I feel more than a little embarrassed about the state of accessibility in Twine. It’s been difficult for me to validate that things work well for screen readers, due to a lack of expertise on my part, and feedback would be welcomed on 2.4, which is currently in beta.
5 Likes
I would be more than happy to provide feedback.
2 Likes
“The story of Versu, the unreleased interactive storytelling platform built by Emily Short, Sims A.I. guru Richard Evans, Inform 7 creator Graham Nelson, and the world’s leading virtual worlds company.”
7 Likes
“Inkle Studios and the surprise hit that took players around the world in 16,000 choices.”
8 Likes
Thanks for this excellent write-up of a game that I abhor (PS - referencing Ingold’s employment history, Xbox had the Kinect, PS had the “Move” system).
Basically, 80 Days hit the iPad market at exactly the right time, so it got lauded in the corporate press. Other than that, though, it’s a pig with lipstick.
Players only see 10% of the content in a playthrough? A colossal overbuild.
Americanisms throughout start to chafe as well, such as the “Siberian Express” and “extortionate” (in lieu of exorbitant) If you’ve ever been to Siberia, you’ll know there’s nothing “express” about the colossal territory - nor would Russians ever give it such a ridiculous name.
But the snide little in-joke of the “Marri” maid story in Australia really takes the cake in giving a big F-U to the reader. The reader is asked for help, and then the game prevents you from delivering that help. And years later, Jayanth is STILL telling readers it’s their fault that they got angry about her ridiculous “woke” retcon of history.
Furthermore, the entire Marri maid “wants to write a letter” premise is a mess and clearly not written by anyone with some knowledge of aboriginal history.
You can’t simultaneously be oppressed by an uber-racist society that won’t publish a letter from a “Marri” (whereas, in real life, there WERE lengthy debates about aboriginal rights in Australian papers, and nobody would’ve known the race of the writers of letters to the editor) and yet simultaneously have a plot point be about some kind of modern human rights activist raised in a Mission school who is employed as a maid in a hotel serving wealthy white travelers. If that maid ran into a less tolerant guest, she would’ve been out on her ear, jailed, or worse.
80 Days looked slick and was the coolest thing to download on your iPad in 2014, but otherwise, it’s a dud. The “disappearing text - endless scroll” interface is also incredibly annoying.
I’ve got nothing but respect for Ingold, but the ink/inkle system is… cumbersome, to say the least. Notice you didn’t mention they had to hire one “regular” writer for Sorcery! and one “inkle” writer to code everything because that’s how non-intuitive the interface is DESPITE the fact that the programming language looks more or less like plain English.
80 Days is just like Avatar - had a brief period of mega-popularity but the fan base is a mile wide and an inch deep. Nobody’s pining for a new Avatar movie, and nobody is waiting breathlessly for the next inkle story either.
1 Like
Thanks for this excellent write-up of a game that I adore.
Basically, 80 Days, is the best Interactive Fiction ever.
Thanks a lot!
3 Likes
You don’t have to like it, but pretending nobody else does is just bollocks.
“If those people were REALLY being oppressed, they’d have had the sense to shut up about it”
7 Likes
Yeah. I didn’t like it either: a lot of Jon Ingold’s design ethos has always slammed straight into my pet peeves as a player. And 80 Days was the game that really crystallized for me the reasons why I’m unlikely to really enjoy any of inkle’s work.
But plenty of people are waiting breathlessly for the next inkle story, and it seems silly to claim otherwise. If anything, I wish it were easier to find people interested in diving into which aspects of the design work and don’t work for which people and why, instead of just being incredulous that anyone could fail to like it…
4 Likes
Um. This is not a universally held attitude among choice-based game fans.
Did you read the reviews of Heaven’s Vault?
Complaints about “woke” are still the same whining that “politically correct” was in the g*mergate era. You can pretend that all the awards and the positive reviews and the excited critical response and the sales figures are part of the conspiracy, but at some point you have to wake up. I hope.
15 Likes
Dude, I live in Siberia and it is literally a Trans-Siberian Express on the Trans-Siberian railway. You’re lecturing people who actually did the research here.
14 Likes
Hi Sam-- thanks for the correction re: the Kinect. Sorry the Americanisms bother you: I am, in fact, an American, so you’re going to have to live with them. (The “Siberian Express” reference is also part of a direct quote.)
Not sure why you are feeling the need to put the name of the Murri people in quotes, or how as an expert on Siberia you also came to be an expert on indigenous Australians and how they can or cannot be oppressed, but clearly not every game is for everyone, nor is every article in this series.
8 Likes
I am one of those people who does not regard 10% as an overbuild, but then I’m the sort of player who puts 60 hours into Long Live The Queen (which takes 2-3 hours for a single successful run) looking for ways to get all the variations.
Of course, it has to be the right sort of game to warrant that much build - some games work perfectly well with showing 100% of (non-failure-related) content on the first run, there’s plenty of space between for games that want to have a smaller number of meaningful variations, and a game has to meet a certain threshold in a given replayer’s mind before any replaying will happen.
As for the “Express” debate… …“express” can refer to a mode of transport that makes few stops compared to other methods of travelling the same route. It does not necessarily have to be super-fast (although it’s usually faster than the other options due to making fewer stops). In much the same way, the “Palace” trains 80 Days have in the USA are more luxurious than other trains on the same route, without needing to be literal palaces on wheels.
4 Likes
I’m less into 80 Days and more into Heaven’s Vault and it’s totally fine. Each game has different appeal for different audiences, and good in their own way.
4 Likes
It’s sad that Inkle have never made any of their games accessible to screen reader users. I would love to play 80 Days in particular but I can’t because of this. They have told me directly they’re looking into it but can’t make any promises as they don’t know how to go about it.
So, what I’m saying is, please make sure that accessibility is part of your design process, not just for screen reader users but for everyone. It is far easier to do it from the outset than trying to figure it out years after the fact. We primarily talk about text based games on here, which is probably the most accessible game format there is.
8 Likes
Kara, do you – or does anyone else – have any idea whether no-frills ink projects (so without any graphical additions) are accessible to screen readers?
1 Like
If Cycles (Excerpt) from this year’s Spring Thing is a good example, then yes they are. I just found the first Ink game from where I thought there would be at least one.
Going off this, I guess the issue they’re having is the software that runs their games, also maybe the globe. There could probably be a way round that though as Six Ages’ map is accessible if you use a screen reader. It’s not written in Ink but it proves it can be done.
2 Likes
I believe they usually embed the ink part of the game in a larger Unity programme. I can totally imagine a screen reader friendly version of 80 Days, though it would no doubt take some serious effort to put together. It would be much harder for Heaven’s Vault or Pendragon, where the graphical part of the game is much more substantial.
But good to know about the bar-bones ink game, because I’m half planning to use ink myself for a future project!
3 Likes
Ah yeah if they use Unity that could be a problem. There is a plugin though that can help. and probably others. I don’t know much about Unity, I just remember reading tweets about it.
1 Like
To continue with the debate:
80 Days has placed 11 on the 100 best PC games of all time, by Rock Paper Shotgun.
Well, if it is the one of the finest IF ever for some of us, I think it deserves to be that high in that list 
1 Like
“The ‘texting adventure’ that got millions of people to swap urgent messages with a fictional astronaut.”
3 Likes