and not some sort of integrated voiceover function.

Of course, you could have say it will distort how you, developers, see this game to be. However, you shouldn't forget that you decided to make it a publicly available and thus it would be nice to at least make the process just a bit user friendly and also give people choice to transfer some necessary elements (on-screen settings, subtitles, always visible controls guide) into more suitable and comfortable form. Personally, I wouldn't mind that much to open my eyes rarely to figure what a certain character with poor/average pronunciation is trying to say, change settings or remind myself with controls (if I get back to playing the game after making a pause).

[vmaldia]

a fair criticism

[Hackdeen]

I'd actually like to see the reply to this.

[DOWiNO]

Hello

Thank you for this interesting feedback.

Regarding subtitles, we intentionally wanted that there would be no text in the game. We’ve worked with blind people and it has certainly influenced our way of creating the game. The goal is that you put yourself in the shoes of a blind. A visually-impaired person can not see the text and only uses his ears to play and even get in the game. We wanted to try this challenge to players.

For options you proposed, you have good ideas but we are a startup with a small budget. We realized this game through a crowdfunding campaign. We got the budget to the game but no more.

Regarding the synthetic voice is again a practical choice, according to time and budget constraints.

Here are some answers to your feedback. However, thank you for this criticism. We keep, some of your ideas for possible future updates.

[MasterFail]

Originally posted by DOWiNO:

Hello
Regarding subtitles, we intentionally wanted that there would be no text in the game. We’ve worked with blind people and it has certainly influenced our way of creating the game. The goal is that you put yourself in the shoes of a blind.

Real-life blind people do have the option to say "Could you please repeat yourself?", tough. Honestly, as a non-native speaker, that is the first thing I was checking in the forums (this thread is the only search result I got, btw), and the apparent lack of speech replay is THE main reason I won't buy this game. Aim- and cluelessly scrambling around because I didn't understand a voice actor immediately is neither fun, nor immersive. It's actually quite immersion breaking IMHO.

While I understand the implications of budget restrictions, I'd also like to point out the possibility of lost revenue here. I'm fairly confident I am not the only one who didn't buy the game because of that.

[Kill Man]

Plus a Blind person knows how his motor functions work, so even a permanent (this button does this) could be helpful. I think a FREE game that did this well was the Blind Swordsman on Newgrounds, which honestly has a much better combat system and some better voice acting, FOR FREE (well ads do give them money but not much). Yes it has visuals and not this weird smoke crap, but during almost all dialog you hear where things are coming from, you turn instead of having arms in your back, you have patterns to follow. You have different modes, a menu oh dont get me started on the menu. On screen instructions with dont have robot lady voices.
This game could've been really good, sadly a bit disappointing, hell I bet I could make something like this on Scratch if I really wanted to.

(CRITICISM, TAKING THIS DOWN MEANS WAR)

[Molchunya]

Subtitles is a good idea, then it will not be a BLIND game though.
As a non-native speaker, I really want a chinese vision of this game. Still not understand the story very well now.

[Kill Man]

Originally posted by Molchunya:

Subtitles is a good idea, then it will not be a BLIND game though.
As a non-native speaker, I really want a chinese vision of this game. Still not understand the story very well now.

Um... yes it will? I mean technically a blind person could visualize words (if they werent born blind and I doubt that man became king while blind) and I just think the gameplay being blind is enough on it's own.