Interactive Fiction: The Ultimate in Accessible Games

Games for the blind are nothing new. Computer games for the blind are nearly as old as computers themselves.  Worlds of entertainment opportunity present themselves through accessible games.  A game is accessible to the blind insofar as it can be spoken to the player.  Text-to-speech technology is the key.  Malinche's text adventure games lend themselves perfectly to games for the blind because they are 100% text.  As every Malinche interactive fiction title is pure text, the written word is easily spoken so blind gamers can hear.  And play.

Every blind computer user knows all about Freedom Scientific's JAWS for Windows and the built-in text-to-speech capabilities of Apple Computers.  Not nearly enough blind computer gamers know about text adventure games.  And those that do are stuck playing the boring efforts of amateur text adventure game programmers.

Unless they're fortunate enough to discover Infocom text adventure games or Malinche interactive fiction.  Then - and only then - is the blind gamer treated to professional interactive fiction.  No matter how much we may admire amateurish efforts, nothing can compare to the polished performance of a professional.

From the very beginning Malinche has been an advocate of blind computer users and a staunch supporter of blind gamers so they can experience the same level of quality entertainment as everyone else.

In our admittedly biased opinion, interactive fiction is as viable an entertainment platform as any other; conventional fiction books, movies, television shows and even computer games. That's because interactive fiction engages the imagination making any other stimuli of the mind unnecessary.

Text adventure games - the overarcing umbrella under which interactive fiction is included - puts everyone on an even playing field of imaginative opportunity to think and ponder and probe the prose and the puzzles and the plot so they themselves can move the story forward (or even backward...) as they see fit.

Malinche Entertainment is proud to publish interactive fiction that blind gamers can consider accessible games that can be played and enjoyed for weeks and months at a time.

Interactive fiction is all about imagination and the blind have access to our interactive fiction eBooks which we humbly believe to be the equalizer that puts all human beings on the same plane at least where entertainment is concerned.

How Text Adventure Games are Played as Blind Games

Windows Instructions

In conjunction with JAWS or WindowsEyes, your screen reading software, you'll need an interactive fiction interpreter to play our text adventure games.  The text adventure game interpreter we've found that works best with JAWS and WindowsEyes is Filfre (Download Filfre here) 

The steps you need to take to play our blind games is as follows:

1) Make sure JAWS or WindowsEyes is enabled.

2) Run the Filfre interactive fiction interpreter (Download Filfre here) 

3) Load the text adventure game you want to play

4) Using Filfre's backscroll feature, you'll backscroll through each section of the game so JAWS can read it to you.  When the reading of that section of the interactive fiction title is done, exit back scroll and enter your commands.  Our text adventure games recognize all of the standard commands you'd expect to work. You can also type HELP for a comprehensive help facility within the text adventure game itself.

If you have any questions or need any help with this just let us know.

Mac OS X Instructions

1) Enable VoiceOver by selecting System Preferences then Universal Access and toggling VoiceOver ON.  (Learn more about Mac OS X VoiceOver)

2) Run the Zoom Interactive Fiction interpreter (Download Zoom here)

3) Load the text adventure game you want to play into Zoom.

4) All of the test of our interactive fiction books will now be read to you from the screen.