Ergonomics - iPhone Game Blueprints - page 65

but there are other genres too; for example, puzzles, quizzes, shooters, and so on.
By using binaural audio technologies—a way to record sound, which uses two micro-
phones imitating human ears (placed inside a special dummy head), so the result is
the natural version of 3D stereo—the developers can create a breathtaking surround
sound experience, but headphones should be used to achieve the proper effect.
Devices with touch screens answer the needs of audio games, because the player
can utilize the advantages of multitouch inputs; an interaction with the game can be
based not on buttons, but various gestures. The player can tap the screen with one,
two, or three fingers, or make different drag movements with his index finger. Each
gesture has its own meaning, for example, it may be signal to open the inventory,
to take an object, to press a trigger, and so on. Besides, the screen gestures, the
voice recognition input can be used as well. Players may interact with a game world
by saying some special voice commands. Confirmation of the action, of course, is
based on auditory feedback; there can be a few special sounds to illustrate that a
scene or a dialogue is over and so on. The audio games can surprise an unprepared
person, because there can be no graphics at all in such games. For instance, one of
the famous audio games for iOS called The Inquisitor Audiogame Adventure created
by Ivan Venturi , has the description on iTunes as AUDIOGAME NO GRAPHICS . In-
credibly, people who worked on this game made a titanic effort to provide blind or
shortsighted people a wonderful gaming experience. The adventure story includes
about 21,000 words or up to 8 hours of the gameplay, which is totally based on
sounds, music, and beautiful voice-acting, dubbed in three different languages. Try
to imagine how long and difficult was the testing and debugging process alone! But
all the efforts were paid off by players' appreciation.
A screenshot from The Nightjar featuring minimalistic graphics is shown as follows
(it is pity that the image can't transmit sounds):
Another great example is a pretty elegant audio game called The Nightjar developed
by Somethin' Else , a thrilling story of a spaceship falling into a black hole. It does not