SLATS
SLATS
Sounds Like A Travel Survival is an audiogame made for the Games for Blind Gamers Jam 4. In it you need to walk a dangerous path home avoiding zombies and finding food, water, and ammo for the journey.
It takes about 5 minutes to complete and it's played with a one-button interface and without any visuals.
Instructions
The game has a full tutorial. Press T to toggle it on or off. It starts on by default.
The game features a one-button interface and for it you can choose to use the spacebar, return key, tab key, Up and Down arrow keys, left or right mouse buttons. What the button does depends on what's happening in the game:
Walking, toggle between walking and running
Near an abandoned house, enter the house to search for supplies.
When you hear supplies searching a house, pick them up.
Gasping with thirst, drink water.
Hungry noises, eat.
Near a zombie, stop walking and hide.
Hiding from a zombie, fire your gun.
Settings
You can adjust the volume levels of
Background sounds using B to increase and Shift-B to decrease.
Interface sounds using I to increase and Shift-I to decrease.
Sound effects using S to increase and Shift-S to decrease.
You can toggle the tutorials ON and OFF using T.
Goals and strategy
This is a game of strategy, risk and resource management.
You start with 1 food, 2 waters, and 6 ammo. Keep track. When thirsty, hungry, or facing an enemy, you'll hear some clicks counting how many of the needed supply you have.
You have 5 minutes to reach safety. You will hear a loud bell ring once when the game starts. As the time passes, it will ring more times. When it rings 7 times, the sun sets, the zombies go wild, you die, and the game ends.
At set intervals, there are sets of planks in the path that will make your footsteps ring. As you get closer to safety, the sets get shorter.
Entering houses is the only way to find supplies but uses up time.
There's no penalty for weight. Pick up everything.
Running is faster but you get hungry and thirsty faster than when walking.
Your walking and running speed vary with how well fed and hydrated you are.
If you're going too slow, the game will automatically make you run. Likewise, if you're too fast, it will make you walk. In the comfort zone, you can choose whether to walk or run.
Thirsty gasps and hungry rumbles sound more often as you get more hungry and thirsty.
You don't always have to eat and drink when you hear a gasp or rumble. Waiting a bit can stretch your supplies without hurting your speed. Pay attention to the speed of your footsteps to gauge your condition.
There's a good chance that a zombie will just walk by if you hide. You don't always have to shoot them down. This saves ammo but wastes time. When you hear a zombie get enraged and rush you, you definitely need to shoot. I hope you've been saving ammo.
If you are at top condition, well fed and hydrated, your shots are certain to hit. If you are weakened by lack of food or water, you may miss a shot.
Be careful but quick.
Credits
The game features the talented Voice Acting of Rain Lefever,
the Sound Design of Torey Sound
and bscross,
and for now some sfx placeholders from Freesound.org
Comments
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I love the concept. A few things though. The most pressing of which is that when you’re badly affected by hunger or thirst, that action takes precedence over searching, making it impossible to search a house in some circumstances. Second, I’d like a way to tell how much of each given resource I have.
Also, the game seemed to go on longer than five minutes, and for some reason, I would become fully revitalized without knowing how it happened. Eventually I stopped playing because I wasn’t really sure what was going on any more or how close I was to getting out.
It would definitely help clarify what’s being picked up by putting in better sounds, though I laughed the entire time I was playing at how the game sounds now. Hilarious and fun.
Thanks for playing and commenting.
Hunger, thirst, searching and all modes shouldn't overlap. In theory. I do have a bit of a timing issue where you're hearing a sound cue of a state that's ended and causes the problem you mention. I have found a way to solve that and it should be fixed for the next build.
There's a problem at the end of the game where the game sometimes doesn't give the sound cue and pause that mark the game over. So you're unknowingly clicking to restart the game. I plan to fix that with... solutions... that I will find... soon.
Additionally, the soundscape will have some clear landmarks that will signal both the time and distance remaining. So that confusion that won't happen because solutions, would also be impossible as you'd know the difference between start and end of the road. And yeah, sound cues should be a lot better than me saying *gasp* XD
Now about knowing how much of each resource you have, that was the original intention. I'm a compulsive inventory checker in all games. That said, I'm loving the idea of this being a one-button game and the resources are so few that they should be possible to track in the mind (except that I clearly can't). I'm still thinking about this one.
Glad to hear you had fun and some laughs. Still plenty of room and time for improvements so stay tuned. Thanks again. :)