Hi, I am new here! I have been trying to find websites dedicated to PC games for the blind for a while, and it was surprisingly hard to find one. First: I am not blind myself, but I have developed a game which now features an alternative user interface for blind players. The interface has been tested by only one blind player so far, but he said it works well (but there is still room for improvement left).
Of course, blind people are unlikely to stumble about my game by accident so I tried to find a site to promote the game. Now, I have read the rules of this forum including the "no advertisements" rule. However, I have browsed the forum a little and it seems that some forms of advertisement are actually tolerated. The recent "New Mud" post was not deleted for example. So I guess "no advertisement" really means "no off-topic spam"? Whatever, I am going to post this but I will promise not to post promotion stuff again should this post be deleted.
My game is non-commercial BTW so I am not getting any money out of this anyway, but let us talk about the game now.
The game is called "Warp Rogue". Warp Rogue is a gothic science fantasy roguelike game. It features RPG-like game mechanics, recruitable NPCs, and a consistent theme.
You may not know what a "roguelike" game is. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike
In fact I was surprised to find out that roguelike games are not discussed here, because of their traditional text-based interface they are usually quite accessible for blind people (like MUDs). I have met multiple blind roguelike players on USENET in the past!
Because the standard version of my game does not use plain text output, I wrote an alternative interface especially designed for the blind after someone complained. It was an interesting coding challenge and a test for how well I have managed to seperate the UI from the game mechanics.
The game is still in development, but despite the version number it is fully playable and winable. The low version number is mostly the result of my long term "pie in the sky" goal of an RPG featuring a randomly created world (or even multiple worlds) and quests. Right now the game features only one quest. Very much a "dungeon crawler", but it has a unique theme (no elves in here!). Oh the game is hopelessly focused on combat, so friends of complex dialogs and NPC interaction will have to look elsewhere.
You can download the game here (be sure that you get the FTB version!):
http://todoom.sourceforge.net/
(NOTE: the game could be considered unsuitable for children because of its grim theme and in-game violence)
Please tell me what you think and fell free to request further interface improvements. The only think I cannot change is the structure of the game world. I.e. it is based on "tiles", and I cannot translate the world into sentences (like in a text adventure). Instead the world is displayed using ASCII symbols e.g. '#' is a wall, '.' is a floor tile, '=' is water. This is the common style of display used by roguelikes, it takes some time getting used to if you have to parse it using a screenreader AFAIK, but as I have said there are multiple blind roguelike players so it is certainly possible.
Unfortunately the interface tester of the FTB version disappeared before the fine tuning was finished. So I would like to use this opportunity to ask for help. Warp Rogue is a free, GPL/open source game and you can help to improve the for the blind version by supporting the project as a tester. Contact me if you are interested.
Regards,
copx