OK, so there's a few things which are sticking out in this thread to me at least:
Personally, I - presumably like others - am a developer. I spend my days on Google figuring out things. When I do play a game, I don't want to fight with the game to get past the main menu. ShadowLine might be the best game ever built, but I've got to bugger about so much, that it takes away from the enjoyment of the thing.
Secondly, many people have talked about a lack of ideas, and general stagnation, and yes, that's probably true. I've personally never been able to see enough to play "normal" video games, so I personally can't draw inspiration from that particular quarter. My inspiration comes from Shades of Doom, Tank Commander, and Swamp, because they're the best things I've ever played. I would imagine many other devs who have either been blind from birth, or never had enough usable sight to play games made for sighted people are in the same boat. How can you get new and fresh ideas when there's so little to experience outside of the available audio gaming titles that don't require a whole day of pissing about to play?
Next, where is the tooling? We have Lucia, which is trying to pick up where BGT left off, and uses the (in my opinion inferior) Pygame. I find its documentation hard to navigate, and it just doesn't look like the slick API I'm looking for.
We have Sable, which doesn't count since it's not ready for purchase yet, and - int its current incarnation - requires deactivating your antivirus which I won't do for anyone.
I've personally spent so much time writing Earwax so that I can create better games, that I now can't really be arsed to make the games I originally started writing Earwax for. Also, I don't have the knowledge of maths to create the ground-breaking games that people crave. I could *probably* get something like Tank Commander down given a few weeks. Think Shades of Doom is beyond me. I could probably do Swamp also, minus some of the clever tools like the building helper, and I could probably iron out some of the niggling problems I have found with it, like sounds happily propagating through walls..
Finally... At the risk of being a massive dick, while you're all writing messages on this thread, complaining that the available audio games are rubbish, you're not coming up with viable alternatives. Yes, I know not everyone can code, but honestly, if you can't do any better, don't complain haha.
I've seen so many topics on the new releases room where folks have put something out there, only to be told it's boring, or unimaginative or whatever. Doesn't exactly inspire people to release stuff. In fact, especially when much of the stuff is free, it frankly comes across as ungrateful.
If someone does release something, and god forbid thinks about getting some cash to remunerate them for all their hard work and energy, magically nobody has any money. I'm sure that's true in some cases, but seriously, *NO* money? Even 15 year olds have birthdays and christmases where they get given money. Adults have the power to save $10 a month, just don't buy a bloody pizza one weekend, or live without Apple Music for a month. It's not hard.
Also, there have been some topics where people post a great new idea they've got. I know some people come with "I want to make this horror game, and I need one of you to code it for me, one of you to do the sounds, and one of you to write the story". Many people though, have great ideas. Yes, they might not be perfect, because they're first drafts. But instead of bashing their creators for copying other ideas (ever heard of the word trope?) try encouraging them, or giving them constructive feedback, help keep them excited. Even if they don't code the game, that idea might spark something in someone else.
Even if everyone else stops making audio games, I shall continue to make them, because I enjoy them. My wife also enjoys them, because she can't see enough to react quickly enough to play mainstream games, and doesn't do well with fast text to speech. No amount of speech software, or high contrast graphics are going to change that.
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I have code on
GitHub