Entombed!

As you all know, I’m an avid game player and spend man

Technorati Tags: accessible gaming,Entombed!,game dev,roguelike

y precious life hours on such things as killing goblins and looting the laboratories of evil wizards.  Back when I still had functioning eyes, I used to play a game called Nethack.  Nethack is a species of game referred to as roguelike, after Rogue, the game in the early 80’s which turned a million college students like me into craven junkies after our next fix of orcs and heroism potions.  Then optic neuritis hit me and I could no longer play.  There was  a set of instructions floating around the Net about how blind people could, after a lot of baffling rigamarole, get NH to work with a screen reader, but it was difficult and not very much fun anyway.  You can’t really enjoy a game if you’re stuck struggling with basic game mechanics issues.

 

Now something miraculous has happened.  A talented blind programmer named Jason Allen has created a roguelike game for blind players.  It’s called “Entombed, and it’s powers to divert and distract from my ongoing task of writing a novel border on the supernatural.  In addition to playing the game, I am an enthusiastic member of the development community around the game and have made a number of suggestions which I expect will find their way into future versions.  Right now, Entombed is in beta testing, but the full version will sell for about $40.00, –in my opinion a steal of a price, given the time, effort and genius it has taken to develop this game.

 

Multi User Dungeon?  What’s that?

 

 

 

 

Entombed!