I suppose I'm in the minority here, but I like that the game doesn't talk. Most audio games are too verbose as it is.
Being able to learn the game sounds directly rather than through description would help, though. It could be done with a pre-recorded menu rather than sapi or screen reader support (I never had much luck getting either of those to work with java, but they can be done if absolutely necessary.).

I couldn't tell what the potions did, so I just pressed j on each one hen I was injurred and when I heard the haert beat sound get lower, I knew I had found the health potion. Also I couldn't find any spells except that rock throwing spell. Also I don't know whether armor is automatically equipped if it's better, same with weapons. There is no inventory category for them.

Hi jahed.

Just coming to this one, it's downloading now, thanks for the game it sounds great.

As a few pointers however on audio game design generally.

visually, most sighted people see by direct perception, ie, an object is instantly identifyable. The same is not true for sound, at least not for most sounds, thus a learn game sounds feature is pretty standard for most audio games especially the more complex ones.

I would also strongly suggest that if your game is intended as an adventure/rpg game, ie, one powered by at least some level of statistics, it might be wiser to rely upon speech to get things like accurate measures of character health and status, and that of items, especially if you are planning a game with heavy random number generation and a lot of   variety in it's items and attributes, indeed the more ffeatures and items and the  the more randomness, the better.

i will try the game properly now, but those are my initial thoughts.

Hi I've played one round as well and can confirm darks impressions. I will post the questionaire filled out later. I think if you add more navigation helpers and the ability to make side stepps it will be great and if it gets expanded even more. Maybe you could add a key mapper were we can decide wich key does wich action. I usualy move the characters in a game with the arrow keys. The controls  were a bit tricky for me at the beginning.
So, I send you the questionaire as an e-mail. And like I said there, the movement control could be seen as a challenge.

Its java-based because that was the programming language chosen.

hi jahed, whn I try to louder the sound of the door, room, or telporter, why when I walk forward when the sund is louder why the sound quiet again?

Sorry for the late reply, guys. I had a busy day yesterday. Thanks for all the feedback again. The project is due soon so I'll be putting some of this feedback (anonymously) into my final report.

Because of the interest, once my exams are over near the end of May, I'll trying getting my university's permission to make this open source so that I can work on it further, implement some of your recommendations and maybe even give the game a proper name!

I'm trying not to use speech in the game, but that sounds like what I've been trying with the radar. Maybe I could have radar upgrades on later levels to detect non-enemy objects. However, that may make the game too easy, it'll just mean instead of exploring, you'll mainly just be waiting for that signal.

Currently all non-enemy objects do make sounds when you're 3 squares away from them, maybe I should expand that range?

That's exactly what I'm trying to aim for in terms of not relying on speech. I'll be adding a menu in the next release. Looks like it's an important requirement to fix the game's learning curve.

Items by definition can't block your movement.

If it's not a sleeping enemy, it's likely a teleport blocking the opposite side. This is a known bug since previously teleports didn't use to block movement but I switched that recently without changing the teleport placement code. But in that case you should still hear and have access to the teleport and wind.

That's strange. If it's a common problem, I may need to update the logging so if it does happen, I'll have enough information to figure out the problem.

Weapons and armour, no matter which you pick up, is automatically worn. So it's more about learning to pick up the right one by listening to the pitch differences using 'O' to check your current armour and 'L' to check the armour on the floor.

Your old equipment isn't dropped down to prevent confusion like "is this my old armour? or am I somewhere new?". However, I'm still on the fence with that. Do you think it's better to drop your current armour and wear the new one? Or dispose the current one completely?

An armour and sword menu would be a bit redundant at the moment since the only difference is their strength and defence so if it's higher you'd just use that one, no need to switch between them.

In terms of not knowing how much each potion heals and which heals what (health or stamina), this will hopefully be fixed with a help menu explaining some of the sounds.

Thanks for the pointers. That's a major problem I've been having with the game. With no speech, it's really hard to put in complex stats in the game without making it even more complicated. Since the aim is to not use speech, I'm pretty much stuck with it. However, that is one of the aims of the project, i.e. to discover the limitations. I might get around to adding speech and more stats later though after the project has been formally assessed.

Are you using Windows? I've ran the game using the BAT file in most Windows versions and they've worked fine. Are you using Java 7 (the latest version)?

I'm using Java because it's just what I'm comfortable with I guess. Swamp is a lot more complex than this game and the programmer is likely a lot more experienced. Also, this is not really a release build, it's more to get initial feedback like an alpha version, so I don't want to mess with people's computers outside the game's folder with installers and such.

It depends where the sound is. Say there's a wall between you and the door, you'll need to go around that wall so you may end up moving further way but eventually closer.

@Dark again: Thanks for the in-depth feedback.

In terms of ambience, it was more of a limit with the sound files I found available, same with the floor and wall surfaces. I had plans for rock walls which you could break, lava floors etc. but couldn't find decent sounds for those features. Over time as I find more suitable sounds I'll be able to add to it.

Don't worry about being harsh, I prefer honesty over anything else.

Hi, I do have the latest version of Java installed. I am using windows 7 Home basic 64 bit.

I'm starting to wonder if there isn't something weird about jarfiles in general. I haven't found any case of jarred games giving people anywhere near as much trouble as mine have.

I've heard that how one goes about extracting a jar that's been stored in a zip archive can sometimes break it. Copy/paste vs the Windows extraction wizard, and so on.
No idea if any of that is going on here; it could be something much simpler, for all I know.

Probably an error message appears too briefly to catch. If you can run it from the command prompt, that'd make it easier to tell what's going on.

Which operating system and Java version are you using?