Designing sound-based computer games

Designing sound-based interactive entertainment for visually impaired users poses several challenges. This article points out some central issues faced when developing sound-based computer games. The three games described here were developed for the Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille (TPB), to be published on the TPB Internet site [1]. These games, Towers of Hanoi, Memory and Tag, can be played without the aid of graphics, although they do also feature animations of a style designed for partially sighted players. The games are quite small Flash applications, suitable for web publishing, and while not so complex as some other titles, they still emphasise some crucial design issues of creating sound-based computer games.