Hey folks, wanted to go semi-public about this project I've been working on for a while now.
Godot is an open source game engine in the spirit of something like Unity, by which I mean you create games in a graphical environment. So it's a bit more complicated than just editing scripts, but it has some key advantages:
Godot has a bunch of ready-to-go classes for just about any game development task you might imagine. No need to hunt up and integrate some external library. 3-D audio? Check. Multi-player networking? Check. There's even upcoming Web RTC support for chat and multi-player browser-based games if you like.
Multi-platform. Godot won't make your games playable on a touchscreen if you've developed for keyboards/joysticks. But you can at least run your code on Linux, Windows (desktop and universal), MacOS, Android, iOS, and the web. And UWP support means games should run on the Xbox One. Ports to other consoles are also possible if you're willing to hand off code to a third party with the necessary dev kits and signed NDAs.
A solid community with lots of documentation and helpful folks. Unfortunately, due to Godot being graphical, many of the tutorials contain screenshots. But at least they exist, and are accessible with help.
Anyhow, I've built a screen reader in Godot's built-in scripting language. I've managed to get enough of the editor accessible that I'm able to build games on my own, albeit with the help of external tools like VSCode to make up for the inaccessible built-in editor. The same screen reader also runs inside of Godot games, and makes their menus and other UI components accessible. Basic touchscreen accessibility also works, and text-to-speech is confirmed working under Linux, HTML 5, and Android and likely works under Windows as well, but I can't test this because I only have a VM and can't get hardware-accelerated GL working. I've exported the little Asteroids-like shooter I've made to my desktop, the web, and my Android phone, and while it isn't yet playable under Android until I build an accessible touchscreen joystick, it shouldn't be hugely difficult. But the game and GUI do work on the web, which I thought was pretty damned impressive given that all I had to do was create JavaScript implementations of my TTS functions.
Before I drop links, I'll note that this isn't yet a polished experience, and I'm not going to pour lots of support time into helping folks jumping ship from BGT and thinking this is their next alternative. As an example of what I mean, I often use the editor to create scenes to get started, but they're just INI files with a slightly less human-friendly format. Eventually I hope to make the editor more usable, but if you aren't capable of looking at an INI file and reasoning your way through how to set some values, this isn't for you. This isn't the newest, greatest way to build games. I've simply decided that the extra hoops and added complications are an acceptable trade-off for the possibility of easily releasing audio games on a handful of platforms, including the Xbox. But if you're looking for a fun and experimental new way to build audio games, and don't mind rolling up your sleeves and helping out, give this a look.
The easiest way to get up and running is probably via the accessible starter. Cloning that with --recursive gives you a basic starter game with the accessibility addon in the correct directory. You'll need to download the latest godot-tts builds as per the README to get Linux/Windows binaries, but once done, running "godot" in the checkout should speak "Hello, world." and give you a blank starter game. Otherwise, the plugin repository gets you directly to the addon without the starter template. It's probably a good idea to read the README there, as it contains a list of known gotchas and rough edges.
Enjoy, and I'm looking forward to finding collaborators to help me improve this. I'm also planning on launching a few games based on this work, and would really like to build it out into a tool that empowers blind and sighted game developers to collaborate on building even better accessible games.
Thanks for reading.