2022-07-11 22:45:12 (edited by Dark 2022-07-12 14:34:54)

This is one which I think has been discussed a little for the past couple of years, but recently has had some great accessibility fixes, and (according to a very nice response from the developer on redit), will be seeing more in the future.

its a slow, tactical, and in some ways quite unforgiving partly incremental text rpg, played in your web browser, in some ways similar to a dark room.

Waking in the dark, you  find yourself in a grim abandoned cityscape with an injured leg.
You can scavenge for food and metal. Using the "bag" heading you can access your inventory, where you can start crafting, the first thing to craft is a lantern to see in the dark, after which  you can scout the area, equip a plastic bag to hold more inventory, and then craft a bucket to catch water, and a trap to catch food, and a camp to rest in.

You'll also at this stage see directional buttons on the map, with the directions you can't go disabled, and so can think about exploring, but bare in mind each move takes both one food and one water as well as some staminer, and running out of either of these can be costly in time and injuries.

This is how the game works, slowly accumulating resources to painfully unlock the next part of the game, heck even fixing that injured leg takes quite a number of  upgrades and buildings, including getting camp workers.

Despite some existing access benefits, like showing the coordinates of the square you're currently in at the top and some handy headings, the game did have some access niggles, such as lack of labeled images, which could make things like looking at the inventory and your upgrades a might confusing.

Not anymore, now everything has a nice lot of labels.

one thing to bare in mind, is that many things in the game have mouseovers, which tell you what they do or access other functions, including equipping items, previously I found these a little haphazard, but either because NVDA or chrome has improved, they now seem much more stable.

The only miner access niggle currently is the map, since the area is large and somewhat maze-like, and you really do need to explore quite a lot of it to find things you need to continue in the game, indeed currently I'm mildly stuck trying to find those last few rooms I haven't explored yet.

I've made a few suggestions on the redit, and the developer has promised updates to the map in the next version of the game.

I'd say though at the moment the game is more than playable so long as you don't mind slightly floofy directions.

Any questions, feell free to ask, or indeed use the redit.

I'll admit this one is a slow game (I've been playing it while watching youtube bits, but its still rewarding, its got that sort of sense of progression where even earning something small, like just the ability to explore a little farther along the map, feels like an achievement.
YYou can Play the game here online, or alternatively,

You can find the game here on Github

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.)

2022-07-12 00:16:48 (edited by defender 2022-07-12 00:18:15)

This is great news!  Curious though, how do you use mouseovers with NVDA?

2022-07-12 00:40:15

@Defender, NVDA plus numpbad slash will move the mouse pointer to the desired object, at that point just use the arrows to read the mouseover.

Unfortunately, I have to admit the mapping in this game is pretty tough, since while there is ample opportunity to pick up food and water along the map, you do need to work out routes and supply stations, though once you've built the clinic in your camp, running out of food and water and getting injured isn't quite as bad.

Hopefully though, better tools for viewing and navigating the map will come in the next update, and the game is indeed playable, its just mildly difficult right now.

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.)

2022-07-12 10:35:06

@Dark: The download link is somehow not correct. Or am i missing something?

2022-07-12 12:16:13

nice, I'd try it as soon as I stop being lazy

if you buy a king sized bed, you're left with more bed room, but less bedroom!

2022-07-12 14:38:35

@Firefly, as to whether the game is downloadable I'm not honestly sure, someone else claimed it was and  provided the link, but I've not seen a  download option personally, (Yes, moral to self, check links before posting).

it certainly has a github page which you can find at the above, now corrected link), and certainly can be played  online, but whether that translates to being downloadable to play offline I honestly don't know.

again you might want to check either Github, or the level 13 redit.

Sorry about the mistake.

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.)

2022-07-12 16:11:59

Hi all.
Interesting find, dark. I'll certainly take more of a look at this later on, though that may not be soon as I'm traveling for a short while.
My only issue with such games in general is that there's really not much story to speak of, this happened even with a dark room because maybe I'm just being dumb but i still don't know just who I am and what it is that I'm trying to do in that game, all be it it doesn't get in the way of me enjoying ADR too much.
But I will admit that I found myself wishing in ADR that you found out more about yourself, though I was signifikently more dence at that time so there might've just been several hints telling me more.
Anyway, i do hope that doesn't happen now.

2022-07-12 16:31:00

@kavya, with Adr,  the intension is to almost have you piece together the story yourself from the environment and from what happens, especially if you get the good, and very difficult ending, and even more especially if you play the fiendishly difficult prequal; the Ensign.

Unfortunately, at this point in time, level 13 doesn't have a story, or rather story sequences are apparently coming in a future update.
it does have an interestingly grim environment to explore, along with survival mechanics that buy themselves convey a lot about the world, EG that food and water are hard to come by, that metal can be scavenged (presumably from the ruined environment you find yourself in), and that hazards like cold, radiation, and giant mutated rats and bugs are a problem.
But for more legitimate progressive story we probably need to wait.

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.)

2022-07-12 21:05:18 (edited by lightningdragon 2022-07-12 21:10:52)

In order to download the game from GitHub you could navigate to the releases heading and click on the tags link. It will bring you to a page with all the released versions sorted by newest first. You can download the zip from there.
After downloading the file, extract and click on index.HTML to play.

2022-07-12 21:14:56

Thanks for reminding me about this one, I always meant to play it and never got around to it. Just started, and yes, very much ADR vibe. Not quite sure what the point of evidence or exploration is, but you know, baby steps. Does the map randomize each restart? That would be sick!

2022-07-12 22:59:23

@amerikranian, Yes, the map is indeed randomised each time you restart, which is awesome and another reason I'd like to see the game's map overview a bit more accessible, because the map, even for just the level you start on is pretty huge, like about 100 or so rooms type of huge, and there are obviously a load more levels, if I can ever clear the first one big_smile.

You need evidence for at least one upgrade in your camp. I also believe that you can't exit the level until you've collected all the evidence, though not sure of that at the moment as I'm still trying to scout the last few rooms myself.

Even though the story sequences haven't been added to the game yet, there is the really nice vibe of working to unlock stuff then having to work out how it bennifits you and what it does, which is always makes games feel addictive.

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.)

2022-07-13 00:49:25 (edited by defender 2022-07-13 00:49:43)

@Dark
So by Numpad slash I assume you mean Numpad divide right?  Or well, I think they are the same thing actually.
The laptop keystroke for (move mouse pointer to current navigator object) is NVDA+shift+M.  If this is indeed the same command, then it doesn't seem to work for me.
This example mouseover page works fine with JAWS but not with NVDA.
https://www.freedomscientific.com/SurfsUp/MouseOver.htm
Am I missing a step here? Or maybe it's one of my settings. Does that page work for you?

2022-07-13 04:30:47

I wonder if we can't get the developer to fix how the resources are being read, I.e, I saw metal190.02/s or something to that end and I was highly confused because building a storage only required 50 metal but the button was dimmed. I've been clomping around, still haven't fixed my broken leg or anything. So far I've been sticking to one specific direction which has been working relatively well. A very neat concept, I must say.

2022-07-13 10:23:55

@Defender, yes, NVDA numb pad divide moves the mouse to the current object, I've used it on other pages before.
Not sure what the problem you're having with those mouseovers on the freedom scientific page, since I tried them with NVDA and they worked fine here, EG I just went to the link labeled "open book", hit NVDA numbpad divide (or slash as Scansoft Daniel calls it), and I got the descriptive text printed underneath.

@amerikranian, the numbers are a trifle confusing, since they have an extra zero to represent the decimal places with no point.

so 10.2 becomes 102.

It is indeed a  bit weird and probably could do with a fix, though you can get the hang when you know what's going on.

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.)

2022-07-13 11:26:08

It's good to see others giving this one anoter go, now that it's more accessible. Regarding the map, there is an ASCII option, where we can read a text representation of the map. I've found this extremely helpful, especially when I have access to a Braille display. Even without the display, it's still possible to find those last few unexplored regions by looking for question marks. Also, the Next and Previous buttons take you through every known square on the map, so you can also find unexplored sectors that way.
I've been in touch with the developer on Discord and have been very impressed with how a lot of my accessibility suggestions were implemented. As Dark said above, this dev has made great strides towards making this game fully playable with screen readers. I've played, a lot, both before and after the latest update, so please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

2022-07-13 18:46:21

@Skhye, the ascii map is not as bad as some ascii I've seen, but its a little difficult  to locate individual rooms I find, especially with me not having a braille display, since as usual, hearing a load of ex ex ex zero quesiton ex ex bang isn't as informative as it could be, especially when connections between the rooms can be a little twisty.

Apparently map fixes are coming in the next update though, which sounds awesome.

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.)

2022-07-13 19:35:50

@Dark, I know what yu mean. When I can't borrow the display, I do a lot of counting. I use the camp as a starting point and move around character by character. It's doable, but slow and arduous. I'm glad to hear about the upcoming fixes.

2022-07-13 19:37:20 (edited by defender 2022-07-13 19:43:49)

@Dark
Okay thanks that helps. I'm sure it's just some setting I have then.
Update: Yeah for some reason I had (follow mouse cursor) disabled in the (review cursor) section of NVDA preferences.  It's fixed now.

2022-07-13 22:17:38

@Skhye, so far, I've been able to use the ascii map vertically by counting up from the row with the c for camp, but not horizontally, particularly because it seems some rows are shorter than others.
Even vertical counting isn't %100 helpful, because of the routes being a maze, meaning that sometimes to get to one row, you have to go to another and so on, at the moment I have only about three or four streets left to visit, but finding them is proving more annoying than fun at the stage, particularly because I suspect they're rooms I visited, but wasn't able to scout due to the cold.

If I could get the coordinates of the last few rooms I'd be okay, but that's one thing I'm hoping will come in the next update.

I'll have another poke around, but given how good this dev has been, and how much of a pain to play this game was at first (I still remember having to mouseover literally everything to see what it was, and not being able to tell the difference between the bag in your inventory and the bag you're using to carry items),  it might even be better to wait.

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.)

2022-07-19 15:05:41

This is excellent news.

2022-07-25 06:59:25

I'm having a weird issue where I can't equip anything. I made a lantern and have found a bunch of bags but can't equip them.

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2022-07-25 07:06:10

@stirlock  go to the heading in the inventory that says "other items", and mouseover on the name of an item, it'll bring up a description along with an equip  or use button for the item, if its something you can equip or use, though obviously not all items can be equipped or used in this way.

Mouseovers are generally how you find out about a lot of stuff in this game.

Hth.

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.)