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Release v1: Initial Release · fastfinge/supertonic-nvda

GitHub - fastfinge/supertonic-nvda: supertonic for nvda

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Fengshen Tale CONFERRED GODS is the first game I've played by Chinese mobile game developer Shanghai Huaxiao Information Technology Co. It's an accessible autobattler that's really similar to Call of Fate. But is it better? Surprisingly: yes, it really, really is! When I first launched the game, I was greeted with a five minute unskippable cutscene entirely in Chinese, with no subtitles or translation available. I figured the game would be completely unplayable, and was just sitting through it to make sure the menu was also in Chinese, so I could give up and call it a wash. However: once you get through the cutscene, the account sign up menu is in perfectly translated English. Not only that, but you can sign in with your Apple ID or Facebook account, instead of creating an entirely new account. Once you get signed in, if you enable the assistant, it has a tutorial voiceover that's actually in English. She does have a thick Chinese accent, but it's always easy to understand her. Also, unlike in Magical Artist, the tutorial usually calls the interface elements by the same thing, or something similar enough it's obvious, as the interface translation. The only flaws I found were that sometimes the tutorial refers to "find" when the interface says "seek", and at one point the voiceover tutorial girl just calls something by an untranslated Chinese word. The word is translated in the actual interface as fortune, by the way. But if you get confused and select the wrong thing, nothing will happen, and she'll just repeat herself until you select what she wants. So you can't get lost. Seriously, this tutorial is exactly what I wish Call of Fate had. It clearly explains all of the various tokens, stones, and upgrades. It tells you how the rankings work, and explains what upgrades will effect what stats. It tells you the various stats and what they do. It tells you about all the different systems. Other than sometimes using a Chinese word in the tutorial when an English word is used in the interface, and the thick Chinese accent perhaps being difficult for some players to understand, it's absolutely perfect. Conferred Gods is the first time playing one of these games where I felt like I knew what I was doing, and what the results might be. Second, I encountered absolutely zero bugs that were the developer's fault. I've played for about 12 hours at this point, and the app never crashed once. Every single time I was supposed to get an award, I actually got it. The only bug I struggled with is that in the latest version of IOS, direct touch is broken. So I have to turn off VoiceOver completely, because when I enable direct touch in quick settings, nothing happens. This made sign in with my Apple ID a bit tricky, but I got there in the end. And this is one hundred percent Apple's fault, not the developers. Everything they control, they do well: when I change speed and pitch settings, they actually save! Once you go through the initial cutscenes, you don't have to skip them with every launch! You can turn down the music, and it stays turned down! It doesn't use 20 percent of the battery on your phone every hour! In fact, this is the first Chinese mobile audiogame I've ever paid money. With Prudence Interactive, I never felt certain that my payment would be correctly processed. However, Conferred Gods had some unique Christmas items, so I thought: why not? I've spent hours playing this, after all. Paying was easy, and my items were available instantly. Everything is, of course, not perfect. However, Shanghai Huaxiao Information Technology Co. isn't posting endless forum threads promoting their game to westerners, and the initial cutscene made it obvious that I'm not the intended market, so the flaws are completely forgivable. First off, the story is obviously machine translated. Unfortunately, it's extremely complex, with dozens of different names and empires that I can't keep straight in my head even if the translation was serviceable, and techniques and poems and mythological references that the translation turns into complete gibberish. Oddly, though, characters don't seem to randomly switch pronouns (as far as I can tell), and if I could figure out what on earth all of the metaphors and idioms meant, I suspect the literal translation is probably pretty on point. This only applies to the story though, and it never actually matters in the RPG. You can just click through it and get to the battles, and you won't miss anything important. If it matters, the English voiceover girl will explain it, and her explanation will actually be in comprehensible if sometimes imperfect English. When you do get to those battles, you can actually tell what's happening. Instead of just listening to the game make noises at you, you can see your party's health, the enemies health, what techniques each side is using, and get an easy to read battle report at the end of each battle. After a few levels, though, you will find the battles overly long. And this was the only time in the game that I felt like I wasn't properly told something I needed to know. So to help out anyone else who decides to play: once you reach VIP level 1 (by paying like a buck one time), you can swipe right with two fingers to skip a battle. I was never told about this, and I discovered it entirely by accident. All of the other things I struggled with were because I'm stupid, not because the game didn't tell me something. Here are some tips, if you're as stupid as I am. First, you can repeat chapters in the battle story. You get the same rewards, no matter how many times you do each stage. So if you fail a stage, just redo the previous stage and upgrade your heroes until you can succeed. Second, if you pay, the currency you purchased is put in your bag under items, as a bundle. You have to use that bundle of currency before you can get the things you paid for. At first I thought the payment had failed and I'd been scammed, but I was wrong. Third, you can always double tap to skip a cutscene or story or anything else you don't care about. Fourth, the game makes a "ding" sound when there is something you can do. You can go under reminders, and see what you should now do; if you don't hear the ding when you return to the home screen, you don't need to worry about it. Fifth, even if it says maximum stamina, you can still get more than that, and it won't be lost. Your stamina won't regenerate until it's under your maximum, that's all. Even though I'm playing like a silly westerner, and picking my heroes entirely by if I like the sound of their voices, the game is flexible enough to support my playstyle. I know I'm doing things that are not strategic or optimal, but never-the-less I'm still advancing in a satisfying way. And I paid because I wanted to, not because I felt pressured. Although I would recommend giving them at least a buck so you can skip battles; it'll save you a lot of time once you know what you're doing. But even then, don't do it right away. Do it when you find yourself walking away from your phone while a battle happens and wishing it would be over. Until you get to that point, watching and interacting with the battle interface can be interesting and a lot of fun. I really, really hope that this game gets out of test flight, and into the regular app store. It's an absolute travesty that if you're a sheltered westerner like me, Prudence Interactive will be your first exposure to Chinese autobattler audiogames. With Conferred Gods, Shanghai Huaxiao Information Technology Co has shown me what this format and style of game really should be. And with English tutorials and a correctly translated interface, they've made me feel more welcome than a game that's being specifically marketed to me. If you've never played any sort of autobattler, give Ranger Legend and Call of Fate a miss. This is where you should start, even though it's still only on Test Flight.

Magical artist is the third game I've played developed by Prudence Interactive, a Chinese developer that specializes in developing mobile accessible audiogames. When I went into this one, I had high hopes. As I said in my review of Call Of Fate, a lot had been improved from the first game they released. So I hoped that Magical Artist would be even better, as they applied everything they'd learned over multiple games to this new release. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. That's not to say nothing was improved at all. Magical Artist doesn't require you to go through the screen reader instructions and do the audio test on every game launch. However...that's really the only improvement I can highlight. Sadly, even the accessibility suffered some regressions. The game no longer uses your default voice, instead always using Samantha. And if you change the voice speed, your changes are not saved between launches. So I'm afraid to say that one annoying thing has been swapped for another equally annoying thing. As the game starts, it plays like some sort of cooking game. You're breaking eggs, flipping pancakes, and making food for your customers. It's a fun mechanic, if a bit too easy. Unfortunately, instead of building on that, this mechanic will never come up again. Suddenly you get accepted by a master, you pick a craft (cooking isn't an option), and you start getting lessons in your chosen craft. At this point, the game becomes what it really is, a resource management game. You'll be filling your warehouse, managing your employees, selling crafted goods, and so-on. In spite of the bait and switch, it's a fun idea! However, it's completely ruined by the game's major flaws. As I dive into criticism, I need to state up front that a lot of the criticism aimed at this developer is xenophobia and racism from the western blind community. That makes it hard for the realistic issues to be either heard or addressed, as we're either lumped in with or drowned out by the bigots. I hope the fact that this is my second review of a Prudence Interactive game, and that I've played three different offerings from them, will serve to show that I really am sincere. But at the same time, I'll acknowledge openly that I'm a western man who grew up in western society, and almost certainly have internalized xenophobia and racism of my own. The first flaw that has to be addressed is the translation. I realize that this sounds harsh, but Prudence Interactive either need to hire professional experts in app localization, or pivot to focusing primarily on the Chinese market. Games like Mist World did the former, creating professional sounding English voiceovers and high quality translations, while games like Dreamland did the latter. Either approach is fine; it's still possible for an English player to have some fun with dreamland using machine translations, by realizing this game isn't for us, and setting expectations appropriately. But the middle road that Prudence is on is entirely untenable. The way things stand, the tutorial calls most interface elements different names, with no relation to how they were actually translated. You can usually figure it out...until you can't. Now I'm on a quest where I'm completely stuck, because I can't find anything in the interface that even sounds similar to what the tutorial quest is telling me to do. This also applies to all of the documentation and help text in the game: it almost never translates the interface elements the same way they were actually translated in the interface itself. It also took me ages to figure out that there are two interface sections named "home building". The first section called "home building" lists the buildings in your town. The second section with an identical name is where you build new buildings in your town. I assume there was an inflection or conjugation in the Chinese text that was lost in translation, leading to both functions being called "home building". While the translation in Call of Fate wasn't particularly amazing, it was at least accurate and workable. In Magic Artist, however, Prudence is effectively marketing a game to English speakers that is unplayable to us, as the game is rampant with these kind of flaws. It was nice that they included a western character, but less nice that his/her pronouns switched multiple times, that she didn't have a western sounding name, and that his story arc was nearly incomprehensible. Something about challenging the main character to a fight, but she meant to request guidance and accidentally challenged them instead. I can only assume this hinges on another quirk of the Chinese language that isn't reflected in English. If that was the only flaw, it would probably be possible for English speakers to exchange tips and advice, and eventually figure out what we're supposed to do to complete the tutorial quests. But it's not. The second is the bugs. At least on IOS, the app crashes every fifteen minutes or so. Sometimes when you claim a reward, it just doesn't work. Sometimes you have to complete goals two or three times. Sometimes the daily rewards tell you that you've already claimed them, when you haven't. Sometimes the interface becomes extremely laggy for no clear reason. Sometimes the gestures don't work the first time. Sometimes interface elements don't refresh when they should, giving you inaccurate information. In a resource management game, not knowing exactly how much of a particular item you have can be a massive problem! The one thing I can say for Prudence Interactive is that they always have ideas that are ambitious, interesting, and could be a really good time. If only they'd finish them! Please, I'm begging you: stick to one big game a year, and take the time to get rid of the bugs. Spend the resources to localize it properly. You'll get much more return on your investment that way, instead of pushing out a half-baked game with an amazing idea every quarter. Call of Fate could be loads of fun if it was maintained and all of the promised features were released. If the flaws in Magic Artist got fixed, this could be hours of fun. Ranger Legend sounded amazing and had interesting mechanics, when it wasn't crashing. But you've got to stop teasing us with games that should be wonderful, if only they had been allowed to cook a little longer. Take the advice from your own characters in Magic Artist, and treat your games like the exquisitely polished works they deserve to be.

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Video Games | Audio Description Project

A list of all blind-accessible videogames

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Release v4: A Lot Of Good Volunteers · fastfinge/eloquence_64