You can’t copyright game mechanics. So, if you replace the sprites with legally distinct ones and write the code yourself, there are no laws broken.

I’m a big fan of that series (the second one being my favorite), but I also get where you’re coming from. I felt that, as books went on, they became more about the Science-Fiction concepts and less about the characters. I do hope you come back around to it though, as I thought that the second half of The Dark Forest was better than the first.

My absolute favorite audiobook narrator is the late Frank Muller. I’m currently listening to his narration of Interview With The Vampire and it’s incredible how well he’s able to convey the tone and atmosphere of the story.

I first encountered him when I was listening to the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. When I discovered that (due to his passing) the series switched narrators after the fourth book, I considered switching to the print copies rather than hear someone else narrate those books. I’m glad I didn’t, because George Guidall did a very good job finishing up the series, but no one can quite compare to Frank Muller.

I just did a bit of research and it looks like if you have a free account it will almost always play the Youtube video instead of the album version (possibly as an attempted foil for ad-blockers?).

I use YouTube Music and this (usually) isn’t a problem if you have premium. The only times I’ll get the music video audio instead of the studio track is if I’ve liked the music video on YouTube. In that instance it’ll sometimes show up in my automatically generated Playlist. For me, it’s worth it for the huge music library that YouTube Music has.