Hi everyone, It's nice to become part of your community! I'd love to share our project with you, which we are working on for 11 months now. It's an Audio Adventure Game (AAG) with audio only - no graphics. But that doesn't mean it's a game for visually impaired people. The Girl Who Sold the World is a true adventure providing a complete gaming experience. Some short facts to begin with: Genre: story driven, episodic Audio Adventure Game (whole story will probably fit into 7 chapters) Platform: iOS & Android Business model: Paid app (NO ads, NO in-app purchase) Release Date: Q2 2017 Website: http://www.thegirlwhosoldtheworld.com Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeZhuIpQS8U Features: * connect with the protagonist Frances through a messenger called Skyler * make choices and shape the story = different paths = different adventures = different endings * solve logic puzzle * combine collected items * fast-paced action sequences (chapter II) * creative puzzles (chapter II) * puzzles will get more challenging throughout the chapters * all sounds recorded professionally by ourselves to maximize atmosphere (outdoors+indoors, with our special recording device which we've built for that purpose) * real acting, not just voice over * a game about empathy, caring for each other, friendship, curiosity and courage, fear and hope, about us humans and what we are willing to sacrifice to survive the future * Frances can be killed, so please take care of her In TGWSTW you are pulled into the story by a great canvas of sound. You find yourself in the middle of the adventure, helping Frances to survive, to find her way through a strange world, to find out the truth who she is, where she is and what its all about. All you have to do is to put on your headphones, dive into the fictive world and let your mental cinema do the rest! The cool thing about audio is that although the story is the same for everyone each of us will build his own world, his own characters. The gaming experience is going to be unique for every player! Its kind of like we were playing Manic Mansion and we had to use our imagination to put together those big pixels into beautiful pictures in our heads! But with audio only you are free to let your imagination run wild! I know for some of you, it may sound scary that there are no graphics at all. But believe me, your imagination has more power than you think. Just turn off the sound while watching one of your favorite movies and no matter how great the pictures are your perception gets confused and it feels just not right. But if you make it the other way and just close your eyes you can still imagine the pictures when supported by sound and have a great experience. Of course, an intriguing story is key to a thrilling experience and I think we have it with TGWSTW. I would really appreciate it to have some specialists/true adventure fans from this community as game testers on board. So if I aroused your interest you are more than welcome to apply as a game tester on our website. I appreciate any feedback and comments. It helps so much through that hard times of development. THANK YOU.
WOW ,awesome concept and am so excited to try this game as am heavy hardcore gamer and so much into story driven type games but wanna know does it have any horror themes or atmosphere? as for beta testing i really wanna test this game and i have iphone 6s so how can i apply for game testing ? is it on your website or here? because i tried the website but couldn't find any info on game testing , so i sent you an e-mail and i hope to hear your reply soon
Sounds great Your game sounds very interesting to me I applied as a game tester on your website. Hope I get to play the game..!!
@bebo_beta2002, Happy to hear It's definitely a thriller atmosphere so there will be many scary/dark moments. As to your application: provided there is no bug website-wise you should see a big orange banner saying "Play TGWSTW before everyone else" on the left of the main page. Click on it and you'll be forwarded to the application form. Please let me know if it worked. @Dankrio Thank you. There will be text output of the audio voice as well as the player inputs. So you can easily read along to better understand what's going on. @KMS Thank you. We'll get in touch with you very soon
Would be really interested if the game could be played hands-free. With Siri app integration, that may be possible; any plans to investigate this?
That would be one option to implement such a feature (so that it's playable also by visually impaired people) and it's definitely on our do-list for the next chapters. However, this is a huge topic and relying on third party software has its risks. So we'll need to hire some experts for that task
UPDATE #2: gameplay teaser #1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo8RngKYjPs We just published teaser #1 for TGWSTW showing a small part of the gameplay specifically a few inputs, choices and one failed time pressure choice. There may be up to 4 options you can choose from and thus push the story into a specific direction. We are going to release another teaser very soon showing: 1. The "DO LIST" (gear icon) where you can decide what to do or explore next by picking a task from a range of possibilities. 2. The puzzling process of a combination puzzle Stay tuned!
Hi everyone, Before that I tried to contact you on Twitter but I am not sure if you are active there. I am totally blind gamer, musician, sound designer and voice actor. I worked on several projects before including design, voice acting or just testing. I worked on the accessibility for few video games including Skullgirls or visual novels like Narcissu and Steins;gate. I am just wondering if your game will be accessible for the blind community as it's completely based on audio. It will be just weird if something what is audio-based will be not. If you need testers I could help you with optimising it and make it much more friendly for the blind players. Hopefully you're open for the suggestions and will make it really playable for us as it's sounds really amazing! Best regards, Tom
Hi Tom, thanks for reaching out to us. We thought about making TGWSTW enjoyable for visually impaired players from the very beginning of development and we came to the conclusion that our budget is too small to make this happen right in the first release. Because it's not just about reading aloud the controls, decision etc. The goal is to keep the same level of experience as in the pure audio version, which includes puzzles and mini-games so we have to come up with some smart and fun solutions. Every time when we approach new ideas, we want to make them as perfect as possible. That's our philosophy. And that means a lot of research, more skilled people to hire and hence bigger development costs. Long story cut short - this is only to justify why we couldn't reach that goal right from the beginning. If the first Chapter is going to be successfull enough to increase our team, then we'll definitely pick up the idea, develope and release it afterwards as an update. We would love to have you as a consultant for that project. Please drop us a line at [email protected] with a copy of your post so we can stay in touch with you. Have a nice weekend, Art
+++ THE GIRL WHO SOLD THE WORLD +++ Audio Adventure Game +++ LAUNCHING Update: TGWSTW is launching! It was a rocky road but we finally did it. Were happy and proud to announce that chapter 1 will be available on AppStore and Google Play on August 15. So check your headphones and make some space on your smartphone
