Unawakening

Game for the Blind

Our team members

In 2010, I was invited to join the development team and my job was to design the game. This was my first game design.

We totally had no idea what were we going to do. However, our mentor advisds us to make something for our society. we took a while to think about it and we decided to make something for the disabilities, moreover, our university, Mahidol university has the college named Ratchasuda whose missions are to develop the learning and education of the disabilities and improve their career opportunities and quality of life. We visited there and asked some questions from the blind teacher who teach the blind. We discussed many possibilities about regarded the software which improve the blind; however, the blinds have not had the game which were really designed for them and made them fun. So we decided to make the game for the blind, we visited there many times later and talked to the blind who played game. Therefore, we found the key components which made the blind could play game.

They do not like to use keyboard to play game because they cannot perceive the simulate direction as others who have monitor to display.
The controller should be something that made them understand the movement easily.
The another sense that they can perceive is sounds. We should make the game that sound make them understand.

Gameplay Design

Unawakening Screenshot

Unawakening Setup

When sounds became important part of our design, it was very difficult because we use sight to locate things. So, how can the blind locate things. They may touch or hear. For touching, I decided to use the vibration of controller to response the player. However, hearing became the difficult part of designing. I started with the distance of the object or source of sound. If the object was further, the volume of the sound would be low. Now, the distance became one dimension of sound perception of the player. I thought another sound dimension should be the direction. I decided to use only left and right which was match to the stereo speakers. So, the player would know how far and which direction of the object or sound source as the figure above. We began simulate this and created the simple sound engine by Microsoft XNA. While my friend who responsible for programming polishing the engine, I was working on the theme and genre of our game. I found which kind of game which could make the blind excited while giving them the new experience of playing game. Furthermore, I decided to make the game view only in 2 dimensions because game was new to our blind player, so our game would be 2D to reduce the complexity of the game. For the first time, I planned to create the adventure game with RPG model which let the player to adventure through the story and upgrade their characters but it was too complex, so I reduced the RPG part and try to focus on adventure part. For the battle part, first idea that came into my mind is using a range weapon. Therefore, our game would be like 2D shooting adventure game.

We moved on choosing the controller. The controller should make player understand the direction and could response by vibrating, so we chose Wiimote. Wiimote can simulate the direction for player and also vibrate.

For the story of our game, Player would play as a brother who lost his sister in the carnival and tried to find her until he fell into the dark dungeon. The darkness made him cannot see things. He has to use the sound to survive in the dungeon and find his sister.

The interaction of this game is to use Wiimote to control the direction, movement and battling. Player can walk by press the button and aim the Wiimote for direction. Player can shoot the monsters in the dungeon by press the trigger of Wiimote. Player will begin with hand gun which has low attack power. All objects in this game have their own sound, for example, the bat monster has the sound of flapping the wings, the golem monster has the sound of stone moving. The sound will come from left and right speakers. If the object is on the left, the left speaker will produce higher volume than right speaker and so on. If the object is in the front, both speakers will produce the same volume. However, I also make the center threshold which make player not to aim to the exact direction, it make player can play easier. If the monster attacks the player, player will hear the unique sound of that attack, and player can dodge it by point the controller down as a crouch. If the player gets hit, the Wiimote will vibrate for short duration.

With this game, I got several awards.
- 2nd Runner-up Award, Thailand National Software Award 2011(NSC) in the software for the disabilities category.