Need some help from gamers

Submitted by Lennon on Tuesday, January 7, 2020.
Forum
Accessibility Advocacy

Hello all,

This post is directed towards visually impaired gamers. My brother is fully blind from birth and we love gaming together. I usually sit next to him and narrate everything in detail while playing RPG games and the sounds, music and any cut scenes only add to the fun. However, there is this one game we have played since we were kids but wished it could be more accessible. The game is called Age of Empires 2. I know this has nothing to do with Apple products besides the fact that we both use apple products. I couldn't help but wonder if anybody played that game or knows anything about scripting to make games more accessible. Heck, if you could direct me to any other forum that itself would be much appreciated. The present version of Age of Empires 2: Re-definitive Edition released last month and has support for color blind gamers. It also has a lot of hotkeys and short cuts but sadly it has nothing to enable a screen reading software to read anything ingame and it also requires a mouse to "place items." We are trying to play online multiplayer together and I would love to be guided towards any resource. It really sucks that it is 2020 and big gaming studios are doing so little.

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Submitted by Oliver Kennett on Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Hi, I've only recently got back into gaming myself and it's a rather confusing and frustrating thing to try, but I like fiddling.

Anyway, on the Mac, you're out of luck. On windows your brother could have some success using NDVA and the OCR function it has. I use this when gaming on my xbox as I can patch the xbox feed into my Mac that is running windows and then OCR the screen with a shortcut.

As this isn't really the forum to discuss non apple items, drop me a message on twitter

@oliverkennett

and I can point you in the direction of some resources. Sadly, there is nothing quite as good and active as Applevis, but there are a lot of gamers without sight out there using mainstream equipment and playing mainstream games and it's getting better by the day, though it will be frustrating more times than not.

Submitted by Patrick Smyth on Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Set your brother up with Manamon 2 on PC. It's sound-only, reasonably deep strategically. I have some vision, can play games like Xcom 2, and I still enjoy it, it's great when I'm just feeling too blind to play around in a game for sighted people. It's...uh..."inspired" by pokemon.

http://www.vgstorm.com/manamon2.php

Unfortunately we're not quite there yet with the blind playing games. You can read about people like Terry Garrett who are just really persistent and there are certainly games to play, but you need to be kind of flexible. AoE seems like a tough nut to crack since it's so visual and unsemantic.

https://www.wired.com/2011/04/blind-gamer-plays-zelda-by-ear/

Something else to check out is the new RetroArch, which builds some OCR functionality into a games emulator. Your brother could play some of those old RPGs himself, maybe. You sound like a special kind of brother, my bro and I always used to play together as kids and those are treasured memories.

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-8-2-coming-soon-accessib…

Submitted by treky fan on Wednesday, January 8, 2020

If you are looking for a game that you and your brother can play together, I suggest dice world. It isn't designed for windows, but you can play it on iOS and android. It works with voiceover, talkback, and voice assistant.

Submitted by Laura on Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Trivia Crack is another game the sighted and blind can enjoy playing together.