Blindfold Games Level the Playing Field
By Marty Schultz, Blindfold Games
Video games have dominated popular culture with no sign of slowing down. This is true not only for children, but people of all ages and demographics. The vast majority of these games, however, are centered around spectacular visuals and graphics. As gaming continues to gain popularity, Blindfold Games has dedicated itself to bringing the fun to the visually impaired.
Our flagship game is Blindfold Racer, where you drive with ears instead of your eyes. It’s a multi-level game that challenges you to aim for all the prizes and avoid creating roadkill.
Blindfold Racer was initially built as a STEM project in cooperation with students at the Cushman School in Miami, FL and the teens at the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind.
Since then, we’ve built more than 35 games in the Blindfold Games series for iPhone, iPad and iPod. Ranging from card games to puzzle games to casino games to action games, these apps have been enjoyed by thousands of people who are blind or have low vision, from 5 to 75 years old. All games are audio games, and only a few games require headphones to fully enjoy them.
Here’s a selection of the most popular:
A New Way to Solitaire: Not Seeing is Believing
The first game in our card game series, Blindfold Solitaire includes more than 15 different Solitaire games such as Klondike, Free Cell, Spider and Golf. The cards are not visible; instead, you play by listening. You can flick left or right, or up or down, to hear the cards. You move a card from one pile to another by tapping on the screen twice to start the move, and then tapping twice again to complete the move. A complete guide to the gestures is included in the help.
Other card games include Spades, Rummy, Hearts, Dominoes, Crazy Eights and Uno.
Sight Not Required for Gaming Sports Fans
The most popular game in our action series, Blindfold Bowling allows you to test your skills against yourself, a variety of computer opponents, or another person side-by-side.
A flick of the finger propels the bowling ball at speeds matching the strength of the flick. Listen for the ball’s roll and triumphant crash in into the pins to gauge your audio bowling prowess. And, of course, we highly recommend you showboat your talents with a post of your high scores to Facebook or Twitter.
Other games in the action series include Air Hockey, Pong, Breakout, Shuffleboard, Juggling, Horse Race, Pinball, Skee Ball and Hopper.
Win Big with Audio Casino Games
Blindfold Bingo comes with 16 patterns of play, and lets you both explore a pattern and then play that pattern, such as a clover leaf, or the letter X, or an inside diamond.
Blindfold Color Crush Puzzles Gamers with Visual Impairments
Similar to Candy Crush, Blindfold Color Crush is one of about 10 different games in the puzzle series. You mission, should you choose to accept it, is to remove as many colored gems as possible by swapping adjacent gems, to get 3 or more similar colored gems in a row. How can this be done if vision is an issue? Just set the game to identify gems as color names, such as red or blue, or fruits, animals or numbers. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll ascend the gaming levels to new bejeweled challenges.
Other puzzles include Sudoku, word games like Boggle and Hangman, Simon (similar to My Simon), and Spin and Solve (similar to Wheel of Fortune).
All Blindfold Games are yours for the taking in the iTunes App Store. To find out more about how the games are developed, visit Blindfoldgames.org.
About the Author/Developer:
After launching a handful of software ventures in both the greater Boston & Miami areas, Marty Schultz has recently been collaborating with visually impaired people to design audio games. The goal of Blindfold Games is to create game apps for children, teens and adults who are blind or have low vision. The first game, Blindfold Racer, was an overwhelming success. The positive feedback from the community led the way to the dozens of other accessible games that now comprise the Blindfold Games series. And more are in the works!Pre-Register for Abilities Expo Today...It's Free!