Schim: How Shadow Jump Adventure Focuses on Accessibility, Out July 18

Accessibility is a very important element in any game, because games are amazing and should be enjoyed by as many people as possible! We are very excited about the release of Schim and wanted to highlight how we included accessibility in the design process from the beginning of the project.

With this article we want to give you an insight into the thoughts and challenges we (Ewoud van der Werf and Nils Slijkerman) have faced along our journey. We will divide these up from different angles.

Visuals

Schim has a unique art style, which is also a result of player feedback. The art style itself was heavily influenced by the fact that Ewoud suffers from a form of color blindness. He had a clear vision of how he wanted the game to look. The visual style is built from several custom shaders. Ewoud originally wanted to create one color palette for the entire game. This would make it easier for him, as color is a challenge for him. We ended up testing several color palettes and the testers responded very well to them, so we added a unique one for each level. They are all contrasting, which makes the shadows and therefore the platforms stand out and make them easier to read.

Line thickness can also be adjusted in the settings. Ewoud created a tool in the engine so that we can easily create and load color palettes. This tool has made its way into the game. So anyone who feels the need or desire to create their own color palette can do so. The custom color palette tool can be used in any level of the game. The PlayStation controller’s touchpad makes changing the hue very convenient and fun.

Text, language and interface

As the game developed, we decided on the rules that we wanted to follow for Schim. The most difficult of all was to create a game with little to no words on screen. We love games and movies where the animation tells everything you need to know, so we wanted to tell Schim’s story that way. The challenge was that creating the story required a lot of testing of different variations to find the best way to convey it.

We purchased a motion capture suit and spent many hours recording custom animations. The benefit of having as little text as possible is that younger audiences don’t have language issues. Visually impaired players also don’t have to focus on the corners of the screen without a heads-up display. We ended up with only 291 words in the game. This made it very possible to localize the game into a total of 32 languages, and we’re looking into adding more.

Controls

The core of the game was clear from the first month of development: the player jumps from shadow to shadow. The jump button and the character’s direction schim are the main elements. The jumping itself is forgiving and the controls are never hectic or stressful. Each level can be reached with a decent interval between jumps and interactions. A player can complete the game by entering their actions one by one.

After the jump button, the secondary action the player can perform is to interact, which will activate the essence of the shadow the player is in. These interactions can trigger something the player can use to progress through a level, at other times they activate a fun animation or sound that causes an interaction in the scene. Some examples are a car horn, a parasol that throws the player, a trash can that spills trash.

All buttons in the game can also be reassigned. In any level of the game, R2 can be used to move the camera to the nearest objective. The player can always check where to go next in case they feel lost.

the audio

The sound of important objects can also be detected by visual cues. The player can trigger shadows that generate a sound. This can be heard and seen by a musical note above the triggered object. Characters around the object will also respond to it if they hear it too. This can create new paths. And of course, you can also adjust the levels of the various audio elements.