Hi all,
My name is Felipe Oliveira, and I'm the developer behind Dungeon Scoundrel.
I've been working on a new game made for blind players first: Audio Football. It's an American football game inspired by Jim Kitchen's NFL Football. You coach your team and call every play, and two announcers, Hank and Lou, call the action. It's an early prototype, and I'd love your help shaping it.
You can play it in your browser here: https://audiofootball.gatunogames.com
It works on iPhone, iPad, Android and computers. No download or account needed.
How it works:
- Pick a team from a made-up league of 8 teams. Every player has a different last name, so you can tell them apart by ear.
- On offense, you choose a play: line plunge, end run, screen pass, short pass, long pass, field goal or punt.
- On defense, you guess what's coming: goal line, short run, long run, blitz, short pass or long pass.
- A game has four quarters of 25 to 35 plays each. Tied games go to sudden death overtime.
- Hank calls the play by play, and Lou adds color commentary and some silly booth chatter.
Controls:
- With VoiceOver or TalkBack, every choice is a regular button: move to it and double tap.
- Without a screen reader, on a phone: tap a play, or swipe left and right to hear each choice and double tap to pick it. Hold anywhere to repeat the prompt, tap with two fingers for the score, clock and down, and swipe up to skip the play by play.
- On a computer: the number keys pick a choice, R repeats, S gives the score and Space skips.
- In Settings you can switch to screen reader mode, where the game sends all the text to your screen reader instead of playing the announcers. You can also turn the chatter off and change the crowd volume.
- On iPhone or iPad, if you don't hear anything, check that silent mode is off.
The player Holger Fiallo has already helped a lot. Thanks to that feedback, there's now a whistle at the end of each play, the crowd cheers your scores and boos the other team's, and there's a crowd volume setting. Coming next: more back and forth between the announcers, some fake funny commercials at the breaks, and a better end of game.
What I need most: feedback on the narration.
The announcer voices are AI generated. There are thousands of combinations of players, teams, yards and scores, so every line is built from short recorded pieces joined together, like "Brought down by" plus a player's name. One tester said the pitch jumps between those pieces were hard to listen to, and I'm working on a fix. Before I re-record everything, I'd love to know:
- How does the narration sound to you? Do the jumps between pieces bother you, and where do you notice them most?
- Does Hank sound right for play by play? Too much energy, or too little?
- Is Lou fun, or does the chatter get in the way?
- Can you hear the announcers clearly over the crowd and the whistle?
- Would you rather play with the recorded announcers, or with your own screen reader's voice in screen reader mode?
- Is the pace right? One note: the speech speed setting currently also changes the pitch of the voices. I know about it, so for now it's best to leave the speed at the default.
Anything else is welcome too: bugs, confusing moments, plays you'd like to see, or how it went on your device.
Tell me what you all think!
Comments
Game
I play it 2 times and lost 2 times. It is a good game and for those who love football play it. I can see a good future for it. This is a real game instead of those kiddy games. PS. I am not getting pay for saying this.
Great idea for the next game for the blind!
Is there a tutorial mode in the game to test things first? I’m somewhere who barely understood some rules lmao
Re: Great idea for the next game for the blind!
Great point! let me add a quick tutorial to the game
Re: Great idea for the next game for the blind!
Good news: there's now a "Football in two minutes" option in the main menu that explains the basics in plain language. And when you move to any play, you'll hear what it does and when it works best. If you played before, reload the page to get the update. Thanks for asking, it made the game better for everyone!
eyesfreesight
It is simple and very easy to use at lease for windows PC. Need work on the stats. The voice reads it as robuttic.
Screen reader mode
I found the pacing to be faster and screen reader mode. I personally don’t need to hear the announcers in order to enjoy the game. I did notice that the pitch changes were most prominent when the announcers were announcing the result of a play such as a player gaining 7 yards on first down.
Re: Screen reader mode
I did notice that too and I have a plan to fix, but it requires re-recording the narrator lines and that is expensive. I will do that as the last thing after I iron out the problems and make changes to the gameplay.
Awesome game so far
I haven’t played the game yet, but I like the premise and I’m gonna try it out but I do have a question. Will it be on iOS like your other title?
Re: Awesome game so far
Im not sure yet, if the community like the prototype and the idea I will release for both iOS and Android
This web version is just to validate if the game is fun and people will play it
iOS
Well people cry for a good game and this is it. People need to check it out. Would love to play with some one day. Suggestion change the name of the team to San Fransisco, Chicago, and so on. Call the league the SFL. States of football league or the CFL, cities football league. I see potencial on this. Board games are nice but a good football game is for real men.
Penalties
Maybe inserting a few penalties, such as holding false, starts or pass interference would make the game more realistic, as long as it wasn’t excessive
I'm torn
I'm not quite sure what to think here.
As a long-time casual Madden player, the first thing that jumped out to me was that this game doesn't have any sounds during plays. It needs on-field sounds of players running into each other and the like. I also agree that it needs penalties. Maybe you could choose to challenge plays that could go either way.
Maybe you could have a hybrid commentary mode for advanced players? I like the announcers calling the plays while they happen, but don't want them reading me menu choices or stats at all.
I do kind of like the fictional team names though.
I don't know if this would be a game I would regularly play. All you do here is choose plays and then whatever happens is random. You can't control any of the actual play on the field. When the bar is a mainstream game like Madden, which has had some accessibility for a few years, this feels like another dumbed down game for the blind.
JMO, for whatever it's worth.
Re: I'm torn
This is great feedback. I agree that when compared to AAA games this is very lacking.
That is why I posted here to see if more people like the idea so I can invest my time and resources to improve the game.
I'm Interested
I will likely try out the game later this week when I have more time. I am interested though. As a low vision player, I have played a few football games over the years. I don't really care for the Madden games, as I find the more arcade style games more fun for me. A couple of my favorites over the years were the original Tecmo Bowl, NFL Blitz, and NFL 2K. The 2K series was a nice balance between simulation and arcade gameplay. I still haven't forgiven EA for crying because someone made a better game than them, and chose to monopolize the NFL license...
I have mixed feelings about the style of gameplay though. I know some people like the more menu driven managerial side of things, but I like to actually control players, even in a simple way, like Tecmo Bowl back in the day. I don't know how long simply choosing a play from a menu would hold my attention, if I wasn't actually doing anything on the field. I think the number of play options is fine, but do agree that including penalties is a good idea. The problem is though, I don't like luck based penalties. I like my success or failure of a play to be because of something I did. That's just me though.
I will keep an eye on this game though, because I'd like a good American football game again.
Agree
The suggestions are good. The game is also good. It made me mad. I lost 2 games so far. I need to work on my plays.
I don't know anything about football
I'll be honest, I'm not a big football fan and I don't know much about it either. However, the game was pretty simple to play in the browser using JAWS. It was pretty fun too. I see the potential for the game, and I would like to try it on the iPhone. Good luck!
Re: I don't know anything about football
It was good agree. With some of the suggestions it can be better. I lost and it got me mad. You know you are having a good time when the game is making you upset and your trying to win. Hope people check it out. People cry because there is no good game yet they do not take the time to check it out.
Long pass
I notice that when I am defence and I set for the long pass and I am right still game point. Looks like when I do the long pass 99% time it does not work. Still a good game. It just drives me nuts. We need penalty and also when the quaraback can do an audible.
Re: I don't know anything about football
I wonder if I could make a game like this, but the rugby league in Australia
Re: I don't know anything about football
That is possible. Would a game with several sports be interesting?
This game is awesome but I just found an issue when penalized
This game is great. The AI voices as noted by other users are a little choppy at times and the volume changes during phrases. This does distract from the game just a little. The issue I ran into when I last played a few minutes ago. was that when I received a penalty on offense, the AI did not read the penalty and the game froze. The choices were no longer visible on the screen of my iPhone 16 running iOS 27 nor were they spoken by the AI. This caused me to need to refresh the page and therefore lose the game. Keep up the great work! And thank you for all you’ve done so far.
iPhone
I will play it on my iPhone 16 pro max with iOS 27.0.1. Played it in my window PC with JAWS. No conflict with it. Good game and hope you keep working on it. This is what a game suppose to be.
Lost again
Did not get any penalty. Lost 18 to 23. Windows 10. Stats are better read but still need work. I am not quitting until I win a freeking game. It be great when one day we could play it against another human. People provide input. Did email the blind apple email group about this game. We need this game to work.