A Night Below the Opera is a sample game for testing accessibility of IF parser tools and interfaces. It tries to display a variety of common IF formatting and interface conventions, while also sticking to best practices for accessibility in Inform 7.
(These two goals aren’t exactly compatible, as we will see.)
You should be familiar with the basics of parser IF before you play. If you aren’t, try this introduction: http://www.brasslantern.org/beginners/beginnersguide.html
The game has seven rooms, with several puzzles or tasks scattered throughout. I will describe each of them, with the accessibility goals and intended outcomes. After that I will give a “spoiler” section, which describes exactly what to do. If accessibility problem prevent you from finishing a task, the spoilers will explain exactly how to do it.
You begin in the Kitchen.
The Washroom is east of the Kitchen.
The Storage Room is west of the Kitchen.
The Smoking Room is south of the Kitchen.
The Rear Corridor is southwest of the Kitchen. It is also south of the Storage Room and west of the Smoking Room. (These four rooms form a small square.)
The Basement is down from the Rear Corridor.
The Dance Floor is east of the Basement. (You can move around to different positions on the Dance Floor; it forms a four-by-three grid of locations.)
In the Washroom is a notice board with several signs on it. You can read any of the signs and see a message in one of several languages, plus fonts (demonstrating font styles) and emoji.
In the Washroom, pulling the shiny lever allows you to wash your hands. Every time you do this, your score increases. The total score should be readable at all times.
In the Smoking Room is a book. When you read the book, the game prompts you to “hit any key to continue”, prints a text passage, and then prompts to hit another key.
In the Rear Corridor is a slide projector. When you turn this on, you will see a menu of six slides. You can navigate this menu with the arrow keys; hit Enter to display a description of one slide.
The sixth slide describes a location to look to find an item.
In the Rear Corridor is a brass plaque. Clean it, then examine it. You will see a pane containing a verse, which gives instructions on how to obtain an item.
In the Smoking Room, the case contains three photographs. The console photo gives a clue about how to open a secret compartment on the control console in the Basement.
In the Storage Room is a holiday card. When opened, this plays an audio sample which gives a clue about buttons to push on the control console in the Basement.
In the Storage Room is a crumpled note. This shows an ASCII-art map, which gives a sequence of directions to move on the Dance Floor.
In the Storage Room is a parcel. If you unwrap it, you will find clues for a goal which involves the items found in the other puzzles. Once you have all five items, you can leave the game area and end the story.