Looking for Games for my New Computer

The following link has a bunch of games that are free for Mac and PC, and you can also get them for iOS, but I believe you have to pay for it there. You could play all sorts of board and card games, including things like Monopoly, blackjack, Yahtzee, apples to apples, cards against humanity, Uno, and a ton of other games. It is quite an enjoyable experience, whichever platform you decide to go with. Enjoy!

https://rsgames.org/

I know there are other free games for Windows, and even possibly some for macOS. AudioGames.net has a bunch, but I do not know how many also work with iOS. So, RSGames is my go-to whenever somebody is looking for free games on either platform. 😎

Conjury is a deck-building rogue-like that's on both Steam and iOS. I also believe Asmar Quest is on Steam and iOS, but I could be wrong. :)

I know you're asking for free games, but I have to agree that Steam is a really great place to find accessible games for the PC platform. And their sales can be absolutely amazing. 🎮

Some games I like:
- A Hero's Call (PC; freeware)
- Katawa Shoujo Re-Engineered if you want a romance visual novel (PC)
- Art of Fauna on iOS (very casual)
- I'm not sure if there's any accessible ways to play MUDs and interactive fiction on iOS, but those are also great free options too

I don't really like playing games on my phone, and I'm on my computer for the majority of things so...
The AudioGames forum can be pretty toxic (I can't swear on here so I can't call it what it really is) but sometimes there's gems you can find on there.

Yeah, there does seem to be a thing with gamers, on mass, not being very nice people. I wonder why that might be. Maybe gaming simply draws people in without evolved social skils. I follow a bunch of reddit subs for gaming and they're all the same.

there are nice gamers too though. Maybe the difference is we undersand games to be play. Play should always be done with a light heart.

Yeah, it's... notorious. God forbid you're a girl playing online games, I've heard that's horrific (I never liked playing MMORPGs and the like, or games like Overwatch. I tried, just didn't understand what I was doing with games like Overwatch) My bf is a hardcore gamer, him and his friends are pretty okay (I didn't get abused the one and only time I played Apex Legends before losing my eyesight and just collecting items). I prefer cozy games - I miss playing Sims, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Webkinz etc and there's nothing like that for blind gamers. There's Manamon, that's the closest we'll get to Pokemon. But part of it is the fandom element.

Girl gamers are a myth. True story!

I kid, I kid.

Some of the coolest female gamers I've ever known, were in my old World of Warcraft guild, back when I still had eyesight. WoW... talk about a game that sucks out your soul.

Sadly though, there are plenty of toxic gamers out there. People who have way too much to prove, and just want to spoil things for everybody else.

Don't reveal my secret 🤫

That's awesome. Never really played an MMORPG - Final Fantasy 11/14 and World of Warcraft both required subscriptions, and Australians had to play either European or American prices so... expensive. I do like the character designs, though - I remember one woman in my psychology class just sitting with me at lunch and showing me her Warcraft characters. My bf plays Neverwinter from time to time and I wish I could play it. Or just for the community.

Sadly, I'm a loser in both.

I think, sex aside, disabled online gaming is something we need to enter into with our finger on the escape button. There is a lot of push back against accessibility, various small minded gamers considering it cheating. Maybe it is, but that assumes that it actually matters. I can play Forza Motorsport online and, though I have almost full assists on, partial breaking being one of the things I change, success is far from guaranteed. It does mean I can come mid field rather than last every time which is nice but, I guess, I do also accept that the skill I'm employing is within a narrowed experience, IE, I have training wheels on. I, of course, don't advertise this fact to fellow racers as the response would be predictable.

Stardew Valley is more my pace these days with the Stardew Access mod which, incidentally
, is also available for Mac as well as Windows and Linux.

I am going to be heading out onto the Sea Of Thieves open world at some point, but only when me an my crew have worked the game out properly and what, as a sightless gamer, I can do. Ironically, steering the ship is one of the more accessible tasks, that and fishing.

The way sighted gamers tend to respond when they end up competing against a blind gamer is the reason why I am not competitive with any of my games these days. Gaming blind is challenging enough, no need to add the negative criticism icing on top of that particular cake.
Regarding World of Warcraft, there is apparently a mod, or a series of mods, to allow blind gamers to play. However, remembering the depth and scope of that game when I was sighted, makes me wary of attempting to play it with accessibility mods.
On a sidenote, I guess if I wanted some World of Warcraft nostalgia, I could get into Hearthstone. Assuming the accessibility mods for that are still up-to-date.

Yeah, honestly... I just find gaming too exhausting and not appealing to me nowadays. I wanted to like Stardew Valley but learning all the keyboard commands, remembering the coordinates for my home, worrying about getting lost and the concepts of NPCs moving around... not for me. I also just felt like I was missing the visual aspect so there was just this... hollow feeling whenever I'd play, like "oh, I'm missing something."

But I wanted to like gaming when I could see - Skyrim, Bioshock Infinite etc - I just found combat and instructions too overwhelming and stressful, as much as I loved the story of, say, Bioshock Infinite or Horizon Zero Dawn. I would rather just end up sinking hours and hours into Sims or Animal Crossing instead.

I have never been one for competitive games, I'd rather just do my own thing, but there's not much in the realm of girly games. Also Brian, to your previous comment: Girly games, just like all girly things, gets looked down on. A lot.

Also, @Brian: I've interviewed the creator of one of the World of Warcraft mods. And I think the Hearthstone mods are still being updated? I never managed to complete the final boss in the tutorial though. Maybe I'm just stupid 🤷‍♀️

That's a really good way to put it, hollow. I do feel, when I'm playing The Last Of Us there is so much I'm missing and kinda just feel I'm going through the steps. We certainly, in mainstream games, get a watered down version of the experience. It's still amazing that we can play so many more games that sighted peers are playing but, like life, our experience is different and our perception is limited.

I am a big fan of the dual sense controllers from Playstation and how they work with their games. That certainly adds a tactile dimension to game play with things like the adaptive triggers with variable resistance and kickback for things like guns and breaks on cars.

One game to look at, though it might not be everyone's cup of tea for a variety of reasons, is Mist World. It's a game for gamers without sight and quite a robust RPG however, it's from Chinese developers which may or may not be an issue but to really progress in the game, you have to buy diamonds and the progression sequence is kinda nasty if you don't. I know they are just trying to make money and get back their dev costs etc, but as it is a far smaller gaming market, the pricing is, in my view, rather predatory.

Knowing that going in is helpful and you can have fun, you just probably won't get very far, by design, unless you pay to play.

That aside, and back to the "Hollow" gaming experience, maybe there is something to be said for games made for the blind. Trouble is, they're under funded and, in many cases, are rather lacking in imagination. The worst of them lean in to stereotypes too, which sucks.

I wonder, what would make an game immersive for those of us without sight without leaning in to the sightless tropes? What sensory input could enrich the experience? What cognitive bridges can be built to make us feel the game is less hollow, make it fuller, more satisfying?

When I played this game for the first time, I had tears of happyness in my eyes, as I never imagined someone could creat such a imersive game for us blind folks. It was just the right amount of complexity, action and adventure with bit of challenge and frustation and scare factor of dealing with that next monster.

@Chamomile,
Animal crossing for the win! I used to play the hell out of that on my old Nintendo DS Lite way back in the day. Also guys play girly games too, we just don't advertise it... 😳

@Doll Eye,
Personal thoughts, but micro transactions are ruining the gaming experience. Man, if I could I would go back to Super Nintendo games. Still one of the absolute best gaming systems, ever!

Finally, I find I get bored pretty easily with gaming these days. Yes, it was definitely a lot more enjoyable overall with eyesight, though I do still find plenty of entertainment with fighting games. Maybe I just secretly enjoy the thrill of beating the crap out of people. 🤷🏻‍♂️

For those of you interested in a game that uses alternative sensory input other than eyesight, and assuming you have a Windows machine, you may want to look into "Lost and Hound", it's on Steam for PC. Jesse from Illegally Sighted reviewed the game on his YouTube channel. Link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yW-uqOIppw

I am ashamed to admit that I never got past the demoness on A Blind Legend. 😅

(Seriously, I hate the fact we have to include subjects)

Brian - I agree, microtransactions are ruining gaming. I also just don't find games that interesting, but as mentioned I've always struggled. Always been more of a reader anyway, but with games I just get too fidgety and would rather do something else. But god do I miss playing Sims like... every day of my life. Tabletop roleplaying games, mainly D&D, is my main gaming outlet now. I liked Cosmic Rage but got annoyed with how grindy it is and hard to level up, didn't play for a while and my character got deleted and so I've been in a mood with it ever since.

I tried A Blind Legend and found it boring/repetitive, also tried the demo for The Veil and found it boring. I need to check out interactive fiction and I've liked what I've played of Katawa Shoujo and A Hero's Call but in my mind they're 'special games' so I can't bring myself to play them.

Nothing wrong with occasionally gaming. However, occasional isn't really the rule when it comes to people living in the western hemisphere. in the end, this is what it leads to. "a generation whose verbal and mathematical skills have sunk so low, when you have the highest technology at your fingertips? Gutenberg's generation thirsted for a new book every six months. Your generation gets a new web page every six seconds. And how do you use this technology? To beat King Koopa and save the Princess. Shame on you. You deserve what you get."

So, there are a ton of IF titles out there. One website I would recommend, would be textadventures.co.uk. I will warn you, there is a category or two on that particular site you may want to avoid, but otherwise you can find some fun and not too terribly long IF titles there.
There is also the Interactive Fiction Archive website, which has a ginormous list, but in my personal experience, that website can be a headache to deal with.
You can also download individual engines, such as quest, which comes with a bunch of free titles, but you can also find additional downloadable titles online. Some can even be downloaded from that first website I mentioned above.

Links:
https://www.textadventures.co.uk/
https://ifarchive.org/
https://textadventures.co.uk/quest

Enjoy Tilda

Thanks Brian, that also might be a good suggestion for the OP too. :)

For anybody interested, iOS, and possibly Android, has a ton of games under The, "Choice of Games LLC", and, "Hosted Games LLC", label. These are very simple, yet very fun and interactive stories that you can play over and over again as they tend to have multiple endings, hidden story arcs, etc., etc. I mentioned this, because you can also play these games on PC via Steam.
Links:
https://www.choiceofgames.com/
https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/hostedgames/

That's a different type of game, entirely...

I think the rewards are harder to establish without sight. The usual progress of a game is a set goal, friction to reach that goal, reward, be it upgrade of abilities or cut scene or pops and pings. The mario games, as I recall, were very good at sloshing that dopamine. It's not game specific, as I find my attention span short even when I'm watching movies/shows. The reduced amount of input simply doesn't give me enough to keep me particularly focused, at least, not until I've drunk the good part of a bottle of fine scotch, then I'm all in.

Games, it can be argued, are a reflection of life: overcome hardship for reward. Thing is, and this is true for all of us the amount of effort to overcome, in life, in a game, is often far greater than the reward deserves. We have to work several times as hard to get the same pop and ping.

Bleak... I know.

Part of the reason I don't do competitive gameplay, as I mentioned in a previous post, is on account of the way people react when they learn their Rival happens to be visually impaired, but another part has to do with my limited attention span. I have all but given up on television & movies and pretty much spend most of my free time reading books. In my defense, I think I'm just getting old...

Not old, we're maturing... Wise... Sage... Refined... Tasteful... Opinionated... Bombastic... Semi-fantastic...

For window GMA tank commander and others. They have a free star trek. Long live cats.

I have tried the last of us 2 on mycousin's ps5 and blind people are 3rd class sitizen at best, at least that's how I feel. Playable doesn't mean fun to play and it's everythingbut fun.
Shadowrine was great too, I am currently playing a hero's call.
A blind legend was overrated or it's just me getting bored, the french version is much better than the english one imo, but still a classic everybody shouldplay. It's best recent version, with the only problem of being too short, is the vale. Incredible story telling.
And on audiogames must try Oh Shit, the best/worstgame ever and after 30s you can only smile and be angry both at the same time.
There are a lot of recent titles bfor "blind/disables" I find to be boring at best or scammy / Infantilizing at worst, an the latter is unfortunately truer. Yes accessible gaming is a niche, but I won't respect most of these developers or small studios because they have earned none of it, so far at least.

Personal opinion here, but games made by the company called "Something Else", were some of the best audio games I think I have ever experienced. I'm talking about titles like 'The Night Jar', 'Papa Sangre' (1 & 2), etc. 'Frequency Missing', and 'Solara' were a couple of other really great games, although 'Solara' no longer exists.

Too shy to ask my dad credit card for $2 or whatever the price was. I have heard nothing but praises about those :(

The something else games, as I think we've all said many times in various different threads, were brilliant. Solid game play, brilliant audio design and pretty terrifying in parts. They were 'real' games, rather than those 'blind games' which feel like a college level design project. They had a lot of production value and narative, two things I look for in a game.

Who knows what might come out over the next few years as vibe coding becomes more reliable. Maybe there will be more fleshed out games that go beyond basic concept. Really, what I want, is a mainstream game which puts us on the same level as sighted players. I game to be part of something bigger, to share the experience. All of my RL friends are sighted, and short of me doing something terrible, they don't get it when I talk about blindness based games or even experiences. The more I can get into the sighted world, the happier I am. Always was the kid running after the bigger boys shouting 'wait up guys!'

I was disappointed, and a little frustrated when I heard Something Else was shutting down. The games were incredibly intense, and yes, were so much more than just another audio game. There is another audio game I miss for iOS, though the standard board game still is in circulation. That game is "A Fistful of Penguins".
Was incredibly fun on iOS, had an almost Mario Party feel to it, though not quite so complex. 😀

This is exactly why when a random sighted person or anybody sighted really ask me do you play game? I say no, because it's virtually true, and talking about audio game is, not embarassing in of itself, but... plain boring!

These are truly some awesome comments regarding the state of gaming and also flashing back to nostalgia games. As has already been said by many of you on here, the Something Else games were truly amazing It was so great to even replay them again and again, and the voice acting in them was truly, pardon the pun, something else.

There are so many sighted games I have wanted to play over the years. One of the most interesting games to me would have been Alien Isolation. I love space games and space in general. Also, any Star Wars games would have been great. They have that small game, Clash of Light Sabers, which was created and is somewhat fun, but kind of limited. Think Bopit meets Star Wars.

Some of you talked earlier about accessible games on Steam. I am extremely unfamiliar with it as a gaming platform. Any trick to finding accessible games on Steam? Inquiring old minds want to know.

Keep up the great thread y'all.

This, as far as I've found, is the most complete list of mainstream games which are accessible:

https://gist.github.com/Molitvan/50e3b5060ab9465b1da895155d5c0480

Some need mods, some are accessible out of the box. The usual limits apply for AAA games IE need a good rig to play them, usually with a discrete graphics card.

And if you download Steam, I highly recommend using the Big Picture mode. It's meant for the Steam Deck etc but navigation is much easier with NVDA.