Itch.io gems and hidden diamonds

So I’m starting this to see what everyone’s likinSo I’m starting this to put together a list of itch.io games.

You have…

Lost in Blindness - Adventure/light puzzle and action sequences. While it’s also on Steam, I bought mine from itch and it is worth the money I feel. I know. I know. Some people want an AAA quality game with uber polish or went in expecting Indiana Jones…but thta’s not what LiB is all about. It’s an adventure with different gameplay styles that mix it up for short periods of time.

Warsim - Text based randomly generated strategy/management.

Does this honestly, at this point need a giant paragraph explaining it? You’re in charge of a kingdom. It’s a turn based, entirely text based strategy/management game, which is one of those you can, quite literally, lose hours to.

Those are the two that spring out at me. Any others?

2 Likes

Fara by Brianiscreative is pretty awesome. It’s basically an open-world roguelike with tons of content. Highly recommend!
I’m on my phone right now otherwise I’d paste a link in here but you should be able to find it with a quick google search. Just google Brian is creative fara itch and it should be the first result!
Edit: Back on my computer now! Check Fara out Here!

1 Like

I’d be remis if I didn’t mention the first and second No Video Jam. :slight_smile: There’s also the blind-friendly tag. Not entirely sure how the tags work, and their interface leaves a bit to be desired so I haven’t dug in and found out. I know a few months back I was able to see far more than just the top few blind-friendly games. Seemed to be quite a few graphic novel-style games IIRC.

1 Like

More for the sake of tradition than anything else, I’d like to start this post by reminding everyone that Code 7 is on Itch. I’d personally recommend Steam, because only Steam has the achievements. But Itch has no DRM, no annoying client and more of the money goes to the developers, so you’ll get some benefits either way.
Oh huh. That’s the markup for hyperlinks here? Link name in brackets and then URL in parenthesis? This is incredibly simple and I like it! Anyway …

Alt-Frequencies is also on both platforms. But again, Steam has achievements, and this is the kind of game I’d recommend buying at a discount. The content doesn’t justify the price, imo.

Now then, HEARtREAD and [Bulwark in the City of Flesh](Bulwark in the City of Flesh by Matt Boyd-Surka] are both free, but I need to send a tip to the developer at some point. They’re charming! Sure, the gameplay in both is quite simple, but I like the heartbeat following mechanic (HEARtREAD) and the use of a mouse (Bulwark). Sure, the story is there in bits and pieces, giving you the feeling that you’ve been dropped into the middle of a book – but somehow that just makes me more fascinated. And sure, the voice acting is at times hilarious (the songs! The sighs – so many!) … but heck, isn’t that the whole point? I often use HEARtREAD as a nice intro game for people, sighted and blind alike, who are new to audiogames, and it’s been received well so far.

SoundStrider is hecking amazing. Buy it. Buy it at twice the price. You won’t regret it. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in a game while just walking around. How randomized soundscapes can pretty much always end up sounding so great never fails to amaze me. Heck, even the randomized songs are usually good!

OK, but you probably knew all of these already. How about Bonesweeper? Definitely a hidden gem. I encouraged Cheeseness to advertise it on audiogames.net, but he’s been waiting until it leaves beta stage, and I never got around to making a topic either. I should though! It’s a game with two stages; the first is digging up bones in a game that is similar to minesweeper, except that crushing a bone isn’t instant game over, and the second is a tetris-like skeleton builder. It’s a nice little time-waster, and a lot of work has been put into making it just as fun for us as sighted players. The accessibility has some limitations – on Windows, it will behave best with NVDA, where as SAPI or JAWS don’t quite work, and it’s the most accessible on Linux – but the developer did the best with the tools he had.
Yeah, I really need to make a topic. With a detailed explanation of how to add that launch argument and which other options to enable.

There is something else on the tip of my tongue – or perhaps my fingers – but right now, I can’t remember what. The Vale? Nah, that was just a demo. A Blind Legend? That’s not even on I … oh hey, it is. But either way, not worth mentioning. Must be some accessible choice-driven thing I played. Hopefully I’ll remember it tomorrow.

Ok I’m sending this from my email. I hope it doesn’t break horribly but the forum said I could do this!!!

'Anyway, I’ll probably check out all of those games at some point.
I just had 1 question: What in the world is Code 7? I have neeeeeeeeever heard of a game called Code 7! :joy::stuck_out_tongue:

Code 7 is mostly a choice-based game that’s really hard to quantify. I’d say play the demo and find out if you like it. Most of the game can be played at your own pace; only a couple of puzzles require you to think or react quickly. The game is fully accessible to the sighted, and that’s who it’s ultimately meant for, but Goodwolves have made a blind-friendly mode which skips certain puzzles and makes others a bit easier. I didn’t find I missed much from the puzzles I couldn’t play. The story is deep, layered and fantastic, and the voice-acting is very good. Definitely recommended.

Another game you can get on itch.io is Sequence Storm. Want a racing game combined with a rhythm game? This is for you:
SEQUENCE STORM by SPECIAL MAGIC GAMES LLC

Hope this helps.

1 Like

I tried sending an email by hitting reply. Sorry for the OT but can anyone explain how I can do email replies?

Sequence storm. Yes. yes. One I need to try, but I’ve not got around to it yet. Bonesweeper looks really, really interesting, I like both of the mode ideas.

As for Code 7, yes you have to act quickly in certain points (the end of ep 1 springs to mind), but yes, the demo’s worth it. The voice acting is fantatic and there’s some genuinely funny moments, really (like the printer bit), and I’mstill trying to get it working under WINE, however.

Oh and…

Audio Death Punch by Keep Flying Games is simple but oh, oh so amazingly good for being insanely simple

I’ll concur on Alt Frequncies, really. I’ll concur on that’s one for waiting on a sale, really. Sound Strider looks fun, similar to EXO, which is one of those wandr around and relax type games.

Of course, since the jams got mentioned, I don’t really need to pick out favorites from those do I?

EDIT: Oh. And…

is one of those you can have a quick blast on for a few minutes too

Helps if I post the right link, derp!

You should be able to respond to threads by responding to the email notifications for a particular thread. That’s what I did, anyway.
@jayde I know what Code 7 is, I was just giving Mayana a hard time because it’s rare that Mayana posts game suggesttions that don’t include that game. :joy:
I could never get in to it myself. I didn’t think the voice acting was the best, the story seemed kinda cheesy and some of the puzzles were annoying. I haven’t played in years though so it’s possible I’d feel differently about it now. I just got bored after having to navigate through a bunch of rooms on the ship for what felt like the millionth time.
I really need to sit down and play E.X.O and sound strider. They sound like really fun little experimental games.

Sound Strider does look fantastic, but ten bucks I could get sequence storm as well, so that’s a tough decision really.

I’m unsure how to get to other pages in the blind friendly list on Itch however, that’s the problem I’m having. I thought it used to be doable but I’m not sure.

So has anyone had any luck playing with the filters on Itch far as genre and such go? I’ve not tried really, I’m curious how many work under WINE since, yep, over here on Linux

EDIT #2: Not Itch specific but I’ll give ahsout out t Choice of Games too

www.choiceofgames.com

You like story driven choice games? There ya go. Back to poking around Itch, really. I still can’t get to various pages though

I suppose I’d also be remis if I didn’t mention my own Onslaught: Audio Asteroids. A bit loud, and there are things I’d do differently if it wasn’t my first game, but that’s part of the process. :slight_smile: Hoping to have a new thing in early access in 2-3 months.

2 Likes

@Nolan

That Astroids one looks good. I’m still torn over if I’d get more value
out of Sound Strider vs Sequence Storm

I’m not trying to be pushy but would it be possible to see about making
your games work on Linux, if it was yo uwho did Rampage, and I didn’t
confuse you with someone else? If I did, ignore that. I’m doing about 50
things at once right now while writing this

EDIT: Okay that’s weird. Not sure if it’s my browser messing up bht the download demo link for the audio asteroids takes me to a readme.html file. Is that the right one or do I need a different link for the Linux demo?

Onslaught should work fine on Linux–it was Rampage that didn’t. And there’s no demo, unfortunately. The game engine made platform exports hard enough to configure once. Making a demo would have involved going through that huge mostly inaccessible process a second time for each platform, and I figured $5 was a low enough price point to not make it worthwhile. Hopefully the tutorial video gives you an idea whether you might like it, and if it doesn’t work under Linux for you then feel free to request a refund from Itch and I won’t contest it.

I wanted to make the manual available for free, but the only way to do that was to mark it as a demo. I wish Itch allowed for both paid and free files without automatically tagging the free files as a demo.

Creating demos for future games should be much easier, so this hopefully won’t be an issue going forward. I wish I could have provided one for Onslaught without jumping through lots of hoops.

Ah good, I was a bit thrown by the demo being a readme. I wasn’t aware of that quirk of Itch unfortunately. I’ve not yet got around to getting Onslaught however, but the trailer you got on that page makes it seem fun. I’m curiously optimistic for itAh, I’ll grab Onslaught since I’ve an itch (puun intended) for some arcade action. I’m not sure if Rampage would work undr WINE however, though Onslaught does look insanely fun. I can afford fuve bucks, sure and if it won’t work I’ll see about a refundMMMMC

I’m pretty sure Sequence Storm is free to play on Steam.
Are you not able to use Steam on Linux?

Nope, I prefer Itch because, well, I don’t much like the issue I have of
Steam (and Skype for that matter) suddenly having focus if I’m alt
tabbing and haven’t reached them yet.

Plus I like not being reliant on Steam as a whole. I honestly thought
Sequence Storm was free to play on Itch. That makes me wonder now why
it’s free on Steam but paid on Itch, the same issue @Nolan ran into? I
dunno…
Also a shout out for Punished Felix’s stuff, very interesting games. I’m
avoiding the obvious elephant in the room with that dev. I’m focusing
solely on the game in question. I don’t know if links work right in
emails, but here ya go:

Some good stuff theree. I’m still on the hunt for other good Itch games,
I’m slowly going through each genre

I’ll see about throwing together a post-jam Linux build of Rampage. I created an AppImage bundler script for System Fault, the commercial version of Rampage I’m currently working on, and it shouldn’t be much trouble to at least try it on Rampage. At the very least, it’ll eliminate any issues I’ll hit bringing System Fault to Linux in a few months, so it’d be a win.

Sweet @Nolan

I’m still trying to get to grips with getting to other pages beyond just the first few top rated games, I’m not sure if I’m missing something obvious (probable) or…

My friends that I hang out with on Mumble speak highly of Exo. I had tried it for a while but had to refresh my computer; definitely will be trying it again.

Hiya,
In my experience the best way to get past the first few pages is to turn off infinite scrolling in settings. It’s almost impossible to keep your place otherwise

Btw, not really a big game or anything, but a fun quick play is wavelane, it’s more of a concept game, but it’s nice to try and survive more than a few minutes lol. There’s a few inaccessible screens at th
e beginning, at least on linux, so keep in mind. My best way for opening it on linux successfully is to open the game, press shift tab, and press enter. Note that at least if you’re in something like ratpoison, you’ll want to be on an empty
workspace, otherwise when you press enter it will somehow disappear and only what was upfront before shows up. Weird.

-Michael.Hope this helps.

1 Like