A mysterious event has left you without the gift of sight, plunging you into complete darkness, leaving you to rely solely on the symphony of sounds that now shapes your world. Navigate through a diverse landscape where every sound tells a story – from the rustle of leaves to silent chirps of crickets. Your survival depends on your ability to interpret the rich tapestry of auditory cues, as you adapt to the unexpected transformations in your environment.
HINTS/TIPS:
- You’re almost completley blind, leaving you to have to figure things out by sound.
- Pay attention to your footsteps, and tap around with your hand to figure out the blocks you’re sorrounded by.
- You’ll start with a pickaxe. Use /pick to get it back if you lose it.
- You can tell what item you’re wielding by scrolling through your hotbar, each item has distinctive sound when wielded.
- Hear a sound you don’t like? Get away from it.
- Listen to your heartbeat to tell how much health you have; get something to eat as soon as possible.
- Items can be crafted into other items via left-clicking on another block; try cooking something in fire and see (well, not see) the results.
- You have no inventory. You can access a list of discoveries you’ve made via the “I” key.
- Fires are extremly useful for crafting, and keep predators away. Start one by finding flint in gravel, and striking it by flammable things.
- Head to lower elevations to find more vegetation.
- Food is eaten with RIGHT-CLICK while looking at the ground (not left-click as usual).
- The rest you will figure out by yourself. A gameplay video will be on YouTube, watch if you're really stuck.
Goodluck.
NOTE: This game was made for the Minetest Game Jam, and is therefore very beta.
Great concept, lots of potential, but questionable playability
I've been toying with the idea of a "video game without the video" for a while now, and it's great to see somebody actually attempt it. I love the ambition of the concept. It might just be a bit much to try to make it work as a sandbox game during a game jam timeframe.
Unfortunately, while a human has potentially dozens of senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, balance, body position, temperature, passage of time, etc) on a computer you mostly just get sight and sound, and losing sight is harder to compensate. Without a sense of balance or body position, it's hard to tell when I'm looking at the horizon, or when I just fell down a hole, or about how far. Without touch, I can't tell if the crunchy-sounding stuff I'm touching is sand, gravel, or dirt. The use of "synesthesia particles" is a pretty good way to translate at least some of the missing senses into the unused visual medium, but it really needs to expand to cover more senses. In particular, when I'm working without a sense of sight (reaching deep into a machine to find a broken part) I rely on touch, not just to sense obstacles, but feeling textures, shapes, temperatures. More missing senses need to be recreated in some way to know what it means when I poke something and it sounds like a drum.
I'm not sure I can recommend this to a player yet. It was a bit intriguing wandering around and getting lost in a cave but now I think I'm stuck. It definitely feels like a project whose development I want to get involved in, suggesting, experimenting with, or contributing some ways to recreate the missing senses ... but for those not developerly inclined, it's one I'd watch for future updates rather than expecting much right now. I'm definitely looking forward to when it reaches the tipping point where I can change my neutral review to a positive one.
Also, the "no sense of sight" game being one of the few to actually feature a gameplay video was entertaining.
I'm highly confused
I... don't know what to do. I "looked" around, clicked on some nodes (also, the HUD is broken) and I guess there are secret things to find in the dark (I've also read the description now). But I can't find them nor I felt intrigued, so after 5 minutes I quit the game.
?/10 a great attempt for the novel concept of videoless video game
i've seen this done before on a different video game, but nontheless i commend the developer's bold decision to implement this idea their own way. I cannot recommend for or against this unique gameplay. Whilst the present mechanics are sound, i do not feel the approach currently is good enough to have fun. one thing i would like to have in-game is to perceive the world differently. human have many senses beside the eyes for knowing our orientation and material properties of the things around us. it may not be fair to convey this information kinda visually though. a cool idea would be to look at how animals with poor eyesight navigate, for instance echolocation of dolphins. aside from that, i kinda question why this is an open world game? i seriously thought i started in an enclosed generated room. anyways, i sincerely hope this game gets an overhaul from the developer.
Very innovative
(Disclaimer: This review was made in the context of the game jam 2023. May contain spoilers.)
Confusing to play, not much to do
The game idea is relatively unique and hasn't been tried out too often. Trying to explore the world (almost) only by sound. Interesting, but I find it to be very confusing in practice. The README explains things well, but I still didn't get very far.
You're not entirely blind. Blue particles float upwards from blocks, so they're an useful indicator of the landscape while still leaving much ambiguity. I like that concept, so you're not staring at a completely black screen all the time. XD
I managed to dig a few blocks like dirt and sand. But the pickaxe seemed useless. I tried to dig stone for like 1 minute but apparently stone is unbreakable in this game, even with a pickaxe. There are "achievements" but I only found 1 for digging lots of sand, maybe? I don't know what the other achievements are.
My biggest success is killing a few chicken for food.
The world itself must be very barren. I walked 1000s of blocks but all I found is dirt, sand and stone, and what seems to be the occassional cave. Leaves and woody-like blocks exist but are rare. I don't think I ever found a forest.
Item selection is confusing. You have an "audible" hotbar, meaning by switching tools, you hear a sound. Each thing has its unique sound, which is nice, but you still have to guess what each sound means. And I think this is where the whole item system kinda falls apart, sadly.
Low health is signalled by heartbeats but I find it stresses me out so I just restart the game when I take damage lol.
The sound design isn't that great. The sounds that are in the game are pretty good, but there are too few of them overall. There's music, but it plays too rarely. If you don't do anything, the game is often silent. There is a lack in ambient sounds which for a game like this is a bummer.
I get the game is supposed to be about blindness but I think the whole UX needs to be reworked entirely cuz I simply don't have any idea WTF I'm doing lol.
Is there a goal in this game?
I spawned in and I had no idea what I was supposed to do I walked around a bit, then left due to lack of gameplay. The concept of the game is very cool and the game looks fairly polished, but I was mostly confused about what I am supposed to do, instead of knowing what I am supposed to do. Overall I think the game had a cool mechanic but was made with the wrong approach.