Blindfold Vee Ball

Overview

Blindfold Vee Ball is a fully accessible arcade bowling game, inspired by Skee Ball, for both sighted and visually impaired people, designed for rapid audio play.
The object of the game is to roll your ball into one of the holes on the playing field.

You control this game using iPhone gestures.
First, in the main menu, select one of the Vee Ball games.
To play this game, you need to learn how to roll your ball, and learn how the playing field is laid out.
To learn how to control the ball, start with Practice, Heavy Ball.

You get 9 balls to roll up a ramp.
To roll the ball, flick up in the direction you want to send the ball.
The faster you flick, the faster and more powerful your role is.

During practice, a woman tells you how quickly you flicked and how much power was in your flick.
A man tells you, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the top gutter, how far your ball went.
Experiment by changing the length of your flick, and bouncing your ball off of the sides.
Once you have mastered flicking, it’s a good idea to learn about the playing field.

In each of the games, when you roll your ball, it first goes up a ramp, and then falls into one of several holes on the playing field.
The harder-to-reach holes are worth more points.
If you roll the ball too far, it will hit the top gutter, and you won’t get any points.
If you miss all of the holes, and it the ball rolls back to the bottom gutter, you won’t get any points.
Otherwise, you get 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100 points when your ball lands in one of the holes.
The man tells you, on a scale of 1 to 10, how far your ball went.

Each hole is at the bottom of a vee shape on the screen, and the vee shapes are lined up vertically in the center of the screen, from the top to the bottom.
The top hole is worth 50 points, the lowest is worth 10 points.
There are two small vee shapes worth 100 points near the upper left and upper right corners of the screen.
If the ball hits one arm of the Vee, it will usually slide down that arm and land in the hole at the center of the vee shape.

If all this sounds confusing, you can learn the layout of the playing field another way – using Discovery Mode on the main menu.
That’s described later.

Now you are ready to play your first game – start with Beginner Game, Heavy Ball.

Place your finger at the bottom of your phone, near the center, a little bit above the home button, and flick to toss the ball liked you did during practice mode.
It will roll up the ramp, and start rolling down, maybe hit one of the vees, land in a hole, and you’ll score 40 points.
But, if the ball is traveling too fast, it might bounce off of the arm of a vee, and land on another Vee, and roll down into the 30 point hole.
Or, you might flick too quickly and the ball will hit the top gutter, and you won’t score any points.
Or, it might miss all of the holes and roll to the bottom gutter.

You can bank your shots off of the side wall. When you hit the side wall, you will hear a boing sound.
When you hit a goal, you will hear bells; the more bells you hear, the more points you’ve scored.

After you’ve mastered the Heavy Ball game, try the games with Medium or Light balls. The lighter the ball, the harder the game is.
Once you have mastered those games, try the Begnning game with Random Balls.

In any game, you can change how bouncy the balls are in the SETTINGS screen.
The normal setting is that a ball will barely bounce – once its hit the arm of a vee, it will usually just roll down towards the hole.
Making the ball more bouncy can cause it to bounce around a bit before it settles down.
At the highest setting, the ball can bounce up when it hits the arm of a vee, and can even bounce into the top gutter.
If you select RANDOM, balls will be either not bouncy, a little bouncy, bouncy, or very bouncy.
You can also change the time of the least powerful flick in the SETTINGS screen.

Discovery Mode

In Discovery mode, you explore the playing field to learn where everything is positioned, by moving your finger around on the screen.
When your finger touches something, such as the arm of a Vee, a woman tells what you are touching.
She might say the hole for the vee worth 10 points, or she might say the arm of the vee that ramps down to a hole worth 10 points.

Start your discovery from the top of the screen, and work your way to the bottom.
When your finger is not touching something such as the arm of a vee, you won’t hear anything.

As you learned during your practice, you flick to roll the ball as high as possible, and then it starts rolling down until it lands in one of the holes.
Keep in mind that when you flick, the ramps do not get in the way of your flick. They ramps only appear once the ball starts rolling back down.

In discovery mode, you can also determine how far the vees are from the base of the ramp.
To add distance markers in discovery mode, tap the screen with 2 fingers.

Remember the man’s voice that told you how far your flick made the ball travel?
In discovery mode, as your finger moves up or down on the screen, the man will tell you, on a scale of 1 to 10, where you are.
That’s how you learn that the 30 point hole is approximately at position 5 out of 10.

To leave discovery mode, swipe up with 3 fingers.

To go back to the main menu, swipe up with 3 fingers.