Lost and Hound
Move over, Scooby Doo! Epic Games MegaGrant recipient, Australian Game Developer Award winner and lauded for its innovation in gameplay and blind accessibility, Lost and Hound is a fresh twist on the mystery adventure genre: heightened hearing and sense of smell will guide your paws as you work towards your goals – finding and saving people in trouble, catching criminals and unravelling the truth of seemingly impossible situations.
As Biscuit your hearing will allow you to access information that’s inaccessible to humans. Pause and look around to hear in a straight line for a very large distance. Move, and you’ll be able to hear what’s around you in very sharp detail. Hear through walls, hear people’s heartbeats, you’ll be able to sense both danger and the people you’re tracking from very far away.
Using your superior sense of smell you’ll be able to scent track your way into your role as the world’s first doggo detective. Scent in Lost and Hound is represented by a low, pleasant humming sound. Similar to making your way through a maze where the way out would be invisible under normal circumstances, subtle sound or scent cues will guide you to your query.
As Biscuit you’ll travel around the world taking on many of the roles of real-world working dogs. From working in a hospital to assist with seizure detection and detecting cancer to herding sheep in the rough, Australian outback. Your work as a K9 tracker will take you to Japan, the Swiss Alps, the American wilderness, and many other locales. In between each mission, you’ll have the option to complete mini levels to earn extra money and travel to more exotic locations.
Features:
- Travel around the world working as the strong-willed Corgi Biscuit.
- Solve crimes, track down missing people, and assist those in need.
- Use your superior hearing to listen for accelerated heartbeats, hear through walls, and more to piece together clues.
- Follow subtle scent clues with your heightened sense of smell represented by sound queues to track leads.
- Take on the roles of real-world working dogs; assist with seizure detection, be an emotional support for zoo animals, and more.
- Complete mini levels to earn extra money to fund your K9 travels.
- Meet new animal friends throughout your travels.
- Fully blind-accessible.
Game Discussion
Steam User 43
I've been closely following this game's development for awhile, and I'm excited it's finally here.
This is a solid game that isn't just blind-accessible, it's not just well-designed...it's fun.
Steam User 22
You play a hound.
The game's based on sound.
The dog's nose to the ground.
That too is a sound.
A great game we've found.
So spend a few pound. (I'm British ad Dollar wouldn't rhyme anyway)
Audio game, too few around.
This one's near the top of the mound.
A fully visually impaired friendly game with more depth than a basic audiogame. Here's hoping that this type of game becomes the norm. Well worth the entry price, so give your eyes a rest and play this.
Steam User 15
Lost & Hound is an incredibly wholesome and enjoyable casual adventure game. I really enjoyed the sound and visual cue systems built into the foundation of the game. It's an innovative concept, and an interesting way to adventure through the well crafted levels/worlds. The narrative is endearing, and you can tell a lot of care went into creating this game.
Steam User 8
I really enjoy the sound design of this most excellent dog simulator. A lot of thoughtful design went into this game to make it accessible AND enjoyable to such a wide array of people. I hope that Lost & Hound inspires more game devs to scaffold their game play to be more inclusive for all.
Can't wait for the poodle update. There will be a poodle update, right?
Steam User 5
This game is just an absolute pleasure to play. The asthetic is gorgeous and it's obvious that the creator is extremely interested in inclusion and bringing joy. It's wholesome and sweet and funny, but still challenging, and so so different to regular games that you really do need to concentrate on cues that you aren't used to concentrating on, which was absolutely lacking in the gaming world and I adore it.
Also, it is SO CUTE. I had the pleasure of streaming it and had to squeal like 70 million times already ❤️
The entire thing is a dopamine hit of wonderful.
I can't recommend this game highly enough. It is absolutely worth every cent, even just for the soundtrack alone, and someone who is trying to make a game that visually impaired people can play absolutely gets my support 100%
Steam User 4
For other game reviews, please follow us at What The Game?
Lost and Hound is an adventure game where you play a Corgi named Biscuit who finds herself tasked together with their human with helping folks they meet along the way in this one of a kind blind-accessible game.
Efforts Made
As a game that prides itself on being an accessible game for vision impaired players, right from the off you’ll notice or I should say hear one of the main accessibility efforts that goes into this game. As you boot up the game every option menu that you have your cursor or selection on is narrated, so you’ll know what selection option you’re on. Being accessible, the volume for this can be adjusted whether you need it to be increased, lowered or simply don’t need it in the audio settings.
Relient K
The tutorial at the start helps to teach you what the mechanics of this game are and how they work. Being a sighted person, one won’t know how tricky and challenging and over reliant we are on sight until the missions starts. As most of the mission areas tend to be quite big and open, everything looks similar, so that is where you have to rely on the game’s audio and its auditory hints to help you along. But do know that there’s the option to scale down the difficulty to casual which will provide visual hints if required.
Sounds Good
The game’s use of sound is its strength as its main focus which then has the other sections of the game built around it. The way that the sounds are used in each level’s soundscape is clever and one that I rely on heavily as the game requires one to. You would have Biscuit sniff which would then send out a bell-like sound that continues to hum when you’re still. It gets louder when you’re facing the right direction of your intended goal and goes away when you’re facing the wrong way. So using Biscuit’s sniff action sorts of ping and pinpoints where you are going.
Ping It
Using Biscuit to sniff to ping ever so often is normal as the levels’ layout tends to look very similar (might be deliberate, so as to not have the player rely on sight). Some mission levels are made in a way that has the weather and environment purposely obscure your vision and using Biscuit to sniff at the right moment (when there’s less wind etc) to help guide you on where to go is crucial.
Clip That
With its strengths being its audio, Lost and Hound unfortunately does have some downsides to it. Being a game so reliant on audio, visually Lost and Hound on the surface looks colourful and well made. But if one were to be nitpicky and take a closer look, you’ll tend to see some clippings here and there between assets, you can pass through trees at times and navigating through foliage to find things makes things look messy and could use some polish.
Corgis Aren’t That Fast
Other minor issues include audio levels for dialogue for the characters that seem to be of different levels from one another. If you’re using the controller, you can have Biscuit move at blazing speeds until you hit the “sprint” button which would tend to have Biscuit revert at the supposed speed.
Final Thoughts
Lost and Hound certainly have made strides in making it a game that is built on being accessible for vision impaired players from the ground up. With the developer actively seeking out feedback from players on improvements from forums, streams and gameplay videos, this shows the level of commitment and care that Lost and Hound has in its heart that it has built around, making games more accessible.
Steam User 4
I lOVED this game. Super creative and colorful.
This game has a fascinating concept of using a Corgi's sense of sound and smell to navigate you through this massive world. The complimenting sound design and music was very well put together and the art style is very cute and wholesum. With so many sweaty games at the top of the game boards this is a fantastic game to fall back on and relax. The game is very easy to understand and the art style is very cute.
I rate this game 18 out of 10 peanuts.