Hello everyone, @Piroct here, ready to show you another hidden gem inside the indie genre!
Today we are up for a challenge, not only of skills and sense but too the heart as well. Ready to train your other senses?
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Let's begin!
A Blind Legend.
Not many gamers who are blind can enjoy an immersive and action packed experience, but in 2015 the blind community received such game!
A Blind Legend is a special audio game produced by DOWiNO, a french company, and France Culture, a french radio station in collaboration with a crowdfunding campaing on ULULE and several other sponsorships. Although this game was not produced specifically for the blind, they hope that this can raise awareness about blindness and the hardships that comes with it.
The game does have visual elements, but to make it viable so the blind community could experience it, they used a Text-to-Speech voice to succesfully guide the player through the menu and some of the commands the game has.
And well, to describe the game probably the title explains it clearly... You'll play the part of Edward Blake, a legendary knight that has learned the ways of chivalry while being blind. One day Edward's wife is kidnapped by some guards, and they claim that is the king's orders to take all of his family. With a deep feeling of betrayal, Edwards escapes from the village with his Daughter which will guide him through the treacherous lands that awaits outside the village.
A Blind Legend is an adventure game with a sort of Hack-and-Slash combat mechanic but with no graphics at all. All of the game world is related to you by sound. The game has a Binaural 3D sound system that will help you locate where the sounds are coming from, and this is the gameplay focus.
You'll control your character with the keyboard's arrow keys or via your controller.
While traveling you'll have to focus on Edward's Daughter voice, Whenever she need to guide you somewhere she'll say something like "This way!" and you'll hear her footsteps fade on a certain direction as she goes further. She'll be giving you leads from time to time, but if you feel lost, you can always press "Space Bar" and she'll give you the lead right away, something like "Turn to the left!" or "I'm straight ahead!" or "You're close!".
Let me tell you that while I was experiencing this for the first time, I couldn't avoid to feel scared for a bit. I was playing with my eyes closed and the sounds where of such high quality that it was unavoidable for me to feel immersed. I felt lost and found myself hitting the Space Bar key way to many times so I could find my way to where the girl was.
I also felt powerless. You know, in real life I'm not Knight that spent his life learning and training while being visually impaired, so it was a new experience for me, and being inside the skin of a powerful knight that loses its way and trips with everything in its path was enough for me to feel that way...
From the other hand, the combat in this game will put all your other senses into play, so be ready!
You'll be alerted by the Text-to-Speech system that a battle is about to start, but sometimes the hostile dialogue with characters or the sound of the sword being unsheathed is enough to let you know that something is about to go down.
Everytime you're in a battle, you'll have to hear the movements of your enemies, timing every hit while you block them with your shield, and then finding the perfect time to swing your sword and all of this just by hearing their sounds!
The game will introduce you to combat with a tutorial fight with a cave bear that you encountered while searching for a shelter with your daughter. The Bear's attack will do no damage to you, so you can get used to the timing of its roars and attack sounds. A touch of your arrow keys at the right time will be enough to swing your sword and hit the bear right where it hurts!
The first time I went into this fight, I was genuinly scared, I got hit so many times... I couldn't time it well, but as the fight continued and I adopted the "patient approach", I could get to time his growls to know exactly when the bear was going to attack, and at that precious moments, I attacked, so its action would be interrupted, and that's how I managed to get out alive of my first fight!
In this game, your first time at everything will feel overwhelming and kind of scary sometimes, but as you concentrate and learn to hear deeply into every sound, you'll start to build all the scenario inside your head, and I'll get easier for you to time everything!
We can't talk much about the graphics, as there are none, but the soundtrack is top-notch, and is something predictable as it is an Audio Game. The voice-acting is not perfect, but is indeed good and more than enough to make you feel immersed. The Binaural 3D system works perfectly, the timing works as it's suppose to!
A Blind Legend is an experience like no other, and if you're an empathic person, you'll be feeling a lot of things while playing this and hearing the narrative, so be warned people of soft heart! You'll get to experience situations, choice-making, combat, and a whole world just by hearing and focusing, this is a worthy game, indeed.
I'll let the trailer here so you can hear the voice acting:
If you liked it or want to try it, please don't hesitate to visit its STEAM PAGE and support the developers and the blind community. We are all gamers!
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See you really soon, Steemians!
