Welcome to Gamers Corner
Welcome to the very first edition of Gamers Corner, a brand-new show from AppleVis hosted by Thomas Domville (AnonyMouse), with co-hosts Aaron Spelker and Jesse Anderson. This inaugural episode marks the beginning of a seasonal series that will run three or four times a year, depending on the pace of major game releases.
Gamers Corner was created to provide blind and low vision gamers with a dedicated space to discover new titles, revisit hidden gems, and explore accessibility in mainstream and indie games alike. Each edition will highlight standout iOS games, feature community-driven insights, and showcase accessible titles across other platforms. Our goal is to capture the excitement of gaming while maintaining a critical eye on design, accessibility, and overall player experience.
In this debut issue, we dive into two ambitious iOS games that generated plenty of discussion, explore Aaron’s “Vault Treasure” pick from the past, and finish with Jesse’s console recommendation that proves accessibility is expanding beyond mobile platforms.
Glory Frontline
Platform: iOS (Free, with in-app purchases) Genre: Strategy and Action Hybrid
Glory Frontline isn’t content to play it safe. Instead, it pushes the boundaries of what blind-accessible iOS gaming can be, throwing players headfirst into the chaos of battle. In single-player mode, it feels like a tower defense game where enemies swarm down lanes, demanding that you shift quickly between positions to survive. Switch to multiplayer, however, and the world opens up into a full 360-degree battlefield more reminiscent of mainstream first-person shooters.
The ambition is undeniable, and the sound design is equally striking, immersing players in frantic combat with clear audio cues for threats at every range. Yet with great ambition comes some missteps. The lack of a proper tutorial makes onboarding overwhelming, leaving many players confused about mechanics and progression. Microtransactions and skill regressions can also frustrate those unwilling to commit daily playtime.
Still, for the dedicated gamer, Glory Frontline represents one of the boldest and most console-like experiences available on iOS. It’s complex, sometimes punishing, but undeniably groundbreaking.
Joker Poker: Texas Frenzy
Platform: iOS (Free, optional in-app purchase to remove ads) Genre: Roguelike Poker
At first glance, Joker Poker: Texas Frenzy might sound like just another card game. But this clever roguelike flips expectations on their head. Here, poker hands become puzzles, shaped by modifiers, celestial cards, and relentless boss battles. It’s not about chasing the perfect flush — it’s about leveraging multipliers and bending the rules of poker to survive another round.
The replay value is immense. Every run feels different, and every choice carries weight, from what jokers to buy in the shop to how you approach the final boss’s brutal debuffs. What looks like a familiar round of poker quickly turns into a strategic tug-of-war, where two pairs may outperform a full house thanks to well-stacked modifiers.
Accessibility is generally solid, though a few unlabeled elements and interface quirks make the learning curve steeper than it should be. Fortunately, frequent developer updates are steadily improving the experience. And once mastered, Joker Poker becomes dangerously addictive — the kind of game you promise to play for “just five minutes” but end up losing hours to.
Aaron’s Vault Treasure – The Eldrum Series
Platform: iOS Titles: Eldrum: Untold (Free), Eldrum: Red Tide (Free), Eldrum: Black Dust ($8.99)
For his Vault Treasure segment, Aaron revisits the Eldrum series — a trilogy of text-driven RPGs that have earned acclaim for both their storytelling and flawless accessibility.
The journey begins with Eldrum: Untold, where players awaken on a beach with no memory. It’s a straightforward but engaging entry point, introducing the series’ branching choices and light RPG mechanics.
The second title, Eldrum: Red Tide, raises the stakes considerably. Cast as a soldier in a war-torn land searching for a missing brother, players encounter factional politics, deeper turn-based combat, and a story rich with tension and strategy.
Finally, Eldrum: Black Dust represents the pinnacle of the series. With branching narratives, open-world choices, multiple character classes, and epic battles that demand careful preparation, it feels like a fully realized RPG experience on iOS. Choices matter, consequences linger, and replayability is enormous.
From start to finish, the Eldrum trilogy stands out not only for its evolving depth but also for its accessibility. Every element is carefully labeled, organized, and tested, making the games fully playable from the start. For players seeking narrative immersion, Eldrum is a must-play series.
Jesse’s Crossing Consoles Pick – As Dusk Falls
Platforms: Xbox, PlayStation, PC Price: $29.99
While Gamers Corner will often focus on iOS, Jesse’s “Crossing Consoles” segment reminds us that accessibility in gaming is growing across all platforms. His pick for this edition is As Dusk Falls, an interactive drama that plays out like a graphic novel in motion.
The story follows two families whose lives become entangled in crime, betrayal, and survival, with branching choices that shape each outcome. It’s a game where dialogue and decision-making matter as much as any action sequence, making it both tense and deeply personal.
Accessibility features are a standout. Full menu narration, audio description, and QuickTime event support ensure that blind and low vision players can enjoy the game alongside sighted counterparts. For many, this title sets a new standard for inclusivity in mainstream gaming.
As Dusk Falls proves that accessible design doesn’t need to compromise artistic vision — it can elevate it.
Final Word
The inaugural edition of Gamers Corner highlights exactly what this new show is all about: exploring accessible games with honesty, enthusiasm, and the critical perspective of gamers who live and breathe the medium.
From the daring but flawed Glory Frontline, to the surprisingly addictive Joker Poker, to the narrative excellence of the Eldrum series, and finally to As Dusk Falls’ groundbreaking accessibility, this first outing demonstrates the incredible variety available to blind and low vision gamers today.
This is only the beginning. Future editions will dive even deeper into new releases, hidden treasures, and conversations that matter to the accessible gaming community. Stay tuned — the best is yet to come.
Resources Mentioned on This Episode
Games Featured in This Episode (iOS)
- Glory Frontline on the App Store
- Joker Poker – Texas Frenzy on the App Store
- Eldrum: Untold on the App Store
- Eldrum: Red Tide on the App Store
- Eldrum: Black Dust on the App Store
Crossing Consoles: As Dusk Falls
IllegallySighted
IllegallySighted, started in 2012, covers a broad range of topics for blind and low-vision users, including console and PC games, low-vision and blind-accessible games, accessibility in technology and gaming, hardware reviews, VR and AR accessibility, interviews, and presentations.
Links & handles
- YouTube: youtube.com/illegallysighted
- Website: illegallysighted.com
- Twitter / X: @bgfh79
- Blue Sky: IllegallySighted
Mobile Accessible Games
Mobile Accessible Games is dedicated to connecting the blind and visually impaired community with accessible mobile games. They share weekly accessibility game reviews, developer and influencer interviews, news on accessible gaming, and feature articles.
Connect & read
- Facebook group: Mobile Accessible Games on Facebook
- Twitter / X: @amspelker
- Articles by Aaron Spelker: PocketGamer
- YouTube channel: Mobile Accessible Games
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.
Thomas: Hello and welcome. My name is Thomas: Domville, also known as AnonyMouse. Welcome to a brand new podcast that AppleVis is presenting to you called Gamer's Corner. And this is going to be the May through August edition. It is going to be held maybe three or four times a year, depending on how many games come out during those times that we can give highlights and pick the games we thought is worth mentioning, reviewing it, and the like. We will also be discussing about crossing platforms or crossing console, as we are going to call the segment, which we will go beyond just the iOS games. And with me to make this whole thing work so well, I decided to reach out to two of the Most well-known gamers out there that I know of in the blind community, and I'd like to present them to you today. So I'll bring up first, I will bring in Aaron: Spelker. How are you, Aaron:?
Aaron: I'm doing great today. Thank you.
Thomas: Well, Aaron:, tell us about you and how I found you and just, you know, just everything you know when it comes to love of games.
Aaron: Yeah, sure. So I have a Facebook group. It's called Mobile Accessible Games, where I review games that are accessible for those who are blind and visually impaired on the iPhone. It's about over 220 game reviews that are done there, and there's about 3,600 people who are part of that. I also tend to, at times, interview game developers and accessibility advocates. And I interviewed you maybe a little over a year ago for that YouTube portion of the Facebook group. And we talked all things AppleBiz and gaming and whatnot during that. So I think that's where we kind of first got introduced to each other. And yeah, so I really am focused here on the The accessible iPhone ecosystem.
Thomas: Right. We did meet up and you reach out to me and I came on to your show and been I love your show ever since. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I got to have Aaron: on. Now, you're kind of a newly blind person, aren't you?
Aaron: Yeah, I had an accident about six years ago. So from six years ago, I was a fully sighted person, and now I'm a fully blind person. So yeah, it's a new world. And, you know, that actually, when I went blind, I had been a lifelong gamer. And shortly after I went blind, I said, you know, I need to keep playing games. I love playing games. So I started exploring to see what games are accessible and playable for a blind person. And I really wasn't finding a good list. And after about a couple months of complaining, why isn't there a good list? I decided to start Mobile Accessible Games and be the one who created that list. So now we're up to 220 plus games that a person can go to that Facebook group and see a wide variety of games across, I think, we're up to about 40 different genres of game types. So no matter what you're into, you hopefully should find a game on that list that you can play. Absolutely.
Thomas: I'll make sure I put that in the show notes so people can find that along with their YouTube channel. And so there's people can subscribe to that cause I highly recommend to do that. And then the other person I'd like to bring on and he is very well known as well. And I come to love and listen to his YouTube as well. And his name is Jesse: Anderson. How are you doing Jesse:?
Jesse: I am doing pretty well. Thanks for inviting me on the show.
Thomas: Well, tell us about you, Jesse:. So how did you come about and whatnot? What do you run and do you have a YouTube and etc. ?
Jesse: Sure. Well, I have been legally blind since birth. I have some usable vision, so use some magnification, but a lot of text-to-speech and stuff like that, too. As far as gaming goes, I've been a gamer all my life. I remember seeing the Atari 2600 way back in the day. I thought it was fascinating that you could control things on your TV and Then the NES came out, and I was hooked for life, shall we say. And right now, I've been running the Illegally Sighted YouTube channel since 2012. And on that channel, I cover a variety of different things. I cover a lot of blind accessible games, audio, text-based games, but I also cover many other platforms. It's not just iOS, but I do cover iOS mobile games. A lot of PC stuff, Xbox, PlayStation technology. I dabble in virtual reality as well. When the original Oculus Rift came out, I started digging into... VR and VR accessibility. So I also really, aside from my day job as an assistive technology specialist, I do a lot of technology and gaming and virtual and augmented or XR, as they call it, advocacy and consulting work. And It's a very busy time right now, and it's fun because there are so many games coming out. And early next, like next Monday and Tuesday, we have the North American version of the Game Accessibility Conference, which I'll be attending virtually. So it's going to be a fun weekend.
Thomas: That sounds awesome. You know, I love the both of you because both of you bring things to the table. And, you know, Jesse:, you being low vision where Aaron: and I have no vision at all, kind of brings some perspective to us for those listeners that are also low vision, but also cross vision. which is going to be very interesting and it's going to be kind of an awesome podcast to be able to explore different things other than just iOS out there because I know a lot of us have a lot of passion for games like Aaron:. Um, you know, I've always had a passion for games too. And, uh, just to show our age, Jesse: is that I also remember that was Atari 2600 days. And, um, I remember going to the stores and, uh, renting some games and running back home, get my best friend out and we'd get some frozen pizza. I'll watch David Letterman and start playing games into the wee hour of the ninth. And that's where the beginning of the experience. And, um, I had the privilege of having vision for a lot of those years. So I did get to play with the Nintendos during the NS, Super NNS, the 64 game cubes and things like that and the early PlayStation games. But I was not able to enjoy Xbox and the later version of PlayStation and obviously like the Nintendo Switch and the Wii's. But we all come to the table with something, but the common denominator is that we are all true gamers here. And so the point of this podcast is just to bring a presence of games that you may not be aware of, or maybe you are, and you just want to hear our reviews of things. And so we're going to start with the first segment. So I'm going to take games that came out or that have been updated that are notes worth it during the May through August of 2025 time zone. Or timeframe, I should say. And we kind of discussed this behind the scenes between the three of us, and we came down with the two games we like to kind of talk about and review and give our thoughts about it. And the first game to talk about is Glory Frontline. And what I like to talk about Glory Frontline, guys, is that I'll start with, let's just start with Jesse: first on Glory Frontline. If you can give us an idea what this game is, and then we can go from there and talking about the game itself and possibly give our thoughts on the game and the mechanics and things like that. So if you wouldn't mind, Jesse:, could you give us kind of a nutshell what Glory Frontline is for those that have not seen or played this game?
Jesse: Sure. So Glory Frontline is kind of a unique game because they're actually doing quite a bit with it. It has a single player and a multiplayer mode. And it kind of brings together a little bit of like power defense in the single player portion and kind of like a first person shooter type of gameplay for the multiplayer. And there are like character upgrades you have equipment and weapons and skills that you improve um so there's quite a bit of depth and replayability to it um but yeah it's uh for somebody like i know a lot of people are looking for more action type of games this would be uh one i think that would fit that and offer a fair bit of uh challenge and variety no doubt i totally agree with you on that um
Thomas: I think the complexity of this game is mind boggling. But before I get there, I'm going to go over to Aaron: here. And when you play the game itself, Aaron:, what did you think of the game itself? Did you think it was overly complicated or did you think it was like, oh, my, this is like something unique? Or what did you have in mind when you play this game?
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, I always like exposure to genres that don't get a lot of accessibility. So a first-person shooter type of game, we don't have many of those available. So whenever one comes out, I'm always very interested to explore it and play it. This has kind of a concept of... You have kind of lanes that the enemies are coming down. And, you know, if they're coming down lane one, you've got to move over to lane one, fire, kill that enemy, move over to lane two, kill that enemy, maybe go back to lane one because another enemy is coming. And, you know, keep them away from getting to you and hurting you with either a melee attack or hitting you with fire from farther away. So the quicker you can kill the enemy, the longer you're going to stay alive. So I liked it. I thought the sound quality of the gunfire, the explosions was good. It has a good kind of frantic pace to make you feel like you actually have stakes in playing it. There is... Some drawbacks from the standpoint of it very much just throws you into the game and makes you just figure it out. They really could use a stronger tutorial to kind of onboard you and show you how to play the game, what you're going to encounter, how you can upgrade your different equipment and what that exactly means. So I think that could be a better tutorial to bring you and draw you into the game. I think my fear is some people are going to be too lost right at the beginning that they're going to bail really quickly and never actually get to experience the game and all that it can be. So that's one thing I'm concerned about it. But I really enjoyed the sound quality. I did enjoy the different enemy types that you face. I thought I did a good job of utilizing the sound to convey what is happening as well as kind of a voiceover narration to, you know, let you know who enemies are coming down one lane versus another, how close they're getting. So you actually know, you know, where is the closest danger that you really should be facing and trying to destroy before they get to you. So, you know, overall an interesting game, you know, some, some challenges and some of the, you know, The gameplay, but, you know, as any game, I played it early on. I'm hoping that they will continually improve it, take feedback from people and make it even better experience as we get out here, you know, three, six months from from launch.
Thomas: Sure. Absolutely. I totally agree with you. I'll kind of weigh in a little bit and then we'll come back to Jesse:. One of the things that I see a lot on Apple Biz is that we get a lot of simple games. There's so many out there. There's a variety of different types of games. And one thing that I see some of the most hardcore gamers that always have requested is, number one, we want to play visual sighted people games. Meaning that this, I think, is one of the first I have ever seen that really brings you right into what a visual game would be like if you had sight. There's been many games I've played in the past where you got battle things and there's a lot going on and there's multiple things and there's complexity. The mechanics I thought in this game was mind-boggling and I totally agree with you, Aaron:, is that I think the problem with this game first and going in is that you really were lost and this is one of those games that is not for the faint of heart and I wish there was a better tutorial as well. Because I think if you understood the mechanics, this game is probably one of the best games I've ever seen for the blind community when it comes to very advanced, complex games. For example... You know, there's moments there in the multiple games, or I should say when you play multiple players out there, that you have the 360 spectrum, and you really got to listen to all the cues that are going on, because the cues are very important, because the complexity starts to kick in at that moment, and it really depends what's in your inventory and stock for an So I kind of like to refer to it as the close range, mid-range, long range, and then the heavy area, meaning that when you have close combat, you got to make sure you have something that's meant for close combat. And so you would hear those things that occur that is up close to you and right personally. That is when you need to be quick with your fingers. And I have to admit, That is complex for touch gestures. I almost am probably going to ask you to in a bit about cane controllers for this on the iPhone if that's something that would make things simpler. But back to the close range is that obviously you would need to have like a shotgun or something because those are very good and destructive in close range where that doesn't do well in mid range and long range. So when you hear things or coming to you that is to 1 o'clock position, whatever it is, mid-range, meaning that you've got to kind of adapt to where that moment is coming from and how far. And based on that, you know, you may have to pull out your assault rifle at that point because that's more deadly for the mid-range. And then you have long range where you might have to get a sniper gun out. And what's kind of a cool thing with a sniper gun is that when you zoom in and you hear this zoom in sound, And it's pretty fascinating, but it all sounds so easy, but it really isn't because it's a fast action game. You've got to think quickly. And it's one of those games you may have to play dozens, if not many times more, to get past something so you can understand what's going on. And sometimes I think it's going to go over the head of people and they just give up for frustration. And that's the crummy part. And I think that's why I think this is such a great game But we just need more tutorials so people can understand it. And there's moments that you have heavy combat, meaning that there's mechanics, there's vehicles involved, so you may have to get RPGs out and stuff like that. So there are so many dynamics to this game. It's just incredible. But back to you, Jesse:, what did your gameplay feel like, and did you feel like it was – kind of overwhelming and what did you think of the mechanics and if your thoughts of do you think this game is probably one of the most advanced blind games out there?
Jesse: Yeah, especially for iOS. I definitely think that, like I said, it is a very deep game with all the things that both of you have described so far. And I'm glad you brought up the point about, you know, not just the complexity, but like the way the game controls, because the way they do it, both in single player and multiplayer, they're a little bit different, but they're and this is one thing where I wish that the single player, I almost wish they would have done away with the lanes and the whole kind of power defense type of thing. Because if you play the game like, um, audio wizards, it kind of reminds me of something like that for the single player. But I think it would have been, you know, especially for transferring skills from single player to multiplayer. You mentioned that, um, In the multiplayer, it's more of like a 360. You're turning around and like aiming at, you know, other players and whatnot. You know, if you've played like, let's say, a console first-person shooter where you would use the dual analog sticks, you know, your left... Stick is for movement, forward, back, left, and right. And then your right analog stick is typically for aiming left and right. And most games will also do vertical, you know, looking up and down. So if you have somebody on the ground or somebody on a balcony... But even just having straight horizontal aiming, I wish the full game was that 360, so both modes were sort of in parity. And I was literally thinking when you mentioned that, because this is something I had thought about too, where I was thinking that a lot of games these days are on multiple platforms, and with the depth and everything with this game, I could easily see this Coming, if not to consoles, but if nothing else, to PC and supporting like an Xbox or PlayStation game controller. I can see, you know, because touchscreens, there's a lot you can do with them because, you know, you can basically make any gestures you kind of want to. But at the same time, I think for a lot of games, I find that like actual buttons and analog sticks are a little bit more precise. Sometimes like, oh, I'm doing a bunch of crazy stuff and the gestures don't, you know, they don't always register the way I think they might. But yeah, I mean, like the whole, the 360 movement around and everything works really well.
Aaron: The controller also allows you to take multiple actions at the same time where the gestures, you can really only do one gesture at a time.
Jesse: Right, right. But yeah, and so that's why I was sort of hoping that, like I said, the single player, I kind of wish that was like the 360 mode too, just to... Because a lot of games will do that. They'll have a single-player campaign, and that'll kind of get you ready. You're using the same mechanics, and you're getting ready for going online and actually fighting against real people. Um, and the other thing, like I said, I found it to be like, I do agree with both of you that, you know, having a little bit more tutorial, um, could be a good thing. And the other thing that has kind of rubbed me the wrong way, uh, and I'm curious what you guys thought about it too. I'm totally on board for the game having, um, you know, having elements where you, you know, you pay for a game, you pay, let's say to get rid of ads or you pay for a certain, you know, you pay for the base game or whatever. But there's a little bit of this, I joked in my video review for my channel, I was kind of like, well, A lot of these microtransactions and things that are infesting, they started in mobile and Facebook games, but now they're pretty much ubiquitous everywhere, PC, console, mobile. And, you know, it's largely been, you know, mainstream visual games that have really done this, but we want to be equal. And now we get to deal with microtransactions too, because this game has a lot of them that And one element that I wasn't really happy with, I was looking through, as I said, you can get weapons and items and med packs and skills and things. When you go under the training, one of my real kind of disappointments was it's a thing where you really have to play the game pretty regularly because if you invest, let's say, some skills and whatnot in your training abilities, but then you don't play a little bit, you know, it's not like, oh, I do a thing for a certain amount of time and then I level up and I get better over time. which you do, but if you don't play the game for a certain amount of time, your skill level can actually regress. And especially if you're investing real money in that and then you decide not to play it for a few weeks or you can't play it for a few weeks or whatever, I don't like the fact that your skills can actually go down, that kind of a thing, especially when you put all these timers and microtransactions down. I would rather pay a little bit more for a full game and not have to deal with timers and ads and microtransactions, but I'm curious what your guys' thoughts on that are.
Aaron: Well, I mean, for me, it kind of goes back to the lack of a tutorial and kind of slower onboarding because I think... the microtransactions is going to be a band-aid for people who can't really figure it out, and they'll be like, okay, well, I can compensate by just upgrading my weapon as opposed to learning the game. And if you kind of do that and you don't really learn the game, then you're going to stall out because you're not really going to be able to progress because the stronger weapon is really not going to allow you to advance through the game if you don't really understand how to efficiently and effectively play. And, you know, so it gets kind of this pay to win or pay to maintain as you go with, as you were mentioning that regression, you're going to pay to get back to where you were, you know, and why, you know, like why you can't always play every single day. People have lives. And, you know, I think that, again, you know, I think there's plenty of people who will say, wait, I'm going backwards. Okay. Forget this game. I'm out. I'm going to something else. So I think it does a lot of things that are concerning to me that I think are going to turn people off and away from the game as opposed to draw them in and retain them. So I think they've made some progress. You know, mistakes and models ultimately, because you're going to only retain the hardcore play every day. Go, go, go people. You're not going to retain those casual people who are casual gamers.
Jesse: And it's a shame because the core mechanics of it and stuff, there's a lot there to like. Right.
Thomas: You know, I'm with both of you guys. I totally agree with you is that there are several big cons, and we're not quite used to this. As a blind community playing these games, we're not used to this on iOS. This is kind of a new thing, I think, personally, because you finally got the console quality game here, right? But bringing that to the iOS also brings in some heartaches when it comes to pitching out money and things like that we aren't used to. And I totally agree with you, Jesse:, is that I think a lot of us would agree with you that a one-time purchase or a purchase that isn't so much of would have been great. But, you know, it's unfortunate is that some... game developers are like that and that's how they make the money and but i agree i think this game could be easily forked over to a another platform that could present and bring in more um experience for those that want to do these heavy games so i i agree with both of you i think this is definitely for heavy gamers this is definitely not for everyone this is going to be for the hardcores they have a lot of times their hand and want to play with it nonstop, but you want that console feeling, I think this is a game for you. So now, let's give this a grade, if you guys don't mind. I'm going to go ahead and give it a C, just based on, because of what Jesse: said about monetizing, I think it's one of those games, if you don't use it, it's going to digress, and that could deter people I think the complexity but yet I almost give it an A when it comes to mechanics and bringing the real console game to us is there but I think they failed to present tutorials and things to make this easier for those playing in the blind community but I will say for those that want to try it it is free to try and I encourage you to try it and stick into it if that's something that's really you want to do so What are your thoughts, Aaron:? What kind of grade would you give this game?
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, I think it's overall a B-. There's a lot that's interesting and good. I think you've got to go in, as you said, this is a hardcore gaming type of experience. It's not a casual type of experience. I do like your idea of a controller game Aspect because again it gets really frantic later on and it is hard to kind of do all the gestures and do everything you want I think a controller where you can be pressing multiple buttons and moving and doing a lot of things simultaneously and um, is to your advantage. Cause like in the, um, in the, um, single player, um, you can't reload your gun and switch lanes at the same time. And, you know, why not? Um, you know, those are two different gestures. And if you'd start doing the other gesture while before the gun is fully loaded, then you disrupt the loading of the gun. So, um, that, that can really, you know, not kind of as realistic as you would hope, um, But if you could do that in a controller where you could be using the joystick to move while using the buttons to reload, I think that would make that even more in-depth type of experience in this game.
Jesse: What about you, Jesse:? I'm kind of right there with both of you guys. I guess I would probably hover between a B- and a C. Again, I think gameplay-wise, there's a lot of potential. I do kind of wish that the single-player and the multiplayer played the same way so that even if you were playing single-player, you were kind of getting used to the 360 movement that you would use in multiplayer. You know, again, I think there could be a little bit better onboarding, tutorialization, that kind of a thing, because it can be overwhelming. Even it took me a little bit to figure some of it out right away. But, you know, like I said, gameplay-wise, the audio design, the music, the sound effects and everything, all of that was great. But I guess the other thing that really gets me, and again, don't get me wrong, I am totally willing to pay for a game, but as you said... you know, we all have lives and everything. And me being, you know, I play a lot of, you know, not just iOS games, but my steam backlog is just, I, I have so many things I got to play, but, um, You know, there's so many other things that are drawing my attention that this whole timers and, you know, it's like, oh, well, I want to get an upgrade, but I have to wait four hours for this timer to go or I pay real money. And, you know, I've complained about that in like a lot of visual games on my channel. And that type of thing just generally rubs me the wrong way, especially if. your skills can degrade over time. If it would just stay at one level and go up, that's okay. But the fact that you can also kind of regress, I don't know that I'm... I definitely want to keep an eye on it to see what the developers do for updates. And I would be very curious to see potentially like a Steam version with controller support or something. Exactly.
Thomas: Yeah, that's well said, both of you, and I thank you for that. Let's hop into our next game and our highlights during this month. We found that we want to talk about Joker Poker. Texas Frenzy. This is an interesting twist of a game. I will start with Aaron: here. Could you give us a nutshell what this game is about?
Aaron: Yeah, so it's interesting. It is, you know, think of a classic poker game where you're making, you know, pairs and flushes and straights and, you know, full houses and things like that. Except there are all these modifier cards that get applied to the scoring of your hand. So you can get things that say, you know, three times multiplier on scoring any clubs that you have in your hand, or anytime you play a full house, you know, get 10 times the points. So there's like all these different modifiers or modifiers where you can say instead of getting the normal seven cards, every hand you'll get an eighth card. So there's a lot of different strategy that gets employed making each gameplay and playthrough unique. Your goal is to kind of move up through each level playing and beating a certain point until you reach the boss at the end of that level who's going to have some sort of There's roadblock in your way where it'll be, you know, you only score half the points or you have one fewer cards in your hand or you only get two discards instead of three. So there's things that at the boss level that try to hinder you from being able to beat that boss. So it really is, you know, kind of like a poker roguelike experience. Really a lot of different moving components to it for your scoring that really makes the strategy unique. You know, as you start playing the hand, you start or going to the level, you start realizing, what kind of modifiers you're getting and trying to build and get multipliers that will augment each other so that you really, really ramp up your score. So you really got to be strategic on how you build your deck, how you build your multipliers. what multipliers you want to be applying to your hand in order to get that score. And knowing what is coming on the boss, you might know that the boss is going to reduce your scoring by half. So you really have to think about how do I multiply that score up so I can actually have a chance of beating that boss. So you you have kind of short-term and long-term strategy that you need to apply in order to, you know, beat all the levels and be declared, you know, winner of that particular deck type.
Thomas: Yeah. I mean, this game is definitely, I think, addictive. And one of the fun games, I don't know if that's a real word, but one of the more fun games I have played in a long time, um, How about you, Jesse:? So what do you think of the mechanics of the game? What do you think that this is doable for a lot of the folks out there that can play this game? What are your thoughts on the game itself?
Jesse: Yeah, so believe it or not, this game is kind of an homage, an accessible homage to a game that I got very, very, very hooked on that came out, I believe, in like early 2024, which was called Bellatro. And there is a PC accessibility mod, which I have yet to check out for Bellatro. But Joker Poker is very heavily based on that as far as its mechanics and the way it plays. I love this game. Like I said, I got very hooked on Bellatro last year. And when Joker Poker came out and I could play this with voiceover on my iPhone and Yeah, I got sucked in quite a bit again because, like Aaron: said, there is so much depth. You're not just playing like a simple... This isn't your typical simple card game where it's over and done pretty quickly. You have your short-term, your long-term goals, but yes, you're playing poker hands, but you have jokers, you have planet cards, tarot cards. Celestial cards and all of these can either do temporary or permanent buffs or modifiers to your hand. And what I find is interesting, like if you're used to playing regular poker, one of the things that you have to get used to is Let's say in regular poker, you have a pair, two pair, three of a kind, four of a kind, full house. You have that kind of hierarchy, and you would think that you would play, oh, well, if I can get a full house or a four of a kind, that's probably the better thing to do. But that may not actually be the case because, again, you have all these modifiers, you have these boss kind of debuffs that they put on you, which can be really brutal. I remember getting to the very final episode. boss of a run, and I thought I had such a good hand stuff built up, and I just got wrecked right at the end. But there may be times where if you have built your modifiers in your deck to where two pairs can give me exponentially more score, it may be more beneficial for me to play that two pair than it would be for me to play a full house. So it's kind of those sort of really interesting gameplay wrinkles. No, I love the game. It's really, really good. My only real complaint is there are a couple of accessibility issues where on a couple of screens, like when you're choosing some tarot cards or like you buy, there's a shop in between each round as well. You're earning gold or money. And you can sometimes buy Joker cards or some of these, you know, different modifier cards. And sometimes there are a few things that aren't labeled. So you might not quite understand what a certain card is or they may only tell you the number and not the suit or I forget what exactly it was. But there are a couple of areas that accessibility could be improved a little bit for voiceover. But, I mean, the vast majority of the game is very playable and it is very, very addictive. You were warned. That's what I would say.
Thomas: Right. You know, I had to agree with you on that because I felt like when I first played this game, I was like, when I first heard it, I'm one of those that's like, oh, another card game. What is this with the card games? And usually I'm turned off by that. But this, however, is so different. It's like what you said. It's like you don't have to make a flush or whatever not to win the game. You can actually win off of two pairs and three of kinds and whatever not, these low-end scoring typical in poker. But this puts in a whole dynamic to the next level of complexity of strategies. There is definitely some strategies involved because you've got to really pay attention to what – Things that you purchase and you're going to use during the game to try to beat these boss. And what's funny is that it's like Jesse: says, is that I could be on a roll. And then it's just that last little thing just screws you off. But that makes the replayable of the game. And that's what I'm loving. You just want revenge. It's not just replayable in terms of I can do this over, but it changes all the time. The dynamic isn't the same as, you know, if I would play poker every day, it's the same. You know, you're doing the same old thing. I'm looking for three of a kind, four of a kind, plus whatever it is, the highest you can get suits and make it and flush, whatever or not. This take it to a whole new level. But I will have to agree, there are some quirks to it, and I will give kudos to the developers that continuously come out with updates, improving accessibility on the game itself is why I want to highlight it, and I think it's worthy of taking a look. But overall, I just love this game. Now, it isn't a game that's got tabs and buttons and things like that. There are things you may have to double tap that may not be a button or the placement of things. It's one of those... Games I am going to tell people is that this is not a swipe left, right, left, left, right kind of game. This is going to be kind of a touch explorer areas. Once you get the hang of it, you know where the tarot cards are, the planet cards are, where you need to go into that section. You know where the cards are and you can look at it. You're going to know the placement of those buttons as more and more you do it. And the more you do it, the more natural it becomes. So it is kind of a struggle at first to kind of get a grasp of the interface. But overall, I'm a huge game fan of this as well. Did you find this to be just as addictive? And did you have quirks of your own, Aaron:, when it comes to playing this game?
Aaron: Oh, yeah. I mean, from a game play standpoint, I love this game. This is right up my alley. And, you know, we're talking about these things. I have some numbers here. There are over 200 different Joker modifier cards. There's 13 celestial cards, which is basically multipliers on different hand types. You get better scoring on a two-pair, and you can up that multiplier. And so I might have, as Jesse: was saying, I might have my multiplier set on my two-pair. I might have gotten that up to 10 times. Where actually a two pair is scoring better than a full house is that I only have set as a one time multiplier. There's 22 different tarot cards, 18 spectral cards, 32 voucher cards. And then there's special material cards that add some unique multipliers for different card types on very specific cards. Like you might apply a gold to your ace of diamonds, or you might have a steel to your eight of hearts, which gives you a different scoring point for that card value. the mixing and matching all this makes, as we said earlier, each time you're playing through very, very different because depending on which Joker cards you're getting, you know, you might say, Oh, this Joker card is really going to pair well with trying to always get a straight, you know, because you might have a Joker card that says you don't need five cards to do a straight. You only need four cards to count as a straight. So then I'm going to set my multiplier on my, celestial card on straights to be as high as possible because i can get high points and only need four cards to do that as opposed to five and really ramp up my scores so there's really kind of unique mix and matching depending on what cards you're getting and adjusting your gameplay to fit the cards that you're getting so that makes each game play through very unique now to me there is some um inconveniences which you guys were kind of starting to mention where You know, you might swipe to the right and not get to something and you might have to tap on the screen to find it. You have some things, numbers that are not labeled. It might say zero or five, but you don't know zero or five what exactly. Then that would be your number of joker slots. And then zero of two would be the number of tarot slots that you have. But it doesn't say that. But over time, you'll learn that that's what that is. So it's not game breaking, if you will. It's just kind of annoying, if you will. There's clearly a conversion of language because there's some phrasing terminology that you like instead of saying skip, it says jump over. instead of saying back, it says return. So like, you know, what we are kind of used to as terminology, they're using some different terminology, which I'm sure was just some translate, you know, from whatever original language to English. That's what it's coming up with. There's also some terminology on a card, you know, like this Joker card does whatever. And I have no idea what it's saying. I don't, you know, whatever the conversion is, I was like, those are words that, R words, but that does not really make a sentence that I understand exactly what that is doing. So that's some stuff that could be cleaned up on just kind of the translation, if you will. But there is one part that I find that is game breaking, which is after you play your hand, it clearly goes on screen and totals up all of the different multipliers that you're applying. to generate a score of, let's say, 23,000 that you earned. And it clearly flashes that up on screen and calculates it. It does not auditorily tell you that, you know, you applied this multiplier, you got this point, this multiplier, you got that point. And it all adds up to 23,000, which without that information, it kind of makes it difficult to really fine tune your strategy and to play this at the highest strategy level. Because without that information, you are kind of guessing everything. that you think you know what it's doing, but maybe it's not doing exactly what you think you're doing, or maybe you're missing some opportunities that if it was clearly spelled out to you, you would better have an understanding how to get your score even higher than what you're doing, that you're missing out on applying a certain type of car that would really ramp up if you could double this category as opposed to you're doubling another category that's scoring much lower. So that fact that it does not give you a chance to review the scoring of your total points after each round and how you came up with those, I think is in some ways game-breaking for those who want to play this at the highest level of strategy. Again, I never got that information, and I made my way through the game and beat it on many a times, but I always felt like I was missing out on something by not having that information.
Jesse: I do agree with you, and I'm glad you brought that up because I kind of forgot about that particular element because, like you said, you can still get through the game, and I still get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but yes, I would like to know exactly what it's doing, and I would like to have that same parity of information that the sighted players do have. Does anyone know if, like, I'm glad you mentioned the, because, again, there's so many mechanics and, you know, variation in this game. The, I forget what you call them, but, like, the modifiers were, like, your steel, your gold. I could never find a place, almost like a glossary in the game to tell me, what does a gold mean?
Aaron: modify so or what is steel i did couldn't i did figure that out um what you have to do is you have to um select a card that has one of those uh gold or steel or whatever and then you have to swipe to the left to before your first card and it tells you you know plus 50 points or whatever whatever the modifier is for gold versus steel so um you have to do it card by card and then you have to swipe to before where your cards start, and it indicates how to adjust to this.
Jesse: Yeah, and interesting. And again, what Thomas: had said, too, I'm glad you really brought this up, because this is something that I regularly bring up for iOS games on my videos, too, is many games, like, yes, you can technically swipe through them, But I think whether it's a game or a productivity app or whatever, I think it's really, really important to not just know how to swipe through an interface on the touchscreen. Explore by touch can save you so much time and headache. So that is such a great skill to learn because it is a complex interface, but you can zip around it really well once you get to know it. Right.
Thomas: So yeah, this is another iOS game that is free to try. There is an optional in-app purchase. And I think if that in-app purchase, that just removed the ads. So that kind of makes you happy. So it's a one-time purchase to remove the ads. Is that right, Jesse:?
Jesse: Uh, yeah, I believe it removes the ads, uh, for the most part. And there is a thing where you're arbitrarily playing, you can play the main challenge game and then you can, you can play like a hand against other players, I guess, like you can win. But yeah, uh, there is a, I, I totally did do the in-app purchase for this one because I really enjoyed it.
Thomas: Oh, actually saying that, uh, let's swing over to Jesse:. What kind of grade would you give this game?
Jesse: I would give it, I mean, I know there are a few accessibility things, very, very valid things that Aaron: mentioned, but I would still give this like an A, probably an A minus with the caveat that if these were fixed and a couple of these things were more readable, I would give it an A or an A plus because I love this game.
Aaron: How about you, Aaron:? Yeah, I mean, from the gameplay, I love the games. A, accessibility, it's a C for me right now. You have to kind of struggle through it. But it's stuff that's fixable. So if the developer takes some time, you can bring that accessibility up pretty easy.
Thomas: You know, you both present good points. And this is kind of hard for me to grade because I'm with... Jesse:, is that once I got over the area and where I need to go and over the quirks that the game has, given the history of the developers continuously come out with updates to fix accessibility, I almost have to give this an A-2. I haven't had this much fun in a long time in a game. There's There's games I put away. There's games I just quit or just whatever not. But this is a rare card game, and I can say I love this. But I agree with Aaron: that when it comes to accessibility, I would almost give it like a B-. There are some areas that might drive you a little bonkers, but... With a lot of these games that comes out with iOS that get a lot of popular mention are going to never be over 90% accessible unless they were really, really, really good. There are some games like that, but for the majority, that's just a way of life, unfortunately. But I think it's usable and playable. What were you thinking there?
Jesse: Yeah. And one thing, one caveat that I will say, and this kind of does, you know, factor in and I'm, and like I said, this is why I love that we have all these different perspectives because as a low vision player, there are things where like, this is why I love a touchscreen interface and voiceover because as a low vision user, I can see that things are there. And sometimes like I may not be able to explore by touch to it, but I can flick to it. Or sometimes I can touch or I can flick to it, but I won't get there if I explore by touch. And so for me as a low vision player, even if I can't read or see exactly what it is, I can see that something is there. And so I might have a little bit easier time figuring out the interface than either of you would because I can kind of see little parts of the interface and go, well, there's something here. Maybe if I flick to the left or right, or maybe if I, if this isn't working, let me go ahead and explore by touch and see if it tells me what's there. Um, so that's why I probably gave it a little bit more of a curve than you guys did on the accessibility.
Thomas: No, that makes total sense. And that's why I love having you on is that, uh, there's low vision out there that needs to know about that, but you're right. Uh, there are certainly things that, um, Aaron:, I don't. We take things for granted where you probably get a little more frustrated because you're like, how in the world did I get to there? But we know exactly, oh, we just go here and go left.
Aaron: I spend time on any new app, whether it be a game or just any app. I kind of do both. I try to start at the... the top left and swipe right till I can't go anymore. And then I also just kind of tap, you know, uh, uh, fingers with, uh, you know, all the way across and all the way down until I've touched like, you know, every spot on the screen just to see if I hear anything different that I didn't get to when I swiped. Um, you know, so I can kind of learn both ways where things are by Dutch and also where things are when they swipe and,
Jesse: But I can use my vision as kind of a shortcut to go, oh, I see something is there. Let me point at that. What does that say? Right.
Thomas: You know, it's... I would... Put this game in the moderate-intermediate area of game players where you have the glory front line. It's more advanced users that want the hardcore stuff. This is not for beginners. This is for people that have played games for a while and can kind of accept some quirks and things like that, but yet the challenges. So I kind of put this in the middle of the pack of games. But we have our next segment that we'll be doing each and every time with the Gamer's Corner. And I kind of like this. These next two segments are going to be kind of a big thing to me, and I'm going to absolutely love it. And I'm going to call this the Aaron:'s Vault Treasure. So it's kind of like a blast in the past. So what we do in this segment is that Aaron:'s going to pick a game or a series of games that might go together that have been pretty successful in the past and kind of a reminder or more of a nostalgia. But sometimes it might be games you may not have heard of or never picked up. Or perhaps, like myself, it's like, oh, I totally forgot about this game. I want to go back to it. And so I'm going to hand this over to Aaron:. So he's going to tell you about his vault treasure pick.
Aaron: Yeah, so I decided to pick the Eldrum series. So that's E-L-D-R-U-M. There's three games in the series. The first one is Untold. Second one is Red Tide. And the third one is Black Dust. There are three games. They're all in the same kind of game world, but they're each their own unique story in that game world. The first one, Untold... Basically, it's a story. You wake up on a beach. You have amnesia. You spend the game trying to figure out who you are, what's going on. There is kind of a text adventure, kind of light RPG feel to that first game. And it's definitely more on... you know, rails, if you will. You kind of get a little bit off path, but you quickly come back to, you know, where they're guiding you to go. But it's a good story and a good kind of first out of the gate version of the game. You kind of move on to Red Tide where you are playing a soldier in kind of a war-torn land. Your brother has disappeared and you are kind of navigating the You know, in this land that's constantly in battle, trying to navigate all the different factions while still trying to find your brother. And it really starts ramping up more of the RPG mechanics, more of the inventory, more of the weapons, and starts taking, as opposed to kind of like a text adventure, choose your own adventure aspect of combat, we get into kind of a true turn-based combat experience in Red Tide. Black Dust being the latest one that just came out, I think, last year. This takes everything up a level. It's a more robust storyline, more branching narratives, more open world field where you actually feel like the choices you're making are changing the world. And when you go back to a location after taking an action, it can actually be different and people react different to you or the whole landscape is different because of choices you made somewhere else in the game. Um, it, um, has, you know, kind of a more robust, uh, turn boy turn based gameplay introduced a, a class, um, which kind of, you can go what's called the dread knot, uh, which is kind of, uh, you know, Big weapons, big armor, or jackal, which is more stealth and roguelike. So you can kind of decide which path that you go down to, which kind of changes your combat style, changes what weapons and armor you're allowed to use, and also has its own kind of story plot that goes with whichever path that you take to decide to go down. So it's really kind of a nice transition to watch this developer with their first game that's a little simple. The second game, which adds some more complexity. And the third game that really feels almost like a true open world type of gaming experience with a lot of complexity, a lot of, again, strategy to play. You know, what weapons, what armor you're going to employ and how you're going to kind of do your fighting style to kind of defeat and beat the enemy. And particularly in that third game, some of the most epic battles where I really felt that there was real stakes, I didn't just... blow through the battles and just win, win, win. I really had to think about how do I do this? How am I going to beat this enemy? And sometimes where I got to a place and I really just could not beat that person, I had to kind of start the game all over and think of a different build to think about how to beat some of the later stage enemies. So I really, really enjoyed this overall series and really enjoyed the progression from an easier game to a more complex and robust game. And all three games have really flawless accessibility. There is no issues in navigating any of the elements. Everything's labeled. Everything's very, very clear. Everything is well organized and well managed to play through that entire series from the first game through the third game. So as someone said, you know, games come out and, you know, they're not really fully accessible yet. And, you know, Untold came out fully accessible and each one after that was fully accessible. So I was really impressed with it. You know, they put out a fully realized game right from the get-go. It wasn't something that had to be constantly patched and adjusted. It came out as a fully-fledged game right from the beginning.
Thomas: Right. You know, this is a great pick because, you know, as I mentioned before, it's a diamond in the rough when it comes to games that is completely accessible to this level. I mean, to this level of a type of a game. I totally agree with you. Starting with the first one is very simple. And I almost kind of encourage people to start with simple so you can get an idea how this game works. Um, I love the decisions that you can pick. You can probably do this first or do that. But I found on the first game is that it always kind of seemed to go all back to one point into the game. So you might be in this one area, but you might have five choices, but it always seems like I always come back to the one thing that I have to achieve or complete. Where the third one is completely different. But that just shows you the complexity and how it evolved over each time of the game. Where the second game, the way it came out, it was more richer in story. The battle was a little more complex. And it just kind of opened things up a little more dynamic of your decision making. The only thing I can say to people is that when you play this game... You definitely need to be aware of what you're equipping, what you're picking up, and things like that that plays a huge role into this because there's been a couple of moments where I just got so frustrated, but that's the beautiful part about this game. It is one of those games you can play. put down and play whenever you have time. Those are my more favorite type of games is that I can put down. I don't have to complete a whole game or half a game now. It's something I can just kind of just play for 10 minutes, wherever I can do 10 minutes to come back into it and whatnot. And it's one of those games that can pull you in. Like I will play for five minutes and I got to go do something that's like, man, I really got to go back to figure this out. So this is definitely one of those gems that I absolutely love all three of these games. But I give kudos to developers to making this completely accessible. I'm with Aaron: that the begin with is very simple, but there are times that can be kind of hair-pulling. And just know that the games get harder as you get to the second and third one in the series. But I love... that it comes in a series. I don't know what it is, but I love that they come out with new games that just go on top of each other. And that could probably be true for any games with chapters where you can get new chapters and kind of go on a new quest and bigger and better models and mechanics of the game. But overall, I really love these three games. If this is something that sounds interesting to you, I definitely want to pick it up. It's not... I don't think it's a, I don't know. I play a lot of RPGs, but this is one of the few RPGs that I really truly enjoy. I don't like a lot of RPG games. It just depends on the game. But this one definitely had me pulled in. What about you, Jesse:?
Jesse: I would agree with both of you. Interestingly, kind of like you, especially since I do play a lot more visual games, over the years, it's really interesting, actually, because for the longest time, I found that I really like a lot more of the action, whether it's sword slashing or first-person shooters or platformer, whatever it is. I kind of liked more of the real-time action, and I never really got into a lot of your turn-based menu, Final Fantasy, grid-based tactics, strategy type of games, role-playing games much in general. I really got into the Elder Scrolls series, Fallout, Mass Effect, because those had a lot of real-time elements to them. But As more of these kind of more traditional turn-based games have come out on iOS and even now to PC and such, what I've kind of found is that I do appreciate them more. Maybe it's just partly because I'm getting older, but also I think it's because, but no, I really think it's because, you know, especially being low vision my whole life, Typically in RPGs, there's been a lot of... You're looking at stats and inventories and menus, and maybe you're having to read loads and loads of text dialogue for stories, especially in the 16-bit days and that. But now that you have these types of games that have either spoken dialogue or voiceover support or both... I find that I'm really getting into these types of games more because they are inherently a lot more accessible. If I can go through and manage my character, my party, or whatever it is I'm doing... through voiceover with a series like this, I actually, like you guys, I do really, I found myself really appreciating this series and I really like how the developers have started, as you said, started a little bit more streamlined, a little simpler, and then by the time you get to the third game, it branches out and it's just, you can see the developer has gotten used to making these types of games and how they've tried to experiment and add just a lot more depth and variety to them. My main problem is that I, as you'll probably learn over the course of this podcast, I have a really, really bad case of gamer ADD. So I start a lot of games and I never end up finishing them because I, all of a sudden they'll see shiny object. And then I go to play something else and I never get back to finishing the I have the opposite. I'm a completionist.
Aaron: I can't leave a game until I've beat it. It's fun.
Jesse: Some games I will, but it's partly because, especially when I want to cover regular games on my channel, so I feel like I always have to play something new. but at the same time, like, yeah, I want to devote, um, if the game really sucks me and I totally will complete it. Um, but there's a lot of times where like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to finish this and then I get distracted and then I forget about it. So that's why I think this, uh, uh, treasure vault section is really good because it'll remind me, yeah, I really should go back and finish some of these Eldrum games because I really like what I've played.
Thomas: You know, it's awesome to hear the perspective of each of us because you can kind of start to learn the dynamic of each other of what kind of games you like because that's the beautiful part about gaming is that there's so many different types of games and we might be lured into certain games more than others, you know, and And that makes sense. And, and I think I, and I can't help to think Jesse: is that you're drawn into more action because you do have some vision where, where we find Aaron: and I find things that are cited or visual are more complex. It's not a bad thing, but it's much more harder. And so it's kind of a nice relief every so often to have a game that isn't so like twiddledy kind of a, time waster kind of game. This is actually, you got to put some thoughts into it. There is some logic to this, that how things work and you may have to go back and redo and re-step you do it. And you go, I'm going to go this way now and see if that does something different. And so I don't know, but it just makes me think. So as a whole, how we're lured to different types of games, and that's pretty self-explanatory how certain games play like that.
Aaron: But nonetheless, I'm a big RPG person. So again, you could probably tell because the first one I picked from the vault was an RPG series. So I'm showing my hand right from the beginning here. Right. The other thing, again, going back to this kind of turn-based gameplay here in the battles, what's great about the game, too, is you can't just be like, I am going to have this sword and this armor, and I'm just going to play through the whole game. Because you'll run into where you'll say, oh, okay, I have this particular weapon. It causes a bleed effect, and I'm really effective with that, and I'm doing really well. And then you'll face an enemy that is immune to bleed effects. So your weapon that you've been using and gotten really good of how to beat battles with it is now completely useless. Or you might say, oh, look, I'm fighting a battle. It's not just one on one. Now it's four on one. And I know I have a weapon in my inventory that allows me to do, you know, like a circle spin, which attacks everybody who's within one square of where I am. And I can basically hit four people at once with one strike. which is the better way to try to beat this battle. You know, cause I, I can do quadruple the damage than attacking one at a time. So you got to kind of really think about how to approach, you know, who are these enemies? How are they attacking me? What are they immune to? What am I immune to? You know, can I, draw them in, or do they keep moving away from me? So now I have to switch to a ranged attack because I can never get close to them. So you really have to kind of, you know, again, I like that strategy aspect of that gameplay. And that really ramps up, you know, the most in the third version of the game, the Black Dust. The other good thing on these games is to go look at the achievements because I remember particularly when I played the second game, I was like, I have explored everything that is absolutely possible. I have unlocked everything, done everything that you can in this game. And then I looked at the achievements and I had only unlocked 23% of the achievements. So there was almost 80% of the game that I had not seen yet. which required me to, you know, take different choices, make different, you know, which, you know, when you make choices, you open some doors and close others. So I had to go back and start, you know, making different choices. So different doors got closed, but different ones got open. So I saw different parts of the game. So, And I knew that going into the third game. So, you know, I really played that through a couple of different times where I made just the absolute opposite decision that I would make the first time I played through to just try to see more and more of the game and more and more of the enemy type. So, you know, there's a lot of replayability of this because even if you beat it, you can go back and really approach it from a completely different angle.
Thomas: Well said. I kind of hit that at get-go when I first mentioned about this. You've got to pay attention. You've got to pay attention to what you're equipping. Go to the shops. You might have to try something different to achieve a goal because It's one of those games, just like Aaron: says, don't go in thinking that I can use his sword all the time. No, that's not. If you get defeated and you got defeated really bad, there's something wrong. So you've got to kind of step back and reevaluate what's available at hand and what you need to purchase and things like that. So it's one of those gems that I think the replayable on these games are great. are huge, especially in the third one. Now, the first one, I don't think there's a whole lot of replayable, but the second one does add a little bit. But nonetheless, they're all available.
Aaron: The first one, you could replay a second time. Like, the first one is you just make the opposite choices you made the first time, and the two plays... Well, yeah, I...
Thomas: If you want to do that, I'm thinking in terms of playability, like, yeah, I could go opposite, but I'm thinking, um, you know, when you retrace your steps, you can go to a totally different story plot and things. And so that's kind of what I was thinking. But, um, Oh, yeah. So this is available in iOS. All three games are. I think the first two are free with in-app purchases, things you can purchase in the game. I think the third one is kind of an outlier where that one is a paid app. I think it's $8.99 US dollars up front. Is that right, Aaron:? Does that sound about right?
Aaron: I could look it up. I think they give you a chapter or two for free before you have to pay. So you can feel for the game.
Thomas: All right. That's good to know. So if it's something that you would love to try and if you just want to skip the first two, it's one of those games you can, you're not going to understand the whole story, but I think it's still playable.
Aaron: It's their own unique story in a world. So like, you know, You can pick up any one, but it's worth going through the progression, Untold, Red Tide, then Black Dust.
Jesse: They are all very accessible, and yeah, I would definitely recommend them.
Thomas: All right, so let's do what we always do here. Okay, Aaron:, we'll start with you since this is your baby. I think I know what kind of grades you're going to give them, but what is your grade level you give these games?
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, so I think I gave Black Dust and Red Tide, you know, an A-plus when I rated them. And I think I did, I'm told, might have been a B-plus. And, you know, again, just because it was a pretty straightforward, you know, on-the-rails type of game, there wasn't too much complexity. Fun game, great accessibility on that first one, but there wasn't really the complexity. But, you know, when I got to Red Tide and Black Dust, you know, it really has... every component of what you need in an RPG type of game, which is, you know, you need to have a good main story. You need some side quests. You need to be able to get lots of different types of gear that you can customize. You have to have different ways to solve problems. You have to have interesting, you know, non-player characters or NPCs that you run into that augment the story and And those two, particularly Red Tie and Black Dust, I mean, had all of that in spades. So those two both earned an A plus for me. And then, you know, a B plus, you know, a good starter game and a good round work for what they later delivered in the two sequels.
Thomas: For your grace there, Jesse:.
Jesse: You know, it's funny. We all kind of have similar opinions on today's games, but I kind of have to agree with, again, the caveat that, unfortunately, I have not actually fully completed all of these. But, again, I love the progression of kind of just, especially for the second and third games, how they've really opened things up for more decision-making and replayability. So, yeah, I mean, I would probably, you know, I would... Awesome.
Thomas: You know, I have to say, as I mentioned before, I'm not a huge RPG fan, but I will say when I first picked up Untold for the first time, I actually enjoyed it. I definitely would probably give that in the B range like Aaron:'s mentioned. Then I picked up the second one, the Red Tide. I thought that was an A because I could definitely see some improvements and things got better. I thought the story was a little better. The combat mechanism was better. And then, of course, when the third one came out, the Black Dust, it was like, wow, this guy has really matured out and made this like the best of the best. when it comes to RPG, and I enjoyed it a lot, a lot more than I thought. So I definitely would give that in the A-plus range as well, if not an A to an A-plus. So it's definitely one of the top games of my choice too. And then with our final segment of the podcast, and I'll be kind of explaining some things we might do in a future podcast, The Gamer's Corners, but for this podcast in specific or episode, We are going to go to the next segment, and this is going to be in Jesse:'s area because Jesse: is kind of an expertise, and this is where I find things very interesting. I really wanted this to be in a podcast because... I don't know a whole lot outside of iOS games anymore, and I want to know more, and I hear so much more. So we're going to dedicate this section to Jesse:, and I'm going to call this the Jesse:'s Crossing Console segment. So this is where he will introduce a game that might be on a different platform other than iOS and just kind of give us a... opening of our eyes and thoughts and maybe, wow, this is something I might want to do because I always had this dream. Maybe I should get Steam on my PC and give things a go. So why don't you tell us about your pick for Jesse:'s Crossing console game?
Jesse: Okay. Well, I had a really tough time because there's so many games I would love to highlight. But for my first pick here, I chose a little game called As Dusk Falls. Originally, it came out on the PC and the Xbox consoles, I believe. And eventually, a couple years later, it got released to the PlayStation 5. And the neat thing about that was not only did it come to a new platform, but over that couple-year period, they introduced additional accessibility features to the PS5 version and then actively put them into the existing versions as well. So as Dusk Falls, I would call it an adventure game, It's not like one of those kind of early, like the 90s hunt and peck adventure games where you're trying to find arbitrary objects and combine them. This is very heavily story based. Again, this is not a game for the youngins. Some really gnarly stuff happens in this game. But it is an adventure game where the gameplay primarily consists of choosing between a lot of dialogue and and action choices and then there are also segments where you have QTE or quick time events which are basically you are given like a quick button prompt or like I forget like there's like an analog stick movement or button prompt that you do in order to perform some sort of a task and And traditionally, the quick time events, I'll start there. I usually hate those because they are often, you know, they have pretty strict time limits for those. You know, if you don't perform them in a very quick period of time, you will fail them. And sometimes they appear and disappear so quickly or they could appear, you in a lot of different places around the screen in some games. So it can be really hard, especially as a low-vision player, to play them. But what As Dusk Falls does is the game has full menu narration support, text-to-speech, for the menus and options and everything, and all of the dialogue choice decisions... Support text-to-speech and the QuickTime events also support text-to-speech. So when I played through, this is a game I did all the way, did play through all the way. And I was hooked. I plowed through it in like a little bit over, like probably in two play sessions because even the quick time events are totally blind accessible. And when I went to the game the first time, I did not miss a single quick time event. That's how, uh, accessible it was. So I was very impressed with that. And so the, the gist of it is, is like the story of his dusk falls is you primarily play this guy, uh, Vince, he's not a really kind of likable family, family man, uh, Him and his family are on the way to moving to another state because his wife got like a new job. He got... He is in the process of figuring out what he wants to do because he worked as an airline, airplane mechanic, and he got... basically got fired and there's a potential lawsuit happening because they're blaming him for failure, like some plane malfunction thing, and they're blaming him and he told them that, you know, no, this wasn't the case. But as they're traveling, you know, the family is traveling to their new state, they encounter this other family in Arizona where... So the two sides of the story is you've got Vince, the family man, and then you have these three brothers that you learn more about their story. They're kind of the villains of the game, and you both... cross paths at this hotel because for a little bit you play as Vince, and then you play a little bit as one of the younger, I think it's the younger or the middle brother of the three that primarily focuses on him. And they end up robbing this small town sheriff. And so they're trying to get away, and then they try to hide in this hotel where the other family is staying, and then things just... Get out of control over there. You know, you've got a hostage situation. You've got... You find out there's some corrupt cops. There's some backstory for, you know, both Vince and his wife and Vince's dad that is traveling with them. I mean, it's a really, like... there's a lot going on story wise and things can drastically change depending on how you, what decisions you make, if you fail a certain, you know, if you make the wrong choice. And what I love about these games, you know, there is a series of games, the telltale games, uh, um, that came out of several years ago. They didn't, they made a lot of those. And what I like about this is the choices that you make. It's not a good choice, bad choice. It's like, Oh God, what do I consider the lesser of two evils? Do I try to stop the guy holding us hostage? Do I, do I try to play it cool? Do I, you know, All kinds of different things. And there could be good and bad. You may get out of a situation now, but that decision might come back and bite you an hour later in the story. So there's a lot of replayability. It's just a really, really good story. It's very accessible. There's text-to-speech audio description for the cut scenes and things. And one final unique thing about it is if you're playing like on the PC, console, Xbox, PlayStation, they integrate it with Twitch, which is a live game streaming service where you kind of broadcast yourself playing a game online. But they have it where – and I have not tried this. I've played it as a single-player game. But what you can do is you can integrate it. If you stream the game to an audience, the audience can be involved in kind of weighing the decisions that you make. So, like, you could make a decision and the chat will make a decision about And that will affect like how the store, what choices you accept. So it's a way to really bring a creative way to bring in the game audience into your experience of playing a game. It's just, it's really, really good. I like, I love the story.
Thomas: I think it's a beautiful first choice. Now, this being a different segment, Aaron:, I have not played this, but I have heard you play, and I'll put that in the show notes where people can find this particular show where he demonstrates this game with the new accessibility option on there. I have to ask you, it seems like it's kind of a decision-making kind of a game. And so the question I have to you is twofold. The first one is, when you make these decisions, do they always kind of come back to a peak, or is it like different stories depending on the path you go to? So are there multiple endings, or does it all come back to the beginning? Right.
Jesse: Yeah. Great question. So there are points where like the story will ultimately there's kind of, it's broken down into kind of different chapters and, And they will kind of ultimately come back to certain points, but those points could vary. There could be a character that could live or die. There could be different outcomes, whether you chose to do something that would affect something later in the game. And there are multiple endings. Yes, there are multiple endings in this game.
Aaron: Is this really almost identical to the structure and framework as any of the telltale games like The Walking Dead or The Borderlands or Back to the Future?
Jesse: Yeah, that's why I brought them up because it's like a very accessible version of those. And I should also mention the decisions that you make under accessibility, there is an option to give yourself a little bit more time because you're listening to the text-to-speech read it. But you do have to make these dialogue choices in a set time limit. Like, you can't just sit and, oh, what should I do? You're under pressure, just like you would be in a situation. So, like I said, if you're being held hostage, what do you do? You might have five, ten seconds to decide.
Thomas: So, the replayable is definitely there, sounds like. I mean, you can definitely go down a path and then go back and play the game all over again. and do different decision-making, and then you get different outcomes. That sounds amazing. So the second-fold question is, what can we expect in terms of time-wise? So how long does it – you said you had two sessions, so I hate to ask, was it an all-night session, or what's that like?
Jesse: No, I mean, it was really funny because when I played it, I remember recording the video for the first time. Um, and then I kept playing it after I stopped. And then I'm like, Oh dude, it's like, I don't remember. It was like really late at night. I'm like, I gotta go to bed. And so I went to bed and I picked it up the next morning and I literally had like, I think 15, 20 minutes left. Um, but I, I would say, I mean, it's a few hours, you know, I mean, it's, um, I don't know, probably four or five hours.
Thomas: Okay. I mean, that's doable. I mean, you've got to think about it because if I'm right, this is like, what, $29.99 for the game?
Jesse: Yeah, something like that. I forget what the price is, but like I said, $4.99. The production value, I mean, the voice acting, it's fully voiced. Like, yes, you're getting menu, like the text-to-speech for menu options and things. But all of the characters, it is like professionally voice acted. And it's just like, no, it's really good. I really enjoyed this game.
Thomas: So it's definitely for a mature audience. And as you mentioned before, it is available for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms. And I believe they are $29.99 for each of those platforms if that's something you decide to play and pick up. At some point, I think it will. And it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong, Jesse:, this is definitely for those that are looking for simplicity. And this is definitely for beginners that can pick up on this game and play it.
Jesse: Yeah, I mean, gameplay-wise, I think that a beginner could pick it up pretty well. One of the things that I really like what it did, and I think I showcased this in that video that I sent to you, when you start the game from the beginning, one of the first things that it tells you, because like, okay, you know, arrowing up and down to choose dialogue choices, that's easy enough. We all understand that. But they actually, before the game starts, they give you a few screens where they narrate and they tell you what types of quick time event. Think of them like iOS gestures. Maybe you have to repeatedly hit the A button or maybe you have to flick this analog stick up or down. because maybe you're dodging in a direction or something. But they tell you basically all of the potential QTE moves that you will have to do throughout the game, and there's not a ton of them. So, yeah, I think it's generally a pretty... Like, the stakes in the game are high, but as far as mechanically, it's not bad.
Thomas: Right. So what kind of grade would you give this game? Bobby, never thought about it, have you?
Jesse: Well, I mean, personally, like, I... I would give it an A because I think it's very accessible. The story is really good. I know that it's not, you know, you're not fully controlling a character like you would in like a first person or a third person game. It's kind of like you're playing through like a movie type of thing. And that's why your quit time events represent like, oh, and it could be anything from, Like, oh, I'm scrubbing a dish in the kitchen to I'm dodging out of the way as a bus crashes through a wall or, you know, anything. So, yeah, it's I really enjoy it.
Aaron: Tim, on a too frugal question, this game is very similar to the Telltale games. Have they made the Telltale games accessible at all? Has anybody gone back and done that or no?
Jesse: Not that I know of, and honestly, that was the one frustrating thing. I loved the first season of The Walking Dead, but the problem that I had with those is the timer would go down so quickly on that dialogue that I was not always able to quickly read the choices enough, so I wouldn't be able to respond in time, so I ended up making choices I didn't want to sometimes.
Aaron: Yeah, I remember, generally speaking, if you're running out of time, like the, you know, the up was the positive and the down was the negative, like for the most part, you know, like you could get away and the left and right were the relatively neutral choices. Yeah. If you didn't have time to read it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's general rule. But that Walking Dead telltale as well as the Borderlands telltale are two of the funnest games I've ever played. And actually for different reasons. The Borderlands one is just hysterical. Some of the funniest sequences in that telltale game. Yeah.
Jesse: That was surprisingly good. It's really funny. And I kind of petered out on the later seasons of The Walking Dead, but like that first season, I don't know, did you play that back in the day? Yeah, yeah, I played all of them. That first season, the end of that first season, that is the one that was such a brutal thing. brutal ending. It was sizzling. No good choice. And that's exactly what Dusk Falls does. It's so good.
Aaron: The thing I loved about The Walking Dead once was again, you were watching you'd have the cast of all the characters and you'd see the ones that got X'd out and died and then you play through it and you can have other people die so it was kind of really interesting to try to work through trying to get somebody to survive.
Jesse: And what's also really interesting about these games is they, after each chapter, they tend to tell you, oh, right. Yeah. Like how many people made this decision? Oh, how many people let this person die? Or how many people made this? And it's fascinating. Yeah.
Aaron: And, you know, it's always interesting to be like, oh, I was only one of 10 people who let Susan die. I mean, that's...
Thomas: Well, guys, this has been a great first edition of Gamers' Corner. And there will be more of this coming in the future. And I think we will be playing different things into the Gamers' Corner. We have lots of ideas that could consist of having developers on for interviews. We may be talking about just specific things. We may talk about accessories. We might talk about type of controllers and what kind of games that we do like or don't like. there's a lot of possibilities out there. So stay tuned to the gamers corners and we'll be back in a couple of three or four months and just stay tuned. And I thank you so much for coming on Aaron:, Jesse: and, um, I really love this, and I hope those out there listening are going to love the New Gamers Corners. There's not a whole lot out there in terms of podcasts that goes over in details like this that we do. And so we would love to hear from you. So when this gets posted on AppleViz, I would love to see some of your comments, thoughts, and suggestions and feedbacks or ideas. We are very welcome to. And so thank you guys for coming on.
Jesse: Absolutely. This was a blast.
Thomas: I love it too. All right. Well, that is going to do for Gamers' Corners for the May through August edition. So we'll see you next time. My name is Thomas: Domville, also known as AnonyMouse. See you later.Gamers Corner: May to August 2025 Edition