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A jam submission

Mosquash!View game page

Submitted by LazyChinchilla — 5 days, 12 hours before the deadline
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Mosquash!'s itch.io page

What was your goal for the project this month?
For this jam, our goal was to create a game that can be played by everyone. My wife and I built the Windows version of Mosquash as our first blind-accessible, audio-first game, developing 3D spatial audio mechanics, screen reader compatibility, multilanguage support (Italian and Turkish if system language is set to one of these), and cross-platform leaderboard support for Windows and Android

What type of project was this?

New Project!

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Comments

Jam HostSubmitted

So, I’ve played this and here are some thoughts:

  • At first I found it a little funny. Silly and simple. But then some things caught my attention.
  1. I didn’t have an option to recap an instruction. So if I can’t hear it well, I’ll miss it. It needs a recap button - maybe the right mouse button for mouse-input.
  2. In the game itself, I didn’t know where my mouse was located. The only times I did know was when I would click and hear the net swishing, and then I had an idea about its distance from me. In other moments, I can’t really connect my mouse movement to the mosquito, which makes it harder to actually aim at it.
  3. There is no way to play with a keyboard. Some, half, most (?) blind users may not have a mouse to play with. They also may not have a touchpad. This would make the game unplayable for them. It would be good to find an alternative.

Lastly, the other big thing I noticed that made me stop was: feeling increasingly more disgusted by the sound effect of swallowing a mosquito. The more times I heard it, the less resilience I felt to keep going. I think finding another alternative for a sound effect of the mosquito reaching us would be more friendly for anyone who feels too sick from this effect. It doesn’t have to be swalling it.

In any game, I wouldn’t recommend the game for people with insect-phobia. I think you could do this for catching butterflies to trigger less people, as an alternative. If that’s something you think about.

Developer

Hello Patricia! Thank you for playing Mosquash :)

Your feedback is much appreciated, and it actually highlights why Mosquash is primarily designed as a mobile game. On a touch screen, you have the whole playground right under your fingers, whereas mouse tracking on a computer introduces unique challenges for blind and visually impaired players. The aim here was to create a fast-paced audio-based action game, but a desktop experience is evidently not easy to achieve unless we change the input method or add a radar-like continuous sound effect to the pointer (maybe it could also give a short audio cue if the mosquito is in the catch area). However, that is not what we wanted for the Mosquash desktop version.

Here are a few notes on your points:

1) Recap instruction:

Actually, there is a way to review instructions! It was mentioned both in the game description page and during the tutorial phase in-game: "In case you want to restart from the tutorial phase, click and hold the mouse left button for 10 seconds between mosquito spawns (keep pressed after hearing your stats)." We apologize if it wasn't emphasized enough! We will update this part in the description with bold font.

2) Mouse pointer tracking & 3) Keyboard support:

You are right! To be honest, I don't know why your pointer was invisible but it was not related to game or how it is developed. Either way, tracking a mouse pointer without a continuous radar sound is very difficult for a blind player on desktop, and keyboard-only play would completely alter how the game flows and feels. This confirms our concern that a PC version misses the fluid experience of mobile tapping. This is a main issue, not just for Mosquash, but for any fast-paced action game that has drag-and-click as a main mechanic. In the mobile version, you just tap where you think the mosquito is, and it is fun. If it lands on you (when you hear the heartbeat), you just double-tap to avoid the gulp sound and -5 HP.

4) The sound effects:

Thank you for sharing your feeling about this! Just to clarify, there is actually no swallowing of the mosquito by the player (though we loved your imagination) :D. The "gulp" sound effect happens when a mosquito lands on you—it drains your blood and then vanishes if you don't "Mosquash" it with a quick double-click anywhere on the screen! Maybe you missed this part in the tutorial, so you experienced the continuous blood-draining sound, which was designed to create a sense of urgency and a small punishment for not double tapping in order to keep the player in reward/punishment loop. It is unfortunate you were not able to experience this because you never Mosquashed. While we wanted it to feel pressing,  we certainly didn't mean for it to cause genuine discomfort or disgust! Knowing it had that effect on you is very valuable insight. Yet we think that an action game against irritating mosquitoes is a better motivator than catching harmless butterflies :)

We truly appreciate you taking the time to test it out and share such detailed thoughts. Thank you again for playing!

Jam HostSubmitted

Hi there!

I appreciate that you appreciated the feedback! Haha. I’m just going to clarify a couple of misunderstandings.

Actually, there is a way to review instructions! It was mentioned both in the game description page and during the tutorial phase in-game: “In case you want to restart from the tutorial phase, click and hold the mouse left button for 10 seconds between mosquito spawns (keep pressed after hearing your stats).” We apologize if it wasn’t emphasized enough! We will update this part in the description with bold font.

I should have called this “replay instructions”. In any case, I’m referring to replaying a specific message, and not the whole tutorial. Say I heard well instructions 1 to 4, but at the 5th, my bell rang, someone called, or I simply zoned out ou didn’t understand a word well. I would like to be able to press a key to listen to it again. Just the 5th (the one that just played), not every single one.

Further, the bit about holding for 10 seconds might be a lot to ask for people with arthritis, tendinitis and the like. Maybe you could add some alternatives, like swiping (that would work for the phone), holding for less time (there’s no gameplay reason to hold down a mouse key, so 2-3 seconds might suffice, if complemented by a pop-up to confirm the action), or double or triple clicks. This is still not the best for mobility difficulties, but at least it adds some alternatives, or works as brainstorming.

Either way, tracking a mouse pointer without a continuous radar sound is very difficult for a blind player on desktop, and keyboard-only play would completely alter how the game flows and feels.

The radar seems like a great idea. I also think sometimes I clicked and didn’t hear the swishing. I don’t know if that’s a cooldown or a bug, but it also made me unable to check my cursor’s location whenever I needed to.

The “gulp” sound effect happens when a mosquito lands on you—it drains your blood and then vanishes if you don’t “Mosquash” it with a quick double-click anywhere on the screen!

Interesting. I think because the sound was so… human… it didn’t even cross my mind it’d be the mosquito drinking our blood. I wonder if there’s another way to convey this. Perhaps the mosquito flying and buzzing and getting suddenly louder to land on us, then abruptly stopping, and then some kind of prickling sound, and then high-pitch water flow or slurping. Not the swallowing sound, though.

I’m not sure! Those are some ideas.

Developer

Thank you so much for breaking all of this down! :D Your suggestions for the specific tutorial phrase replay is a great idea instead of looking for "between mosquito spawns" window. It could behave exactly like the mobile version does (tap and hold 2 finger anywhere anytime to restart) where we change this to click with both mouse buttons for 3 seconds anytime to restart from the tutorial phase and change the whole function to tap once to hear again this tip or double tap to continue with the next tip. 

Regarding the whoosh sound and cursor tracking: thank you for pointing out how tricky it feels on desktop without a continuous radar. To share a bit about how it's designed under the hood, it follows the mosquito's logarithmic volume gain so you hear the missed sound exactly where it happened to help with triangulation. Because spatial audio relies so heavily on your setup, it can sometimes be tough to catch without headphones.

To give some context on the design intent for the "gulp" sound effect: when the mosquito lands, it triggers a 2-second heartbeat that is your "Mosquash" window, and the gulp only plays if you don't double tap and fail to kill it. That said, your alternative idea about a prickling or rising-pitch sound instead of a human-like swallowing sound is super interesting and this could be a live draining situation. Instead of giving player 2 second heartbeat it could become a 5 second heartbeat plus high-pitch water flow or slurping draining 1 HP per second instead of direct -5 HP and "gulp" sound effect. The end of loop "gulp could become a sound like satisfaction of drinking blood sound, like a sound effect after drinking when you were extremely thirsty. I don't know how to explain :) This gives us a lot to think about for sound design!

Thank you again for taking the time to share such thoughtful feedback—it means the world to us as we work to make the game better.

Jam HostSubmitted

Hi there! Can you please edit the submission to fill out about what your goals and progress were for this jam? Basically, the work you did for the jam. Thank you!

Developer

Hi Patricia! Thank you for letting me know. Sorry about that—since I'm new to itch.io jams, I missed adding those details at first! I've just updated the submission now.