2021-03-01 18:32:49

Hi.
This game is not totally new, but I don't remember it has been shared or mentioned here on the forum yet.
The game is short, the controls are a bit weird but in my opinion, the sounds and voices are pretty great.
Here is the description:

Sting: An Audio Detective Game.
Sting is a single-player, audio-focused detective game designed to be accessible to blind and visually impaired players. In Sting, players take on the role of Detective Keith Martin, the first blind detective assigned to the Denver Police Department’s Covert Encounter Task Force (CETF). As Martin, players are responsible for managing a network of audio bugs placed throughout a criminal syndicate’s base of operations. During a police “sting” operation, it is up to players to discover the identity of the syndicate’s leader, the illusive Cerberus, before the syndicate catches on.

Link:
https://jousting-weapon.itch.io/sting

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.
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2021-03-01 18:54:56

Never heard of this, so this is new to me. I wonder if this is worth streaming.

Much less active on this forum than in the past.

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2021-03-01 19:32:36

why, should, avry, char, be, blind, in, our, games

"But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker?  Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?"

2021-03-01 21:28:04

The blindness didn't bother me at all here. It's used logically, that's the difference to other games with blind main chars.
But to be honest, I don't get this game at all. The rest of this post will be spoilers, not directly for the case, but for the gameplay:
This game is so unbelievably short, you can play through it in about three minutes. This is not really a problem, because they just tried something and that's always cool. But solving the case is done by answering two questions. I mean, two questions? Really?
Even answering those two questions correctly would feel good and would feel like you really investigated something cleverly, but Playing through the game without knowledge of prior playthroughs is pure luck, because it's not really possible for you to know which bug to listen to at which time. And answering correctly after the second or third time investigating doesn't feel good anymore. It just feels like answering randomly, even though you might finally know what's going on.
This all sounds so damn negative and discouraging, but it's really not meant that way. I love the idea, it has great potential. But I can't overlook the fact that the execution here didn't work for me.
For an example of essentially the same idea in a game for sighted players, definitely check out Unheard. I love that game, it wouldn't even be very difficult to make this accessible I think. In this game, you're a police investigator testing a new investigation method. The places of the crimes have bugs in every room and they record the moment of the crime. Initially, you get a list of persons which are there at this moment, but you don't know which voice belongs to which name. Your first task is to listen carefully and match the names. The subtitles will use the names you matched to show you who's talking at the moment, so if you did it wrong, the subtitles will be false. Then, at the end of each case, you have to answer a few questions, just like in sting. But this has two great advantages over sting:
First: Considering the name matching and the questions, there are many, many different wrong answers here. It's not possible to just go through every answer until it works.
Second, and this is a huge advantage: Since this is not live but recorded instead, you can go back through the recording as often as you like, checking out different rooms or following different people around every time. The game does never force you to give an answer, it patiently waits until you think you have cracked the case. This makes the stories so much more immersive and interesting.

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.

2021-03-01 23:35:20

@Liam: Yeah, why not stream it, but it'll only take you 5/10 minutes to complete.
@targor: I agree. I also had the feeling that I missed something because the game is so damn short.
@amir tajik: Why, do, you, write, your, posts, with, commas, between, each, words, which, makes, the, text, extremely, difficult, and, annoying, to, read, with, screenreaders? Please, stop, doing, that, because, this, is, really, annoying. I, guess, it's, because, you, like, the, word, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind,

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.
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2021-03-02 01:35:18

amir tajik and SLJ, don't fight fire with fire my friends. Just leave it alone please, I didn't come here for that.

@amir tajik personally I have no issue with games being about blind characters. I mean, sure it gets old, but if I let things like that bother me on a regular basis, I would be kind of miserable.

I haven't tried the game, and judging by what targor said I don't think it would really interest me, but hey, if there's something new and maybe innovative in there, then hats off to the dev all the same.

Going a bit off topic here... but I feel like lately, old devs are trying old stale formulas, or new devs are trying new things which need polishing but never get it. I mean it's not a given, there are definitely exceptions, but yeah, and I'm generally really open to new games if I think the preface is interesting. But I'm really starting to feel how difficult it is for us as a community to make deep games for lack of a better word. But I'm not giving up hope, there are certainly many great games out there still and many to come.

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2021-03-02 09:39:20

But SLJ's post made me laugh like crazy lol anyway thanks for sharing this.

Kind regards!

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2021-03-02 15:02:20

I thaught my screen reader got stuck saying the word blind haha.
Will give this a try anyways

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2021-03-02 23:33:34

why does he have to be blind? hey it's an audio game so lets  just automatically make the main char blind. derp.

2021-03-03 00:35:40

okay given this a try.
Actually, in this instance I don't mind the main character being blind, since the game actually makes him a "character", who is blind, I.e., a police consultant with a distinct set of skills, not just generic blind protagonist who uses their amazing blindness to blindly succeed by the power of their awesome blindosity!
Or to put it another way, there is at least something else to the protagonist than the fact that he is (as Slj put it), blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, and maybe just a  little bit a bit blind as well big_smile.

I also like the idea of the gameplay, getting 6 bugs and having to switch places. The game is unforgiving, but then again, that's sort of the point, since this is very much a one shot test, and doping out all the little twists of who is who and why is part of the point, indeed even though I did get one of the questions right first time and thus know the answer, I intend to have a few more goes through this just to get the ins and outs of the scene and catch all the wheeling and dealing, since I think I utterly missed one of the crooks.
Indeed, if I have one miner criticism, it's that following the narrative is a little hard when there are several stories going on at once, but then again, that is the point, indeed ideally it might be nice to have several questions which by definition could not all be answered on one playthru since the information needed to answer them would need to be got by listening to different bugs.

yes, it might be cool if there were more questions, more stages or a little more, but hay I appreciate what is put together here, and maybe the devs will work on this formula for the future, indeed, i'll give them points just for trying something quite new.

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.)

2021-03-03 09:49:51

Hi.
I'm glad some people like my small joke, hahaha.
I'm pretty much okay with the character is blind. For me, it feels more natural that it's an audiogame, rather than a sighted character audio describing for blind players what's going on.

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

2021-03-03 18:55:14

@SLJ, I, think, he, put, commas, between, each, word, to, convay, extra, stress, and, emotion, in, his, sentence. And, I agree the blind thing can be annoying at times, but they can be done correctly. I feel the Vail does a decent job at it. On the flip side, an audiogame that does a decent job of making you feel like you barely miss anything is AHC. I know it gets alot of fire for the nav system but it helps not making you feel like a blindie blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, person, that, is, blind.

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2021-03-08 16:59:21

Hey everyone!  I'm Lance, one of the developers of Sting: An Audio Detective Game.  If you have any questions or comments you'd like to make about the game, I'm more than willing to answer and hear you out!  I appreciate all of the support immensely.  smile

2021-03-08 23:12:36

Hi Joust, and welcome to the forum.
I really like the idea of the game here, and credit for trying something new.

My only miner issue is that there isn't more to discover from the bugs, or more questions to answer, and that there are only two questions to be answered, but as a twisty exercise in audio story telling this worked very well, and I'd be interested to see more in the future.

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.)

2021-03-09 09:17:33

Hi Joust.
Welcome to the forum. It's great to see you here. Do you expect to improve the game in the future, or maybe make more audiogames?

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

2021-03-09 19:02:56

Dark,
I'm glad you enjoy it, and I'll be the first to admit that it's not perfect.  The game was made by me, one other developer, and 4 other voice actors over the course of about 4 months.  As such, we weren't able to fully polish the final product.  Since we had a significant amount of overhead and direction to deal with that wasn't inherently related to the game, adding more questions (and other needed features) couldn't be done easily.  But enough about that, I don't want to make excuses. smile

We absolutely want to add more to the game and get it in a much more polished and fleshed out state.  All in all, Sting was more of a proof of concept to see if we could build something that remotely resembled our original vision.   I won't go into great detail, but our pipeline required an immense amount of planning to ensure that we could have all of the asynchronous scenes line up correctly.  Now that we have a great deal of experience under our belt, building a more complete version should be far easier. 

SLJ,
While we don't plan on directly expanding Sting (because of how we wrote the story, the narrative doesn't cater itself well to future development) we absolutely plan on developing more audio games.  As mentioned above, the most likely "continuation" of Sting would be a much more fleshed out spiritual successor.  Since the base-game is essentially one level, the successor would be more of a complete package, with multiple levels and an overarching narrative.

I would implore both of you to take a look at the game Unheard (on Steam) which largely inspired Sting's direction.  Unheard is an excellent example of an incredibly fleshed out version of our game, that, although not blind accessible, is VERY polished and immensely fun.

2021-03-10 09:54:47

Hi.
@Joust: Thanks for your great answer. I'll take a look at Unheard.

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