With every year that inclusive gaming becomes a stronger focus for studios, we see incredible and creative innovations driving what is possible in accessible gaming. While 2021 got off to a lackluster start in this regard, the industry more than made up for that disappointment with a slew of accessible releases over the course of the year. The following seven games have helped set a new standard for accessible gaming.
Horror Stories: The Wine
We have seen countless indie games in the past few years that have implemented various accessibility features. With Horror Stories: The Wine, Developer Carlos Coronado builds on its already great track record with accessibility featureswhich went so far as to mention them in the official description of the game in the shop windows.
Where this game excels are visibility upgrades. The game offers multiple choices for text size, eight visual styles for subtitles (with examples for each shown in the menu) and, my personal favorite, numerous styles for object outlines and crosshairs. These styles range from simple lines or crosshair dots to bold, thick lines. Horror Stories: The Wine is a real rarity as it is a horror game designed with accessibility in mind.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Insomniac is no stranger to making accessible games – Marvel’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales were both leaders in accessibility at the time of their respective releases, with features like customizable caption text size, contrast options, Spider-Sense with high visibility, and full controller remapping. This year Insomniac has postponed the envelope even further Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Ratchet and Clank introduced some incredibly useful options: High-contrast mode (similar to that of Spider-Man: Miles Morales) and simplified controls make it possible to play the game entirely with the D-pad, face buttons and R2. Rift Apart also implements a “simplified traversal” feature that binds all traverses to the circle button. Rift ApartThe standout quality of ‘Game’, however, is the speed of the game, which allows players to play essentially slow-motion, giving them more time to react and make decisions in combat and exploring the world.
The valley: shadow of the crown
The valley: shadow of the crown is a new take on the audio game RPG genre, targeting AAA production values in terms of sound design and voice acting. Designed to be fully playable – and more, pleasant – for blind players, The valley is based solely on two senses: hearing and touch. To play successfully, players must watch out for the most subtle audio signals that indicate how an enemy is about to attack them. World Traversal is also based on sound alone: the only way for players to recognize that they have taken the wrong turn and need to reorient themselves is to listen to the heroine’s nuanced comments. While these are common principles in audio games, The valley Developer Falling Squirrel managed to bring it to a wider audience. (The game received a nomination for Innovation in Accessibility at The Game Awards earlier this year.)
Audio-only experiences can prove challenging for some sighted players due to the lack of visual anchors, however The valley implements tiny balls of light that float around the screen. These tell sighted players whether they are inside or outside and whether it is night or day. Although the story is just as gripping and challenging as any role-playing game, The valley is particularly challenging in how it flips the script in sighted players and removes sight from the equation, and thus the main feeling that many of us have relied on to be “good” at games. The result is a brilliant role-playing game for modern consoles that happens to be completely playable even for the blind.
Chicory: a colorful story
Chicory: a colorful story is about painting a world that has been stripped of its color. And while this may sound inaccessible to color-blind gamers, developer Greg Lobanov designed it chicory to be as inclusive as possible. It offers a robust set of standard accessibility features – including text readability and text effect options – but it also introduces some new accessibility considerations.
The settings for eye strain make the bright white world much more bearable in its uncolored state, and the painting mechanics are tied to the PlayStation 5’s DualSense touchpad and right stick, which makes painting much more accessible than with an exclusively touchpad-based mechanism. chicory also offers numerous difficulty, cognitive, and emotional accessibility options. Players can toggle the option to skip boss fights, determine how many hits the character can take, and toggle content warnings when topics like depression come up in the narrative. The content warnings were inspired by working on Ikenfell, a great example of how developers learn from and build on each other’s accessibility achievements.
Life is strange: true colors
The Life is Strange series is known for telling emotional stories through quick-time events. And quick-time events are known to be largely inaccessible. But with the release of Life is strange: true colors, developer Deck Nine has removed this enormous barrier by introducing both skippable QTEs and an adjustable timer for key dialogue options.
By combining these options with new features like volume and brightness warnings, configurable text display, hold and tap, and an indication when players make a changing decision, Square Enix delivered the most accessible Life is Strange game yet.
Forza Horizon 5
Forza Horizon 5 encompasses a visually stunning world that is also exciting for many gamers to explore. But with its latest release, Playground Games also delivered the most comprehensive and accessible game in the open-world racing series to date.
Besides allowing players to create avatars with prosthetic limbs, Forza Horizon 5 too offers features such as configurable game speed for offline games, braking and steering aids and multiple subtitle options. Decisive, Forza Horizon 5 Also allows players to advance through the story even if they fail in the often difficult story-based challenges. With these additions Forza Horizon 5 is the first Horizon game where many disabled players can compete head-to-head with their able-bodied peers.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was the surprising feel-good game of the year. Yes, the narrative is easy, fun, and well-written – but the game’s accessibility allows many disabled players to feel comfortable while playing. Guardians of the Galaxy, in some cases, has adopted an inclusive design over what often feels like the band-aid version of the accessibility settings. The most important among them is the fact that Star Lord’s sighting mode also acts as a high contrast mode, enhancing visual accessibility in a basic rather than an additive way.
Guardians of the Galaxy is also the first modern game with closed captions that match the quality of movies and TV shows. Deaf or hard of hearing players can better immerse themselves in the game world with “bugged subtitles”, resizable subtitles and closed subtitles. The game also offers cognitive accessibility options, such as the sound focus mode, which reduces all non-essential noises. It also allows players to extend the target reminder timer and keep the target visible for longer. Guardians of the Galaxy set new standards in the industry for the accessibility of the deaf and hard of hearing and show what is possible with inclusive design ideas for video games.
Courtney Craven is the founder and director of Can i play thiswhere they lead workshops and write reviews and posts that focus on accessibility. They also offer advice on accessibility in the game industry and in higher education and have published theirs first fictional novel in 2021.
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