Partly thanks to the success of Stray, animal simulation games are right up there with some of the most popular genres right now. Now there’s a new kid on the block in the form of Biscuit the Corgi, the ridiculously cute protagonist of the upcoming investigative adventure Lost and Hound.
While the game itself focuses on the adventures of Biscuit as she sets off on a number of lifesaving, mystery-solving missions, there’s a deeper concept at work within Lost and Hound. Developer Brian Fairbanks of Australian one-person studio Daisy Ale Soundworks has designed the game around blind accessibility. This means that a sighted person and a blind person will be able to play the game at the same level of success, which is an impressive feat, although perhaps one that should be more of an industry standard, rather than a notable accomplishment.
You can check out some of the innovative gameplay designed for this canine caper right here to get a feel for the adventures to come in Lost and Hound when it launches on Steam next week.
Lost and Hound‘s gameplay makes use of Biscuit’s skills as a scent-tracking dog in order to empower players’ sense of hearing over the visuals. Biscuit turns her superior hearing and sense of smell to help players solve puzzles and discover clues. She can listen in on conversations and events that are beyond the scope of human hearing; tracking down the accelerated heartbeat of a fleeing criminal and hearing through walls, for example. Scents are represented in-game through sound cues also, with a low humming sound being emitted when Biscuit picks up the trail of something.
Players will also undertake tasks inspired by the real lives of working dogs. In addition to travelling the world and using her abilities to solve crimes and conundrums, Biscuit will also get to work herding sheep, detecting seizures before they happen and working the queues as part of airport security.
The game is also designed to be fully accessible for deaf gamers as well as provide options for gamers who have muscular limitations. Lost and Hound certainly looks like a wholesome dog adventure game on the outside but Daisy Ale Soundworks ensuring that its game design is as inclusive as possible for its audience is a standout feature. Audiogames, as Fairbanks describes Lost and Hound as being part of, are part of a genre many sighted gamers are unaware of. They are, according to the developer, games that have been created by blind gamers to meet a need that the sighted world cannot adequately meet. As a result, Lost and Hound is one of these games created for “an entire global community exclusively producing its own content.”
Lost and Hound will be released on Steam for PC on August 17. For more information on this innovative upcoming title, you can check out the Lost and Hound website.
Source -PR
