🎧Best played with headphones!🎧

Blind Bake is a small experimental game built to showcase audio navigation through 3D levels. It hopes to teach gamers and developers some basic methods of guiding players without sight through spatialised audio.

This game was built for the Global Game Jam 2024 and has been updated for a more robust release with more features and levels. It uses ReadSpeaker’s Unreal Engine plugin to power dynamic Text To Speech.

How does it work?

The game is simple; escape the bakery! Head through the doors at the end of each level to progress. Use the help of minions to guide you.

Marshmallows meep in a cone shape, guiding you towards them.	Battenbergs have text to speech with custom text input, which allows you to give verbal instructions.	Jam changes your footstep sounds and is designed to mimic tactile paving.

How Can You Play The Game:

🙋Alone:

We recommend you start with our blind accessible game mode, which throws you straight into ‘Croissant Mode’ where you follow audio beacons (minions) placed by the developers to guide you through the levels.

If you are sighted, you can then play the classic game modes with the ‘Build Mode’ phase active, where you see the level and place your own audio beacons (minions) to follow.

🙋🙋Two Player:

Cooperate to escape the bakery! One player controls the ‘Build Mode’ using Keyboard Mouse, while a second blind or blindfolded player awaits the ‘Croissant Mode’. For best couch co-op play we recommend the Croissant player use a gamepad. If you can, use a headphone splitter so both players can experience the audio at its best.

The game contains an in-game blindfold which can be toggled on and off, so if you have a sighted second player who is physically blindfolded, the first player will be able to spectate their progress through the level live.

Game Information

Controls:

Partial Controller Support (Menus and Blind Accessible mode is fully controller supported, keyboard mouse is required only for Classic mode).

Placement mode (KBM Only):

• Rotate Camera: Q & E
• Select Minion: Left Click
• Move Minion: Mouse Movement
• Delete Minion: Right Click
• Rotate Minion: Scroll Wheel
• Adjust Minion: C
• Set Battenberg Text: Keyboard input

Croissant mode (KBM or Gamepad):

• Move camera: Mouse / Right Stick
• Move croissant: WASD / Arrow Keys / Left Stick
• Jump: Space / A Button
• Toggle Blindfold: C / Y
• Reset Player: X / X
• Hear Controls Narrated: Tab / View Button
• Pause: P / Menu Button

Menu controls (KBM or Gamepad):

• Navigate: WASD / Arrow Keys / Left Stick / D-Pad
• Select: Enter / A Button
• Back: Backspace / B Button
• Toggle Narrator: Tab / View Button

Accessibility Features:

• 🔊 Menu Narration
• 🔊 Unique and informative Audio Cues
• 🔊 Spatial Sound
• 🔊 Sonar-style Level Navigation
• 🔊 Volume Sliders for Music, SFX and TTS
• 💙 Simple Tutorials (text and narrated)
• 💙 Clear Language
• 💙 No Failure/Death
• 💙 No Gore
• 💙 Pause Anytime
• 🎮 No Holds or Simultaneous Inputs
• 🎮 No QTEs
• 🎮 No Precise Timing or Time Limits
• 🎮 Partial Controller Support (except Placement mode)

Credits

TTS provided using ReadSpeaker Expressive runtime TTS AI voice generator (readspeaker.com) 
Sound Effects: Kenney Game Assets, Freesound.org
Music: Adobe Stock.

View the original global game jam submission here: Blind Bake | Global Game Jam