We set out to design a concept around a visual novel game catering the deaf teen market. Using a free engine called Renpy David and Chris created two prototypes and demo videos (whilst I provided the script, which can be found in full here):
Demo video by Chris.
Demo video by David
The game plot:
Radhey (Raddy) Sharma is a new student arriving at Indigo high, this is one the few arts schools that accepted students with disabilities and as a talented blind pianist he really couldn’t pass up an opportunity to study there. During his year there he meets a mute drum Mikko and a jazz enthusiast named Jordan (who turned deaf when he was young) and they were put into a group and asked to perform as a band by their tutor. The game chronicles their collaborative effort to create music and work together despite communication hurdles.
Text adventure game for blind teens (the other version of the game in audio text adventure format)
Now why on earth would a text based adventure game be good for people for are blind? Well if the text adventure game was audio focused then it would be perfect for people with sight disabilities. There are audiobooks after all so why not audio games. Here’s an outline of our audio game (code named, See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil).
A text adventure game is all about examining objects and surrounding as well as interacting with scenes. However unlike point and click games with graphical interfaces, text adventures rely on describing what you see with words (and players’ imaginations) not pictures. Thus it’s suitable for a blind audience.
The game will be playable via speech, a voice recognition system will allow players to dictate their character’s actions:
The controls:
Braille keyboard.
Players will be able to use a keyboard designed for the blind or just a mouse. Players can right click to bring up the mic and left click to carry pause or resume text, rolling the mouse can rewind and fast forward text.
If you are interested more details about the characters are here. Hopefully one day this game becomes more than just a concept.
Unit 6- Critical Approaches 