2017-07-24 18:13:15 (edited by rachelrhetoric 2017-07-24 18:14:41)

Hey AudioGames.Net, I wanted to let the community here know about a project I've been working on with a bunch of veteran game devs. Our team includes Dave Grossman, who worked at LucasArts and Telltale Games, Eddy Webb of White Wolf/The Onyx Path (he wrote for Vampires: The Masquerade), and Jonathon Myers of Zynga and Disruptor Beam. (I'm the Earplay comm director - not a game dev vet, just a longtime PC gamer nerd-type.)

We're excited to announce that our new platform for interactive audio stories - like a choose your own adventure book, in audio format! (Website: https://www.earplay.com/)
Earplay Logo

Earplay is available on smart speakers and voice assistant-enabled devices, for both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. There's also a standalone iOS app on the app store. Enabling the Earplay platform is free, and all of our demos and preview content are free as well. We'll be adding purchasable longform content, stories that will keep you audio adventuring for HOURS, in the next couple of months!

We're just getting started, so feedback from people who're longtime enthusiasts of audio games would be truly invaluable. If really engaging, roleplay-style narratives are your jam, try out a new kind of audio game with us, and let's build a brand new medium together!

Here's our website URL again: https://www.earplay.com/

We're also trying to get a reddit community started for interactive audio fans, so feel free to head in there and share links to your other favorite audio games. The rules are pretty lax so far. tongue http://reddit.com/r/earplay

If you're having trouble getting Earplay launched just reply here, or email me at [email protected], and I'll help ya out! Thanks for listening. <3

2017-07-24 18:29:08

Sounds very interesting. Do you have any plans to create a stand-alone app for Android?

“Can we be casual in the work of God — casual when the house is on fire, and people are in danger of being burned?” — Duncan Campbell
“There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God – admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.” — William Wilberforce

2017-07-24 19:33:07

Sorry to say that we don't. We're focusing our development efforts on the voice assistants since it's Amazon's speech recognition API we're using to interpret player responses. We're looking forward to Google Assistant being integrated with all upcoming Android releases, and hopefully backwards compatibility with older Android devices too.

If you don't have an Android that can use Google Assistant yet, you can still get a taste for our games! Earplay emerged out of our first experiment in interactive audio, Codename Cygnus, which is about 7 episodes long. The Cygnus app is still on the Google Play store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta … namecygnus

We're not supporting the Cygnus apps anymore, but we're releasing Cygnus "Reactivated" with updated lines and voice prompts on the Earplay platform very soon. smile

2017-07-24 20:03:14

This sounds really cool! I just enabled it on my Echo and will explore the service once I finish setting it up.

Very excited, there aren't many interactive fiction skills available so this will be very nice to have.

2017-07-24 22:27:59

This is great! sadly, When I tried to reach Telltale games about their games ( as these are mostly playable for the blind) they just ignored me like I didn't send anything what is really, really bad. I hope they will open for more possibilities possibly in the future.


I am really interested in the Earplay though even if I more enjoy games with more possibilities like walking around, examining stuff etc.

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2017-07-24 22:35:47

I'm really excited! This seems like so much fun!
I got the games using the stand alone IOS app since I ditched my echo a few years ago. I played through the demo and love it!

skype name: techluver
Feel free to add me.

2017-07-24 22:40:25

Hi this sounds great.
I very much enjoyed codename signas and would love to see more in a similar vane, heck this might actually encourage me to see if I can get my anazmon ecco to work properly since thus far I've not found it much use for anything, ---- so long as the games are available in the Uk, otherwise I'll just play on my IPhone 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.)

2017-07-24 23:18:09

I am deeply thrilled that "Earplay" is now on Google Home, as my lady and I both enjoy the platform!

I myyself also have n LG K20 Plus where the pltform is available. My phone runs Android 7.0 Nougat.

Keep up the great work guys and gals!

2017-07-25 03:08:38

Hmmm.
looks like us pc users are out in the cold.
No games for us <sad >

2017-07-25 04:34:57

Sadly I must agree with Crashmaster and this is so sad companies like Telltale games are just ignoring us even if they games are perfect example of possible accessible titles, there's so much potential in it.

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2017-07-25 05:04:21

sounds cool keep up the hard work.

2017-07-25 06:09:23

crashmaster wrote:

Hmmm.
looks like us pc users are out in the cold.
No games for us <sad >

Well, not necessarily... smile

First off for configuring Alexa go to:

http://alexa.amazon.com

, followed by:

http://echosim.io

to interact with skills and the like.

2017-07-25 08:58:06

Hi and welcome on the forum.
I'm a huge fan of Codename Cygnus. I have known about your new project for quite a while, and have played the demos. It's really cool. My only complaint is to be forced to use the voice to play the games. I'm often at public places, where I don't wanna talk with my devices. smile
I have also contacted Telltale games regarding to making their games more accessible for blind people. I didn't got ignored, but got a reply back saying that they might look into this in the future. But nothing has happened so far. It's a huge shame because their games are beatable by blind people if you have extremely much patience. But exploration is very, very difficult and takes many hours, where sighted people just point and click to interact with people and objects. So I'm really exciting for this project...

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
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2017-07-25 16:38:33

Will the "reactivated" Codename Cygnus actually continue the story from where the iOS Cygnus app left off? Or will it just bring the currently released Cygnus episodes to the Earplay platform. I want Mission 2 that we've been waiting 3+ years for!
On a side note, I'm liking the weekly episotic comedy with the Earplay meeting on the platform. I'm hoping that "reactivated" is one of the stories released in August at some point, especially if it gives us what should've been mission 2 after we get through the new revised content.

2017-07-25 17:48:13 (edited by rachelrhetoric 2017-07-25 17:49:33)

Dearest Orko, and Dark, Chief Defenestrator (please do not defenestrate me!) - WOOP! So glad to hear so much enjoyment. We have many blind and visually impaired users already - the iOS app is Voiceover compatible and we're always looking for ways to make the VUI more friendly. As for UK users - Earplay DOES already work with the Alexa Devices in the UK! Google Assistant has just recently started rolling out support for en-GB with third party actions like ours, so UK users with Google Homes should be able to start Earplay without a problem very soon.

Thank you for pointing out the online Alexa sim, Trenton! We use it as a testing environment. smile It's a free tool. Lirin & crashmaster - you can use echosim.io to play Earplay from your PC. We're actually planning on having a full-function web application sometime down the road, so you can run any Earplay story from anything that can load a browser and connect a microphone.

Orin - we're so thankful to our Cygnus fans, who've been incredibly dedicated to our team and the medium over the past three years. "Reactivated" is only going to be a revamped Mission 1. We DEFINITELY have plans to create a Mission 2, but we've got a ton of other partnerships lined up that will be taking precedent at the moment - I'm most excited for Pugmire (DOGGOS!). In the future we'll be helping other writers and audio creators use our platform to create their stories.

Really glad you're liking the Committee!! I'm the Rachel that shows up in it. ;P We'd love to see more people voting every week!

2017-07-25 18:03:53

I never played Code Name Cygnus because I don't use my iPhone for game or media playing because with my kind of luck, when I really need it as a phone I will have burned up it's batteries with games and music.

So it really doesn't matter much to me whether Cygnus is continued on the Earplay platform or not, as long as it can be picked up without relying on the player having already played part 1, unless of course part one was also offered on the platform.

2017-07-25 23:00:55 (edited by hanif 2017-07-25 23:12:35)

hi everyone, I have ever played codename cygnus but never got in to all episodes of the game, I just played the prologue and I think the first episode.
I'm looking forward to play more stories in the future, especially as a telltale fans that we have finally got something similar to that the telltale stuff.
I aggree to SLJ, all of the telltale games are actually beatable, but most of the parts are a real hard, especially for explorations and some puzzles which take some hours to complete just one of the puzzles. I've just beatten 2 of their series and I'm still quite satisfied until now.
can't wait to try more of them when they release the games here, especially for the wolf among us (which I'm hoping that this series will be recreated in earplay) :lol
anyway, a suggestion: for future stories, it would be better if the story is played through several chapters in one episode, which can make the story a bit longer. also, it would be better if you add a tracking system through some servers or such things. this way, you can see your choices and compare it with others as well.

going in to the wilds, collecting pokedex, and capturing them are my kind of thing,
training them, making them evolve, and generally making them stronger is my ultimate goal,
fighting other manamon tamers, winning the tournament, and fighting octoros are what these manamons like to do,
and ultimately, I become the master of mana!

2017-07-26 16:18:05

I finally had a chance last night to sit down and have a nice chat with Earplay on my Echo. The demo was great in that it showed some of what was possible. Hafl was strange, it took me a couple of laps before I realized this story had no ending, but it was fun. And Code Name Cygnus though short left me hoping that the rest of its chapters or episodes would soon be available.

In all I thought the whole Earplay platform was a great idea and look forward to playing more of the stories that develop. Keep up the great work.

2017-07-26 21:05:54

Well for me.
A downloadable app would be nice.
Now granted if you can't make a standard desktop app maybe you can make some sort of app for the win10 universal platform.
I am going to be upgrading within the next 3 years to the windows 10 universal os.

2017-07-26 23:51:30

I tried the iOS app on my iPhone and loved it!
One problem I have is that when I start up some of the demos, when it asks me to say something the app crashes infrequently.
Running the app on an iPhone 6S running iOS 10.

“Can we be casual in the work of God — casual when the house is on fire, and people are in danger of being burned?” — Duncan Campbell
“There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God – admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.” — William Wilberforce

2017-07-27 01:17:48

There were a couple of times while I was playing with it that it seemed to just disappear and my background music resumed playing. I wasn't sure what happened but they could easily have been crashes.

Such as one time while playing Half, I responded that the glass was half full, then with no firther word or comment from Earplay my music resumed playing and I had to ask Alexa to open Earplay again to continue.

And now that I think about it, that's probably why my play of Code Name Cygnus ended so abruptly after I was extracted from the card game, it crashed, though I didn't realize it at the time.

2017-07-27 19:37:21

Hey everyone! Really glad you're reporting back - I've let our dev team know about the bugs and crashes. We're always working on making the platform more stable, since everything is hosted in the cloud it's still a little temperamental.

By the way, Orko, Half actually does have an ending! You just have to figure out how to get to it. Try taking different items with you into each "half" of the world. tongue

2017-07-28 18:10:28

Hi.
I have just tried the latest version, and here are my opservations:
1. Voiceover don't read what title of the game you are pressing play on. It just reads "Play" so you don't know what title you are choosing. I don't remember seeing this issue previously.
2. When I have to speak the very first command in Path, the game crashes. Voiceover don't even read the buttons on the screen, but jumps to the status line at the top. That means I can't play the game, and I'm forced to close the app by the app switcher.
It would be very nice to make the choices directly on the screen instead of being forced to use the voice commands. I look very much forward to see what's coming in the future.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2017-09-28 21:42:50

Did you all know that Earplay is going down! I heard one of there last shortwave broadcasts. Does anyone know what is next for this great startup?

2017-09-29 06:18:27

Hi.
Well I just found this topic today. I figured this is how the story would end. I don't like when things like this happen, but projects like this, which are not well thought out, usually go down sooner rather than later. Really this is just choice of games with sound. It would've been more compelling if they had tried to make an audio game, instead of making audio text adventures.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
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