2018-09-27 15:25:45 (edited by Orko 2018-09-27 16:03:58)

Although these two games were apparently released in July, I just recently discovered them.

BG Alchemy
Spoonbill software wrote:

In Blind Gamers Alchemy you are a trainee Alchemist learning the art of transmuting Lead into Gold and in the process advancing through the Alchemical ranks to reach your ultimate goal of becoming the Grand Alchemical Emperor.

On each level you must transmute each of the 72 cells on the board from Lead to Gold. You do this by placing mystic Runes on the board according to certain rules. Each mystic rune successfully placed on a Lead cell, is immediately transmuted to Gold. Each Rune must be played next to another Rune already on the board. To successfully play a Rune, all edges of the Rune which abut Runes already on the board must match in color or type or both. You score points for each play based on the number of matched edges and whether you played the Rune on a Lead cell or a cell already transmuted to Gold.

http://www.spoonbillsoftware.com.au/bgalchemy.htm

BG Hangman
Spoonbill software wrote:

]Blind Gamers Hangman is a blind accessible computerized version of the old pencil and paper game called Hangman. One player thinks of a word but does not say what it is. Instead, he writes the word as dashes on a piece of paper. One dash for each letter of the word. The other player then tries to guess the mystery word a letter at a time. If the guessed letter appears in the word, all occurrences of that letter are revealed by writing them over the appropriate dashes. If the guessed letter does not appear in the word, this is a bad guess. You are penalized for a bad guess by having one more element of the hanged man drawn on the gallows. Once all nine elements have been drawn and the hanged man is complete, you lose the game. If you guess the mystery word before the hanged man is complete, you are credited with a win.

In this version, the computer is the player who thinks of the mystery word. You are the player who must guess the word. There are also two levels of difficulty, Easy and Hard.

http://www.spoonbillsoftware.com.au/bghangman.htm

I have tried both games. BG Alchemy didn't appeal to me all that much though I'd bet that some of you will enjoy its challenge, but BG Hangman has joined BG Solitair as one of my more frequently played audio games.

Enjoy!

2018-09-27 16:10:08

Hi, I'd love to get all the sp games. Is there any way to do this without downloasing them one at a time?

2018-09-27 18:15:45

Cool thanks for the announcement Orko.
I've always admired the design in the sp games, they're just very well put together for what they are.
Bg Alchemy sounds  quite intreaguing, and if the Hangman game has all the usual variations and deisgn levels Ian Humphties usually does it should be pretty cool too.

My lady actually loves BG crossword, but has finished all of the none cryptic ones that had answers, and isn't sure where to get more to play with it.

As regards downloading all the games, it'd be easy enough for someone who already had them all to make a big archive, but personally as some games interest  me more than others, I have  just got the ones I tend to like.
EG I love the trick taking games like prediction whist, but solitare style games have always boggled me a bit.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-09-27 19:10:24

Spoonbill's site has links to pages with downloadable crosswords on them, some free, some paid. Plus since BG Crosswords supports industry standard formats like *.puz, you should be able to google for downloadable crossword puzzles and find more sources.

For a single file with the entire Spoonbill collection, the first place I'd look is the audio games archive. Even if they don't have a single large file, all the Spoonbill games would be on one page which would make downloading all of them much easier than downloading them from Spoonbill's site.

I'm like Dark here, since I was interested in only a small handful of their games, I just downloaded the ones I wanted and left the rest.

2018-09-27 20:37:53

I dont like pozzle games but i'll try thees

2018-09-27 22:26:12

where is the readme for the alchemy game?

2018-09-27 23:01:32

@Diegogaribay you can usually alwyas get the instructions in any spoonbill games by hitting f1.

@Orko, I looked at those links. One site appeared to have   standard, none cryptic crosswords,  for download, but lots of other seemed really random, requiring their own software or some complicated payment system.

I'm not against paying for the things if they'd work, though your probably right that maybe just googling crosswords in the correct format might be a better result.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-09-27 23:02:10

Spoonbill Software actually has a games installer which can be downloaded here. Just run the program, select the blind category and the games you want to install. About the Audiogames Archive, we actually don't host or link to the games. See this page for an explanation.

Oh no! Somebody released the h key! Everybody run and hide!

2018-09-28 00:04:54

Alchemy sounds pretty cool, I'm definitely going to give that a try. Hangman I'm a little less enthused about, simply because there are a lot of hangman games out there already, but considering how well-developed the titles by this developer are, I'll probably try it anyway.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-09-28 23:36:56

Oh yes! I love SP games, so I'll give them a try.
@orko, thank you for the announcement of this release!
As SP didn't release any game since the last year or so, I didn't check the website.

2018-09-29 02:22:23

I don't routinely check their web site either. I just did it on a whim. But since it appears that they aren't doing email updates and announcements any more, perhaps I'll have to get into the habit of checking their site for new games every couple of months.

2018-10-01 23:32:20

Oh in fact I am glad to tell you that SP didn't release two new games but three instead. The third one is called BG Tablic Solitaire.
Here goes the description:
Released March 2018

Tablic is a card game played in Serbia and other countries of the former Yugoslavia. Each player has a hand of cards and there is a layout of face up cards on the table. Each player in turn plays a card. If its value matches the value of a card or cards in the layout, the played card and the matched cards are captured and placed face down in front of the player. If the card played does not match, it is added to the layout and the turn passes. There are normally either two players, or four players in fixed partnerships, partners sitting opposite each other. B G Tablic Solitaire is based on the Serbian game, and as its name suggests, it is a game for a single player.

This game is blind accessible, but as usual with Spoonbill Software's blind accessible games, graphics are provided for the benefit of visually impaired players.
The game is included in the same installer, which was linked by Slender.
Sorry for my very very bad English, and hope it could be useful or something...

2018-11-11 19:31:22

Okay this threadcromancy is just to say I've started giving these a try and creating db pages.
Tablic solitare Index page here is actually really cool.
I don't usually care for solitare games because I can never get my head around how the spacial thing works with all those columns and such, but this game is completely different.

Its basically all about counting values of cards and playing strategically with your hand (I tried to give a good explanation on the db page). Actually it reminds me a little of cribbage but its easier than that.

I tried the game out for the Db but will probably keep it around and give it another go occasionally.

Then there is BG alchemy Page here

Okay this one is crippled by a really confusing description on the Spoonbill page, though the instructions are fairly clear.
Basically think of a cross between Uno and four in a row.
Actually, what is odd is that the spacial thing isn't quite as complicated in this one as it sounds, particularly with how the game has lots of keys to jump around the board and show you different things.
I played two games, one sitting at my monitor taking advantage of the high contrast graphics, one with my monitor turned off just on headphones, and I found the game more than playable with headphones alone.

My only real criticism is that if you use the shift arrows to always automatically jump to the top scoring spot, the game almost becomes too easy, since usualy the only things you have to choose between are where to put different runes, and of course with rune types your always at the whim of the god of randomness.

Okay, up next is BG Hangman, which is sort of ironic since I was playing the Huboodle version the other day, and also BG boxes, then we'll be uptodate with the BG games once again.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-11-11 20:49:27

always heard of Spoonbill games, but never played them, can dark or anyone recommend any good ones, other than the 3listed??

can i get a peace double harmony burger? no chaos

2018-11-11 21:08:08

I really like these, however I only wish the developer added screen reader support to them. Would make it quite easier to play. Anybody knows if he reads these forums or should I just try contacting him directly or perhaps he already answered that?

2018-11-11 23:26:36

@smoothgunner, the spoonbill games are very well designed and generally always come with lots of stuff like complete options, good documentation  clear ways of interacting with the game, EG lots of review keys or alternative ways of reporting information

All tend to fall in the traditional games/card games/puzzle games genre, (well accept for the cricket game), so if your looking for a complex rpg or a huge action fest these are probably not the games for you.

On the other hand, as I said the design has always been very good and a lot of the games are handy brain exercises.

I'd not say its so much what games I'd recommend, as what games you personally would like.
I for example have never got my head around solitare games, and I find a lot of the board games like Chess, scrabble, boggle and psudocu a bit difficult to play on computer without a physical board.

On the other hand, I really like some of the card games like cribbage, hearts and noimination whist, (one reason I quite enjoyed Tablic solitare), and my lady absolutely loves the crossword game.

So, I'd say it depends more on looking at the games descriptions and seeing what might appeal to you personally.

@nidza07, I get the feeling that when Ian Humphreys began making the game screen reader support was more difficult to add than it became, I know he's been asked about it before.
I don't know if it would be harder to add to the games at this point, or whether he knows about things like the Tolk library etc, so it might be worth having a conversation if nothing else, Ian Hmphreys was always good about answering his emails, though I've not communicated with him personally for quite a while.

I've never minded using microsoft Sapi myself, I had to do it a lot of the time when supernova was my primary screen reader anyway so it doesn't bother me too much, heck, when I first  ran into Microsoft Sapi enabled titles and played Jim Kitchin's games back in 2006, I couldn't get any voice to work but Microsoft Sam and assumed that "sam" and "Sapi" were two names for the same thing until I finally realised other voices were available big_smile.

After playing game of life with Sam, pretty much anything is a relief big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-11-12 01:08:41

I wonder if he'll ever do that bg adventure thing that was on the wishlist for a while, I think it was going to be a simple rpg-type thing with levelups and fighting monsters and things, I don't think it would have been too complex though but who knows, maybe the idea got abandoned.

2018-11-12 01:29:22

Thanks for the info dark. I don't mind playing with sapi either, heck if he says no I cannot add screen reader support for whatever reason I would just continue playing his games normally, was just thinking that he might just not be aware of it so will definitely try contacting him.

2018-11-12 09:01:40

@Aaron, I thought when he said "BG ADventure he meant the colossal  version not an rpg, though I could be wrong.
I suspect rpgs are just less of his thing, even if you look at his sighted games, they're basically all either atari style fast action games or strategic puzzle games.

I do think though he would be great at creating his own strategy games given all of the stuff he's built previously, imagine if he made a conquest game like risk, a ccg, or a resource management game for example.

As I said on the db entry I believe BG Alchemy is a completely original concept, in which case he's likely building his own games now, so we'll see what he comes up with next.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-11-14 16:58:39

Would love a card battler.

2018-11-16 18:44:54 (edited by Dark 2018-11-16 18:46:24)

Okay I've now finished trying out BG Hangman and BG boxes and have added them to the db.

I admit on a personal level I'm a tad disappointed in BG Hangman.
Firstly, because the spoonbill version doesn't give you any categories at all so you have no damn idea what the word is.
For example, I had leters a l t e with a blank at the beginning and the end and about three guesses left. I first said "r" and that was wrong, and then guessed d.

So there I was blank, a l t e d.

I tried "balted", and it was wrong. So what? I did guess "halted" which turned out to be right, but good grief!
And then there was the time I got the word wrong since honestly unless you are particularly told your supposed to be looking at christian precepts  how many people use the word nuncio in casual conversation?
I suspect Ian Humphries just has the one dictionary which he uses for a lot of his games, but while it seems a great and extensive dictionary for the scrabble, boggle or anagram type games, in this instance maybe a wee bit of focusing would've helped.

And if this isn't extreme enough, then there is the hard version where you have to guess each repeated letter on its own, which I haven't even tried given that the easy version was so nutty.

Really, I confess having played the Huboodle version recently, which has extensive categories, points and all that jaz I'm a trifle disappointed here, especially since unlike Jim Kitchin's hangman there is no alteration in number of guesses, to make life easier its the usual nine or bust.

Then again, its not as if we were really in need of another Hangman game anyhow.

I then tried BG Boxes which is a very well put together game, but just not one that I can really get my head around. I understand the principle and Ian Humphries has done his usual great job with the access, but I have no idea how one would stratogise in such a game.
I did beat the computer on easy level, but I suspect that was more because the easy computer plays like a moron than anything I was doing.

As I said, I definitely understand how the game  in principle, I just don't really get how the strategy works in practice, but as I've said  before grid based spacial logic games are not exactly my strong suit, so other people will probably get more out of this than I do.

And now we're uptodate with the Spoonbill games oncemore hurrah!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)