Voice of Cards: A Guide for Blind Players and My Impressions
Attention!
This game series does not have built-in accessibility settings. Players who wish to dive into this captivating adventure will need to make extensive use of various OCR tools, but trust me—it’s worth it!
A huge thank you from me and other members of the completely blind gaming community goes to KenshiraTheTrinity, a respected member of the audiogames.net forum, for providing extremely helpful information about the game.
Introduction
This article is not about a single game accessible to blind players but an entire series: the RPG trilogy published by Square Enix called Voice of Cards.
All three games in the series are built on the same engine and feature similar user interfaces and gameplay mechanics, allowing us to create a comprehensive guide rather than reviewing each game individually.
Before diving into a detailed breakdown of Voice of Cards, it’s important to note that the entire trilogy is available on PC (via Steam), PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch. Free demo versions are available to try.
The series includes three games: The Isle Dragon Roars, The Forsaken Maiden, and The Beasts of Burden. Essentially, these are top-down RPGs, similar to the mainline Pokémon or Dragon Quest games. If compared to audio games, the closest analogs would be the Manamon and Paladin of the Sky series.
In each Voice of Cards installment, players explore the world, meet companions, and, of course, battle enemies—all set against an engaging narrative.
The standout feature of these games is their stylization, resembling a tabletop card game or even a session of Dungeons & Dragons. Throughout the adventure, a narrator describes nearly every event, adding atmospheric and colorful commentary during battles. This way, you won’t have to guess what’s happening on-screen based only on sound cues.
Starting the Game
When launching any of the three games, you’ll first arrive at the main menu. The available options include: Continue (inactive on your first run), New Game, Settings, Multiplayer (which unlocks after progressing through part of the story), and Downloadable Content.
Whenever you cancel a selection in the menu, the game automatically moves the cursor back to the first option. For first-time players, this will be the New Game button.
The additional content includes cosmetic items like dice skins, card styles, avatars, table designs, and music, but none of these are necessary to fully enjoy the trilogy.
The settings menu features tabs from left to right, with various options listed top to bottom. To modify any settings, select the desired option from a tab and press confirm. In some cases, you’ll need to restart the game for changes to take effect, though most settings won’t require this.
Controls
Before we explore the settings menu in detail, let’s go over the controls and their functions.
Gamepads
The confirmation button on the Nintendo Switch is A, while on PlayStation and Xbox controllers, it’s the X or A button. This button is used to select options in all menus and move your token to the chosen tile on the game board during exploration. The bumper buttons (RB/LB on Xbox, R1/L1 on PlayStation) allow you to zoom in or out during exploration and scroll through the item list during battles.
You move across the game board or navigate menus with the left stick or D-pad, while the right stick moves the cursor for quick jumps to specific points on the map, confirmed with the confirmation button.
During exploration, pressing X on Switch, Y on Xbox, or Triangle on PlayStation will display your next objective, and in battles, it will show the status of your party members.
Holding Y for a few seconds during exploration toggles the game speed between normal and fast, allowing quicker movement. In battles, this button opens the item list.
The cancel button is B on Switch, B on Xbox, and Circle on PlayStation.
Pressing + on Switch, Options on PlayStation, or Start on Xbox brings up the pause menu. Pressing it again will close the menu. During battles, this button allows you to flee.
In the pause menu, you can open the settings by pressing – on Switch or the touchpad on PlayStation. On Xbox, this button is located to the left of the start button.
Keyboard
Keyboard controls are as follows:
W, A, S, and D are used for menu navigation and movement on the game board—up, left, down, and right, respectively. The Enter key confirms selections, while the Backspace key cancels them. Escape or C opens the pause menu, and these keys also close the menu. They can also bring up the option to flee from battles.
The E key shows your next objective or displays the status during battles. The arrow keys are used to move the cursor for quick navigation across the map.
Now that we’ve covered the controls, we can proceed to the game itself.
Settings Menu
The list of options in the settings menu is the same across all games. The tabs are arranged from left to right. The first tab is Game Settings, followed by Customization (unavailable in the pause menu), Language (also unavailable in the pause menu), Sound, and lastly, Other, which contains miscellaneous options that don’t fit the previous categories.
Note that the demo version lacks the second and third tabs, just like the pause menu, but sound settings should still be available. To access sound settings immediately, just move one tab to the right from the starting tab.
On the Game Settings tab, you have four options to adjust. The first allows you to toggle highlighting of important words in red. The second option enables or disables shadows, which may improve game performance if turned off. The third option, located below, lets you change the game speed between normal and high, with the default set to normal. The last option allows you to swap the confirm and cancel buttons if you’re used to them being in different positions.
On the Customization tab, you can change various visual aspects such as the appearance of your avatar, cards, table, and dice. None of these affect gameplay, so we’ll skip this tab. On the Language tab, you can select the text and voiceover language in the specified order. The options for text language include English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, and possibly Japanese.
In the Sound Settings, you can adjust the background music, sound effects, and voice volume in the specified order. Simply select one of these options and choose from five levels, which are arranged from left to right: silent, low, normal, loud, and even louder. The default setting for all three is normal. Moving on to the Other tab, you will find three options, two of which are available in the pause menu. The first option allows you to return to the main screen, but be aware that any unsaved data will be lost if you do so. The next option lets you toggle subtitles on or off. The third option provides access to the Credits and License. If you are not currently in a game, there is also an option to delete your game data, but this option cannot be selected during gameplay.
Once you have finished adjusting the settings, press the cancel button until you return to the main screen.
Starting the Game
If you don’t have a saved game yet, you’ll need to start a new one. Select the appropriate option from the menu and wait a minute for the game to load, during which you’ll hear the sound of shuffling cards. Eventually, the game master will enter the room and introduce themselves. After you manually save your game or the game creates an autosave, the “Continue” button will become active the next time you start the game.
After a brief introductory sequence, similar to a prologue, you’ll be prompted to register or enter your name. You can either press start/options/plus/enter to keep the default name or enter your own. When choosing options, they appear left to right in the menu, which won’t scroll if there are only two options but will scroll in other cases. Sometimes, you’ll need to hold the confirm button for a while to make a selection, usually when making important decisions that affect the story.
Finally, when loading a saved game from the main screen, you’ll automatically be taken to the autosave slot, which is the only option at the top of the menu that doesn’t scroll. Below it, you’ll find three save slots from left to right, which become available for manual saves. This part of the menu works similarly to the save and load options in the pause menu, which we’ll discuss later.
Now we’re ready to explore how to navigate the game world.
World Navigation
During exploration, you need to move your token across the game board in various directions using the D-pad, left analog stick, or W A S D keys on the keyboard. Keep in mind that diagonal movement is also possible, which is important as some areas have exits placed diagonally. Make sure to carefully explore locations to find these tiles for further progress.
If you encounter an obstacle during your journey, such as a mountain or a river, your token will be moved back to the last accessible tile or the edge of the map. These moments are accompanied by distinct sound cues, and the dungeon master may comment, letting you know that there’s no path in a certain direction.
The overworld maps resemble hexagons divided into card-like tiles that you can move across in different directions. At first, navigation may seem complex and confusing, but over time you’ll develop a sense of how these sections are structured, making exploration easier.
Voice of Cards pays homage to classic RPGs, and you’ll frequently encounter random enemy encounters in both the overworld and dungeons. This means that moving back and forth between tiles can trigger battles or events without needing to venture far into locations. This is particularly useful if you want to grind for experience, gold, or items without the risk of getting lost in distant areas.
Interaction with NPCs and interactive objects occurs automatically. Just occupy the same tile as the character or object, and you’ll hear the sound of a card flipping when you encounter something available for interaction.
Also, keep in mind that in both the overworld and dungeons, you may encounter events and battles that require rolling dice or making choices to see the outcome. Remember, the game is rich with various random situations, making your runs even more interesting.
Battle Phase
All battles in this game series are turn-based. The turn order is determined by the speed attribute of each character—the higher the speed, the more frequently they act. If two characters have the same speed stat, their turn order will be randomized from battle to battle.
The gameplay during battles revolves around various menus where you select skills, spells, and consumable items. Keep in mind that each attack, critical effect, spell, etc., has its own unique sound. When you first encounter certain effects, buffs, or debuffs, you’ll see a pop-up explanation, giving you a chance to memorize the sounds for future reference during battles.
If any party member loses all of their health points, they will become unconscious (knocked out) and automatically revive with 1 HP after the battle ends.
Instead of using traditional mana (MP) to cast spells or skills, this game uses gems. Each spell or skill has specific gem requirements for casting. The gem pool is shared among all party members, and you receive an additional gem at the start of each turn. Gems can be saved up over multiple turns for more powerful spells. Some characters’ abilities or consumable items, like the Sooth Stone, allow you to generate or restore gems.
Another way to gain gems is through Happenstance Cards, which are triggered at the beginning of certain battles. These cards bring random effects, both positive and negative. Examples include: double gold earned for this battle, double experience gained, all enemies afflicted with freeze, fire attacks deal 5 extra damage, etc.
During your turn, you’ll be in a non-scrollable menu of skills arranged from left to right, with the last option being a pass turn option to skip without performing any action.
It’s worth noting that in The Isle Dragon Roars, each character has 4 active skills, while in The Forsaken Maiden and The Beasts of Burden, they have 5.
By pressing Square or X on gamepads while in the skills menu, you can access the items menu. Similarly, pressing Y or Triangle will display a list of current buffs or debuffs affecting your character.
When selecting a skill or item, you’ll be prompted to choose a target depending on the type—either an enemy or an ally. For example, if you choose a healing potion, the game won’t allow you to use it on a character who is already at full health.
Pressing Start on PlayStation controllers, Options on Xbox, C on the keyboard, or Plus on Switch allows you to attempt to flee the battle, which requires a successful dice roll.
Buying and Selling Items
In all three games of the series, you will frequently deal with various shops. Some shops appear randomly while exploring the world, functioning as random events that disappear after being visited and periodically reappear. Others are permanently located in different towns.
Shops are also categorized by the types of items they sell, and the assortment may vary depending on the town. Be sure to visit shops often to find more powerful equipment and potions.
Let’s break down the menu structure once you interact with a merchant. From left to right, you will see three options: buy, sell, and leave.
By selecting buy, you’ll enter the list of items the current merchant is selling. Selecting sell brings you to a menu where the first option is for items, and the second is for equipment. Depending on which tab you choose, the list will filter accordingly to show available items for sale.
If you wish to sell something, select the item, press confirm, and you’ll see two options from left to right: deal and never mind. Confirm your choice, and you’ll hear the pleasant sound of the transaction.
It’s worth noting that you can sell both equipment and items at any store, so you won’t need to worry about finding specific locations for selling weapons, potions, or other items. Another convenience is that you won’t be able to accidentally sell items required for progressing the story.
Now, let’s consider buying items. After entering a shop and selecting buy, you’ll choose an item from the list and move to a menu section with options such as buy, buy more, buy fewer, and inspect. If you change your mind about purchasing the item, you can simply press the cancel button, depending on your controller.
OCR (optical character recognition) works well for showing item stats, prices, and the amount of gold received from sales. If you try to buy an item you can’t afford, you won’t hear the transaction sound, and you’ll be returned to the item list.
Another useful feature is the ability to buy and equip gear directly from the armory. When you visit the armory and select an item, you’ll see options like buy and equip, buy, and inspect. OCR can read the equipment’s stats and descriptions, but if there are issues with recognizing the stat names, the order of the numbers is attack, defense, speed, and HP.
After selecting buy and equip, a list of characters for whom the item is suitable will appear.
Note that merchants encountered while traveling either buy or sell items depending on the event triggered. You won’t be able to both buy and sell from these traveling merchants at the same time.
Managing Equipment and Skills
Changing equipment and assigning active skills for heroes is done through the pause menu. Upon opening this menu, you can use OCR to read useful information such as the current character level, stats, gold, and more. The menu is organized into several tabs, which are arranged from left to right: setup, owned cards, collection, and data.
When entering the pause menu, you will always start in the setup tab. The first option will be the skills section, where you can choose active battle skills for each character. Upon entering the skills section, the heroes are displayed from left to right in the order they joined the party. Clicking on a character brings up the list of currently active skills.
Note: If you’ve learned more than 4 active skills, press down to access the list of inactive skills. To assign an inactive skill to a battle slot, press the confirm button on the skill and choose one of the 4 slots displayed from left to right.
If you move down one option from the skills section, you’ll find abilities, where you can read the passive abilities of each character. This section doesn’t require any changes or learning, but it helps identify which party members complement each other best.
Below that is the equipment section, where you can change your heroes’ gear. Again, the heroes are displayed from left to right. Selecting a character will show 3 equipment slots: weapon, armor, and accessory. By pressing down on each slot, you’ll see available items listed from oldest to newest, including any newly purchased or found items. To equip an item, simply press the confirm button.
Note: The far-right option is to remove the item. If you want to equip the newest item in your inventory, scroll all the way to the right, then press left once and hit confirm.
The next option on this tab is party, where you can choose which heroes will travel with you. This becomes relevant once you meet more than 3 party members. Managing your party works similarly to assigning skills: active party members are displayed on the top row, and inactive members below. To swap a character, select an inactive member, press confirm, and place them in one of the 3 active slots.
To the right of the setup tab is owned cards, where you can view all of your items, including consumables, equipment, keys, and more. You can also use some items outside of battle, such as healing potions before a fight or removing a negative status effect.
It’s easy to identify usable items outside of battle. When you click on an item, you will see the options use, inspect, and a third option (which OCR may recognize oddly) to discard the item. If the item can’t be used, only inspect and drop will appear.
You can also view all your collected equipment here. If you select an equippable item, you’ll see options to equip, inspect, or discard it.
As mentioned earlier, next to owned cards is the collections tab, which serves as a knowledge base accumulating as you progress through the game. Here, you can read information about monsters, items, and much more. You can also track the overall progress of cards collected throughout the game.
The final tab in the pause menu is data, where you can save or load your game. These options are arranged in that order within this tab.
Overall Impressions of the Trilogy
In my opinion, the Voice of Cards series is a very unique representative of the RPG genre, masterfully blending elements of collectible card games and tabletop games. Everything is in place: collecting cards for your deck, leveling up characters, exploring a game board reminiscent of classic figurine-based games, collecting items, rolling dice, and even a Dungeon Master who feels like a real person or a friend running a game session for you.
As a big fan of tabletop RPGs, I often gathered with friends in Discord or at home to play Dungeons and Dragons, or create entirely new worlds, or even play role-playing games set in familiar universes like Harry Potter. We always had to adapt the gameplay to accommodate a completely blind player, meaning we couldn’t always roll real physical dice often. However, I always had a great time during these sessions.
Playing through the Voice of Cards trilogy gave me the chance to experience almost the same feelings, but without needing to coordinate gatherings with friends. Yes, it would have been amazing if the series had been adapted for blind players from the start—built-in screen reader support would have made interacting with the game world much easier—but even without it, using OCR or apps like Be My AI, I constantly felt the vibe of those group sessions with friends.
One of the key advantages was that all three games are quite similar in terms of general gameplay elements and menus, so transitioning from one game to another was fairly straightforward, making it easier to dive into the next adventure. Of course, as they say, the devil is in the details. For example, in The Isle Dragon Roars, each hero had 4 active skills and there were 3 party members, while in The Forsaken Maiden and The Beasts of Burden, there were 5 active skills per hero, and the party could include more members.
Another interesting aspect of The Beasts of Burden was the monster-taming mechanic, which was the standout feature of that installment. These differences are just the tip of the iceberg, as each game is unique in its own way. Although considered a trilogy, each game tells its own story with different characters and events, so it doesn’t really matter in what order you play them.
I personally started with the first release and played through in sequence, although I purchased the full trilogy as a set after playing the demo of the first game. I already knew I was ready to immerse myself in this type of gameplay.
The Dungeon Master mechanic, where a narrator describes almost everything happening in the game, deserves special attention. I would compare it to audio descriptions found in games like The Last of Us or Spider-Man 2. However, in those games, it’s an accessibility setting, whereas here, it’s an integral part of the gameplay, skillfully woven into the very essence of the game. A similar example can be found in Final Fantasy 16, where there’s a feature called “Beast Instinct,” which helps with navigation, similar to The Last of Us. But in Final Fantasy, this feature is justified by the presence of a dog companion, who shows you the path through tracks, while the camera naturally adjusts toward your goal. In my humble opinion, such narrative-based solutions are even more engaging than standard, detached accessibility settings. While I’m always extremely grateful to developers for implementing accessibility options, it would be wonderful if future games could integrate these solutions directly into the core storytelling experience.
Of course, the main drawback of the series is the constant need to use OCR in some form. NVDA is probably the most universal and convenient option, but as I mentioned earlier, you can also use AI assistance or a mobile phone with a good camera and an app that scans and reads aloud text from images. It would be great to have a mod that adapts the game interface for screen reader programs, or for the developers to consider the wishes of the blind gaming community for future projects of this genre.
Despite all this, the games are fully playable without sighted assistance. Even the puzzle elements can be solved without a sighted helper, as long as you are patient and gain experience with the game mechanics.
Conclusion
In conclusion, after reading this extensive guide, you should be well-prepared to embark on a grand adventure full of intrigue, fascinating characters, and engaging gameplay. Each game takes a minimum of 15-20 hours to complete, and that’s just a rough estimate, so you can look forward to dozens of hours of immersion.
If you have any questions after reading the guide, our team will be happy to answer them on Discord. On that positive note, I’ll say goodbye for now, but we’ll meet again soon in the vast world of InviOcean. Wishing you only the best and most enjoyable gaming experiences—until next time!