I couldn't get it to work. On loading, I heard the narrator's voice, but only saw a black screen. Keys didn't seem to work except Space to end narrator.

I like the concept, but the learning curve for the game is pretty steep since it isn't immediately obvious what each sound que meant. It was also hard to tell what was happening at each resource since it was easy to forget what you sent to each.

It worked for me!

- Press space at the start, then quickly select a difficulty level
- The game announces "The rebels approach"
- Game then works as described.

Attempting to start the tutorial or waiting until the narrator is done talking makes the game unable to start for me. If you are sighted, I recommend leaving the readme open to understand what's going on.

I managed to win once on difficulty 1.

My feedback:

- It's super nice to make an audio-only game and get it to work!! Massive props for that :clap:
- The controls to select regions and units are limited and intuitive, I like that you kept it simple
- I found no way to get my resource count announced, nor my unit count on regions other than farms, so there was a lot of guessing what the current state of the game is.
- There seems to be audio cues about enemy attacks, but with the background audio, it was hard to follow. Consider muting the track when something happens.
- I perceived the game as going very fast. Having things happen slower would give more time to process what happened (consider e.g. pre-invasion announcements, e.g. "enemy is targeting GOLD with 3 archers", then "3 archers arrived at GOLD").

Overall, I was very happy to see this! I work on accessibility and screenreader support for web and it's nice to see games going in that direction. Congrats and thanks!

Hi everyone! A black screen is correct, it is an audio game! The read me is your friend if you're getting frustrated. Also SHIFT will tell you your resources (I thought I mentioned it somewhere, but jam things!)

This is the first time I've seen this....hear this you... So unusual. Great work!

The game is good and all but it is too difficult to learn and play.

@electricicebird Ahh I tried to make the readme as helpful as I could! But making audio games in a short time is hard I'm afraid, wish I had more time to iron out sound queues that would help people more!

Wow. I never thought I would get to experience of an audible RTS, and I'm amazed how well it worked. It took me about 10 minutes to understand the controllers - at first I didn't understand that the enemy also fought for the same resources as me. Once I did though, it made sense to me why I some times got overwhelmed. I managed to get to level 6, before giving in on level 7. Overall a really well executed game, with simple and understandable instructions and a lot of interesting mechanics. Glad you included a readme, so I could remind myself of the units' strengths (btw; written instructions say that knights cost gold, though the in-game instructions tell me I need more iron)

@fnkee Oh good catch on the readme error! yes, it's iron, the mercenaries cost gold!

I'm glad you enjoyed it! It was actually really fun to make and I found it even fun to test. Part of me is thinking if enough people like it here on Ludum this might be a worth while game to spend a few months on to see if I can make it multiplayer and more complex! If I had more time I wanted there to be like random events that just changed how things worked a bit.

Yeah perhaps I should have explained that the enemy is fighting the EXACT same way as you. I know a lot of simple RTS's have an AI that cheats or plays different than the player, but sounds like you caught on that it's fighting like you! If you deny it iron, and gold, all you'll see from it is archers until it gets the others.

But thank you so much for your feedback and kind words!

@fre oh thank you for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it! The overly loud background music and tutorial being broken were bugs that I fixed in case you wanted to give it another shot! So that you don't have to listen through tutorial since you already know how to play, shift will give you current resources, but yeah no way to check on like how many forces you have out in the field! Something I did worry about, but couldn't think of an elegant solution in time. But given more time I wanted to have there be audio cues of chopping wood for the center area, then mining for the two other areas if you have living villagers there, and then some easy way to get an idea of total units on them. A quick "status report" saying "Allied army at gold, few allies at forest, large enemy army at iron" might have been enough thinking about it now. So wonderful feedback! Hope you had fun!

Very interesting idea, I've heard of audio-only games but haven't tried one before now!

I think my main problem was having a hard time understanding the state of the game like others said, I would try to obtain some gold but then the game just announces what the enemy has, so I'm not sure if I successfully obtained it. I think some more SFX for audio clarity on the success of your actions could help maybe?

Still though, a very ambitious idea and bonus points for accessibility :)

@lychee Oh my goodness I never explained how combat works!

Yes, so you and the enemy are fighting over the same res. So if you check in on gold, and it tells you that there is an enemy there, it means they control it and are using it. To take it back you'll need to stream units too it until you control it. Your villagers will work in a contested site, but they do a lot less damage than any of the military units in combat.

I never did explain in the readme that the AI follows the same rules as the players! I'll have to update just for the readme changes!

Ah took me a while to figure out the controls even with the readme. It seems like speed is the key here for those wondering how to play. The faster you deploy your units, the faster you can get resources before the enemies. Really interesting concept, I like the audio cues when there's battle happening. I would have liked for different units to play different sounds when deployed.

Really interesting game. I would appreciate a bit more feedback as to what's going on. It took me a while to realize the enemy was just acting so far before me, but once I did, it got much more fun. It would also be nice if voice lines interrupted eachother rather than playing sequentially.

This is really hard to play, but it's one of my favorite entries so far solely for introducing me to audio-only games. I find the concept fascinating so thank you for that. The game was pretty good after I wrapped my head around the concept and the controls. I think you should work a bit on the tutorial (waiting until the end of the instructions makes the game not start), because the barrier to entry is unfortunately really high.

Found it quite difficult to play, but certainly an interesting concept. Was a bit difficult to tell what the current state of the game was, or even what my most recent actions had accomplished. Since it's easy to select a unit type and send them in a direction, it's a bit overwhelming to try and receive feedback for the different directions in such short sequence without being able to differentiate when one directions information concluded and the next began. Maybe cutting down the syllables required to relay information would be helpful, though that also presents a bit of a problem in having to remember what the shorthand audio is referring to. Considering how long it currently takes to get a description of an area, it also seems like the enemy is able to move to quickly. Maybe it would be more fitting to have a steady pace at which you can build and send units as well as the enemy so that you can guarantee you've at least heard the current world state before making your decisions.

Ok (^^). Well, It took me around 10 minutes of reading comments and 2 games before begining my first game (^w^). It was great, even if a bit confusing. I did manage to beat level 1 and 2 pretty easily, but keep failing on level 4. Things I would have commented about were already asked by other in comments, so I wont repeat them :p. Adding the shift for update on ressource in your itch.io page too might be great (I saw it was in the readme though).

The ennemy is pretty fast to send troops, and I often lost a region during the time I was listening to the update about number of ennemies in an other region (^^") (at least on lvl4, but eh, I guess it's normal the game is harder on harder difficulty). But yeah... Maybe a way to accelerate the speach (maybe as a parameter ?) might help the player ? ^^

Arf. I'm stopping here ~(^^~). I don't want you to believe I didn't liked playing your game. It was great (^w^). Thank you for creating this entry to Ludum Dare ! Good work !

Could do a lot better with core mechanics. We should be able to find woods, mines, or develop our own farm. A button to check our settlement's statistics (example: how many resources do we have, what is our army's composition, etc) will also help a lot. Other than that the game looks good especially the audio quality. Thanks for the game!

@bgdc @yohsk13 @apples-mmmmmmmm @feor @nardandas @sheol

Thank you all for playing! Sounds like the general consensus is:

1. Game is too fast compared to how quickly the voice will give details.
2. You don't get enough information on certain things, like how much you have at each location, ect. (shift will give you your resource count, but nothing on army)
3. AI is too fast to react to things, so maybe they could have been a little less speedy to account for the fact that humans need to listen to things to get the information they need before making a choice.

So maybe if I remake it I'll go more of the CK2 route where there are days and you queue up things that trigger at the end of the day. I didn't want to make it turn based since I wanted there to be a bit of panic, but making it so only so many actions could be taken by the AI in a 10 second period probably would help a lot!

Thanks again for wonderful feedback and words everyone!

Okay, first of all, thank you for making that game! I had a lot of fun with this one. I'd say I'm an audiophile, so I love the idea of an audio game. You made me actually grab a piece of paper and think of some tactics, although I've ended up "brutefocing" the first level by quickly sending loads of villagers to all areas. I consider this game to be a bit difficult, maybe because of my poor imagination; I couldn't remember all the stuff from readme file and had to look it up every few seconds. I managed to pass the first level, so I guess that's a plus. Furthermore, I would say that resource informing was a bit ambiguous at first. Lastly, I'm not sure if it is a bug or a feature (lol), but when going back to main menu with escape button, the background audio doubles and overlaps.

Very cool idea. First time I see audio only game!