Really good game! Excellent writing, good art. I only disliked that I had to pixel hunt for the remaining clue - I wish it could have been a bit less small. Otherwise, really nice job. I’d like to know if you think of continuing to develop on it! If you continue this saga, I invite you to check out the Making Games Accessible jam that’s going on this July. Keep making great detective games with this really cute art and nice writing!
Viewing post in Ham Stern: Hamster Detective jam comments
Okay! I had written a longer comment but accidentally closed the page. Now that it’s morning and I have a little bit more energy, I can write a bit more. The reason I recommended you this jam is because your game is almost fully blind-accessible, but still not totally, but it’s just so close it’s worth making the little adjustments. From what I recall (I didn’t make a fully diagnosis haha), everything seems to be read out by the self-voicing TTS when we activate it (I press V or Ctrl+V? when I start). Likewise, we can also use the keyboard to move around pretty nicely (most blind players can’t use a mouse). What is still missing is labels in the crime room. When you move the focus between the items in the room, they aren’t read out loud because they are simply drawings. I’m not sure how ren’py works, but there should be some option to set an invisible label in the code to state what each item in the room is, thus making the game playable by blind players.
It would also be nice if you could add some narration lines throughout the game, or integrated audiodescription by the hamster detective itself. When it’s raining at the start you can say “in a rainy night, blablabla”, and when getting in the room, a general description of it - it is after all very messy, and that standing desk is amazingly funny (that could it be described when Hamster is talking about it instead, if you want); and when talking about June Iper, a description that she’s a hamster with a propeller hat. So that blind players know what is on the screen.
There’s another game in the jam that is accidentally accessible, and once again almost fully so, but it’s playable when you know the rules. It’s My time at the lighthouse. There’s a blind gamer somewhere in the server that has also played through it, and I would love to say that this game jam made two blind-accessible games - almost accidentally up to “100%” accessible. I would be proud and excited to see yours to get there.
And of course, keep this in mind in other games. But it would be great to see this one get updated with these last few details. Please let me know if you do it and I’ll share it with my other blind friends.