Design guidelines for audio games

Abstract

This paper presents guidelines to aid on the design of audio games. Audio games are games on which the user interface and game events use primarily sounds instead of graphics to convey information to the player. Those games can provide an accessible gaming experience to visually impaired players, usually handicapped by conventional games. The presented guidelines resulted of existing literature research on audio games design and implementation, of a case study and of a user observation performed by the authors. The case study analyzed how audio is used to create an accessible game on nine audio games recommended for new players. The user observation consisted of a playtest on which visually impaired users played an audio game, on which some interaction problems were identified. The results of those three studies were analyzed and compiled in 50 design guidelines. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.