Ten-year-old makes audio-only game for his blind grandmother

[Blacksite]

Ten-year-old Dylan Viale wanted to share his enjoyment of video games with his grandmother, who is blind. Instead of breathlessly narrating his own gameplay adventures, however, Viale downloaded the trial of Game Maker and taught himself how to make an audio-only game for her to play.

Quacky's Quest is a maze game in which a duck collects diamonds and avoids spiders. Grandmother Sherry is able to navigate the maze by the distinctive sounds made by diamonds, nearby spiders, and solid walls. Rocks fill the space behind the player to avoid the confusion caused by walking in a space whose diamond has already been collected.

Viale designed the game with sprites and tiles (above), then turned them off for the final version, which Sherry had no trouble playing. He then entered it in his elementary school's science fair, where of course it won first place.

There are relatively few games that can be played with audio only – the Japan-only Game Boy game Soundvoyager is perhaps the most famous one. However, it's unlikely Dylan Viale knew about any of those, so he essentially invented the genre independently. That's worth a science fair medal.

Source

Pretty cool kid. And it goes to show that graphics aren't always that important.

[Lethal_NFS]

That is really cool.

[Kuro]

Damn pretty cool for a 10 yr old

[mooninites]

Nice! Good for the kid and his grannie.

Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2

[Sylar]

That's such an awesome thing to do, what a champ

[Thorzilla]

Fuckin ace. Things like this make me proud of calling myself a gamer. You go Kojima kid!

[Morganator]

He will go far if he keeps it up.

[Beast of Bourbon]

Good show!
When i was 10 i was planing amok runs in the Jagged Alliance Deadly Games Mapeditor

[TRF]

Smart kid and very cool thing of him to do.


Tapatalking from my bed. Ya mutha says hi.