Re: Sting: An audio detective game
The blindness didn't bother me at all here. It's used logically, that's the difference to other games with blind main chars.
But to be honest, I don't get this game at all. The rest of this post will be spoilers, not directly for the case, but for the gameplay:
This game is so unbelievably short, you can play through it in about three minutes. This is not really a problem, because they just tried something and that's always cool. But solving the case is done by answering two questions. I mean, two questions? Really?
Even answering those two questions correctly would feel good and would feel like you really investigated something cleverly, but Playing through the game without knowledge of prior playthroughs is pure luck, because it's not really possible for you to know which bug to listen to at which time. And answering correctly after the second or third time investigating doesn't feel good anymore. It just feels like answering randomly, even though you might finally know what's going on.
This all sounds so damn negative and discouraging, but it's really not meant that way. I love the idea, it has great potential. But I can't overlook the fact that the execution here didn't work for me.
For an example of essentially the same idea in a game for sighted players, definitely check out Unheard. I love that game, it wouldn't even be very difficult to make this accessible I think. In this game, you're a police investigator testing a new investigation method. The places of the crimes have bugs in every room and they record the moment of the crime. Initially, you get a list of persons which are there at this moment, but you don't know which voice belongs to which name. Your first task is to listen carefully and match the names. The subtitles will use the names you matched to show you who's talking at the moment, so if you did it wrong, the subtitles will be false. Then, at the end of each case, you have to answer a few questions, just like in sting. But this has two great advantages over sting:
First: Considering the name matching and the questions, there are many, many different wrong answers here. It's not possible to just go through every answer until it works.
Second, and this is a huge advantage: Since this is not live but recorded instead, you can go back through the recording as often as you like, checking out different rooms or following different people around every time. The game does never force you to give an answer, it patiently waits until you think you have cracked the case. This makes the stories so much more immersive and interesting.
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