Subtitles for sound effects

[glitterbear]

By "sound effects", I mean things like crashing noises, gunshots, yelling, vomiting, etc.

I've seen several deaf or hard of hearing people asking if they'll be able to play the game. Although I don't think there are any cases where non-subtitled audio is necessary to solve the puzzles, it's still important for building atmosphere, and for understanding what's happening in a scene. Especially when there are death scenes that have no subtitled audio at all, just a blank screen, leaving deaf/HoH players completely in the dark.

I can understand that subtitles like [sound of gunshot] or [crashing noise] would be distracting to some hearing players, but they should at least be an optional setting for people who need them.

Another problem might be the inability to distinguish between speakers (apart from the "X" for the person dying in that scene). Obviously, not knowing who's talking is part of the mystery. But as a hearing player, I can tell that there are, say, four different people talking in a scene. For instance:

A: "Keep pressure here."
B: "Hold him down. What madness is this..."
C: "Those ungodly beasts carry a curse! ..."
B: "Tie him up and put him in the lazarette..."
D: "Come on."
C: "Era dårar!"
A: "All's fine, John..."

Without the audio, there's no way to know how many people are speaking, or which person is speaking which lines. Since I've heard that dialogue probably a dozen times by now, I can look at it without any speaker indications and still know what's going on. But for someone who's never heard it, I have a feeling it wouldn't make much sense. (I mean, there are hearing people who have a problem interpreting the dialogue in some scenes. Which is fine - being confused is part of the fun. But I don't think that bodes well for people who can't hear speaker changes at all.)

I can understand the need to keep the interface simple, as well as to keep things mysterious. But the "X" for the dying person already removes way more mystery than generic speaker indicators would. Maybe there's a relatively unobtrusive way to denote speaker changes that could be enabled when the (theoretical) sound effect subtitles were enabled. (Other shapes or letters apart from the X? Obviously colors are out...)

[dukope]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm thinking about about adding a closed caption option at some point in the future. Even if it's marginally playable, I'm not sure how suitable the game will ever be for deaf/hoh players though - a huge part of the experience is down to the audio.

The "A", "B", "C" thing is something I considered for the conversation log. I decided against it because it didn't feel right to me that people would be labeled this way, to reduce them to a symbol. And there's extra confusion with the letters/symbols used. Is "A" always the same person, or does it change per page? The "X" was a simpler solution that I felt fit better within the context of the death page.

[glitterbear]

Thanks for taking the feedback into account. :)

Yeah, as a hearing person, I love what you did with the conversation log. I think the "X" is a really nice touch. It adds to the supernatural/sinister feeling of the book and watch. It's like the book is marking someone for death with the X. Any kind of speaker indication is probably going to be a trade-off aesthetically, but it could be optional. I imagine someone would rather play with that trade-off than not be able to tell what's going on.

Which I guess leads to the question of whether or not the game is suitable for deaf/hoh people. You might want to get some input from deaf/hoh gamers about that, maybe if/when you're adding captions in the future.

For me, of course the audio is a huge part of the experience. I imagine it is for all hearing gamers, because sound is a fundamental part of our life experiences outside of games. It's probably our most "basic" sense, apart from touch. We start learning our native language's sounds, our mother's voice, etc, even before we're born. Not having sound in a game like RotOD would ruin the experience for us.

I don't think it would necessarily ruin it for deaf/hoh gamers, though. From what I understand, deaf/hoh people (especially those who were born deaf) usually have a completely different relationship with sound than we hearing people do. People who were born deaf and have hearing aids or a CI often describe hearing as this "extra" sense. Cool, but not necessary. They can take or leave it. Even if they have the option to use their hearing aids or CI with a game, they might not bother. That's true even for games that I can't imagine playing on mute.

You obviously put a ton of love into the game, particularly the sound - and not just the sound in death scenes, but the interface sounds, as well. (I love the notes syncing up with the tutorial bits, the sound when fates are confirmed, the stamping sounds on the book at the end... I could go on.) So I imagine that the idea of someone playing it without sound is kinda painful, lol.

But deaf/hoh gamers wouldn't have the same experience as, say, a hearing player who decided to mute the game. The hearing gamer playing on mute is missing something, but the deaf/hoh gamer may not be, even if it's hard for us to imagine.

tl;dr: I would talk to deaf/hoh gamers before deciding that the game isn't suitable for them or wouldn't still be a great experience.