Gotta say congrats on announcing a release date.
Regrettably I didn't partake in the kickstarter, but I'll be picking this one up on release day.
I've avoided most of the discussion so far and will be avoiding the forum topics after release at least for a little while, because I'm looking forward to a completely "blind" experience. I was, barring the developer, the first person in the world to play Paladin of the Sky. I was the second person in the world to have played Manamon. etc. So being able to start a game alongside the rest of the world with no prior information is a welcome opportunity.
I'll keep my questions to a minimum, because as I said I want to go into the game knowing as little about it in advance as possible. But I do have one question, pertaining to the graphics update when it comes out. Will the extra audio that makes the game accessible be something that can be toggled on and off at that point?
I must say the idea of a hybrid audiovisual game is exciting to me, and I look forward to playing it publicly on Twitch once the graphics update is available. I was one of the people who demonstrated a lot of struggling through mainstream games publicly during my teen years, in an effort to try and bridge the gap between blind and sighted gamers in hopes of raising awareness and encouraging the inclusion of accessibility features in games. So having the opportunity to fully experience a game that sighted players alike enjoy in public to show people the benefit accessible games have on people will be a most rewarding opportunity.

To be honest, due to my failed attempts at getting sighted friends into audiogames, I was a little unsure about how this was going to work out on places like steam. But now i think i know what you plan to do. Correct me if i'm wrong, but it sounds like on the 29th your releasing it to us as an audiogame, then once the full graffic version is released, you will release it on steam, playstation store, or places like that as an rpg? And not really advertise the accessibility features? By that time blind people will have already played it, so we'd be able to go on public forums and rdddit posts and talk about the game with sighted gamers? If this is what you plan to do, I am very, very excited for the future.

Too, bored like the rest of you nothing really entertains me now when it comes to gaming, of course there are awesome games out there but many of us have had enough of them. Currently a bit sticking to Crazy Party, oh and let me try edc. can't wait until dec29

Hey Josef,
I have a question about how the game's DRM will work, as I will be getting a new PC in the first days of 2018, so will I be able to play on my new PC or I will have to wait till I get it, and then buy the game?

So many questions!

#82, BlindJedi: You're pretty close, except for a couple of important points. First, while we hope to release the game on other platforms once the graphics are done, we can't guarantee anything because that's partially not in our hands. Also, it's not accurate to say that we won't mention the accessibility features. We think it's appropriate, and important, for people to know that this game is fully accessible to blind players. I've had conversations with some folks involved in accessibility efforts in the industry who have said that being able to point to a game like AHC as a way forward for fully inclusive gaming could be tremendously important, so we wouldn't want to hide that fact.

#83 Valmorian: User customization can only be carried so far before it becomes too much of a burden on developers. When you consider the tremendous amount of content our sound designer has had to generate, I'm sure you'll understand why we aren't considering multiple sets of radar sounds. Not to mention the fact that this short-circuits any tutorial efforts since we can't say, "This sound means X" when there could be two or three sounds that mean X. As for DLC and other content, time will tell.

#85 LordLundin: Heck no you don't get the steak dinner if it's a speed-run, lol. Because at that point the game will already have given you far more than an hour or two of entertainment. That said, I'd actually be surprised if anybody could speed run the game in under two hours anyway—I certainly can't. Some of our testers have been a little grouchy about the fact that there are certain things about the game that actually make speed running fairly difficult. I'm not too bothered by it, though.

As for your cinematic suggestions, you and I clearly think alike. I'll be totally up front and let you know that the comment about adding different foley to your footsteps based on character gear is something I suggested to Drew and would love to see happen—but realistically, we seriously doubt there will be time to implement it. This is a great example of the fact that you could honestly keep developing a game forever and never release it, if you want to include every possible idea. Game development is a constant dance of managing priorities, and sadly this is a pretty low priority item, in spite of the added immersion it would add.

As for hearing your party members follow you around, this won't be the case for a number of reasons, some technical (getting your party to actually follow you requires a bit more sophisticated AI movement than we're ready for at this point), and practical (the added sound, that close to your character, can be problematic, and having your party members physically appear on the map could get very annoying when trying to locate other containers and units around you).

#86–87: I can't say anything about DRM right now simply because that's something that's still being tweaked, and I'm very much not involved in that discussion. I can say that we'll provide info about DRM before we release, so that you know how best to proceed, but I can't say anything with confidence on how exactly it will shake out—other than we will try to provide an option that gives the best possible balance between security and user-friendliness.

the hole problem with interacting with containers thing is what I had so much trouble with in kotor, because the party members would get in the way, so I can definitly understand that

Thanks for your answer regarding the accessibility features being able to be turned on and off. That makes me really excited for an educational series I plan to do on twitch and youtube. I'll do two playthroughs in parallel; one where I play normally with accessibility (and graphics shown) and a second where I turn off the accessibility and try to struggle through the game as best I can with traditional resources like memory, prewritten instructions and trial/error like I had to do in Zelda and other mainstream games.
I had a pretty loyal following on Youtube back in the day so I trust I could reach a fair few people. This will hopefully help to shed some light on the importance of game accessibility and to dispel the annoying age old myth that adding accessibility to a game equals completely rewriting and watering down the experience for sighted players.
@LordLundin: It's nice to see that there are a couple others among us who are interested in speed running.
I would love to see this game make it to RPG Limit Break. Now that would be another major step forward.

@Joseph you should still add the clothes russling sound without adhering to if it has light or heavy armor, just a very generic thing. If that's not the case already of course. Check out RTR as a good example.

@Trajectory wrong. Mainstream games for the most part are actually aware of speedrunning and if their game can allow that they modify it in return. It is common practice regardless of speedrun or not to leave little exploits around for the user to find out.

@Muhammad Hajjar I disagree, a good game with speedrunning possibilities can prolong the life of the game for quite some time as extreme speedrunners try to compete with one another for who can complete it the fastest.
Not that I think speedrunning is a major thing here in the blind community, no one shouldn't really focus on it.

@Joseph could you see yourself maintaining development after the game is released? Other than bugfixes and so, like a post-game or continued story or something.

#98 LordLundin: This is a question we've gotten a number of times and the simple answer is: I don't know. There is only so much time available to our team and we're going to have to make that decision based on what time is available to us as we pursue work on future projects as well. Now, if AHC sells 500,000 copies and we can all quit our day jobs and start a full-time development studio...that will be a different matter. But in the world of realistic possibilities, we're going to have to make that call based on how things fall into place in the future. Hopefully that makes sense.