Newsletter #4: Anyone can be an Angel
Accessibility in BLANKSWORD
Hi everyone! No major gameplay updates this month - we’ve been very hard at work behind the scenes, and there’s a lot of new BLANKSWORD content heading your way quite soon ;)
In the meantime, let’s talk about accessibility! BLANKSWORD is made by a predominantly disabled team and our main character is cognitively challenged, so you can imagine that we take the matter quite seriously.
With Disability Pride Month coming to a close, let's look at some steps we're taking to keep our game as welcoming as we can make it:
Gameplay:
- Multi-cues: One of our core gameplay elements is our Brain Parts system: depending on which parts BLANK has equipped, his perception of the world changes. But what if a deaf player equips the Auditive Snail, which causes extra sounds to appear in the overworld, leading BLANK to secret rooms and bonus rewards?
Well, we made sure to provide visual *and* audio cues to each Brain Part (in the Auditive Snail’s case, little vibration effects come with the sound), so nobody gets left out.
- Alternate game modes: In addition to adjustable difficulty, BLANKSWORD has two main game modes: standard turn-based JRPG combat, and a higher-execution Action Command mode that's reminiscent of the Mario & Luigi series combat system. Both are designed to be equally fun!
- Adjustable combat pace: Some players read slow. Some others (like me) get understimulated if the text goes *too* slow. We're letting players customize the speed and pacing of combat text - auto-advancing text is also an option that can be toggled on or off.
- Speaking of toggles, BLANK can auto-walk, and his run can be toggled on/off instead of press-to-run.
General:
- Adjustable audio & visual options: Brightness, screenshake and other cognitively complex factors can be tailored to your liking, and we're also making sure to provide separate volume sliders for music, SFX, UI and character "voices".
- We're quite proud to be one of the very first games to offer a Misophonia Mode (that we know of): some tracks in the game have weird mouth sounds and other uncanny noises, but if you select this option, they'll be replaced by percussions and other more palatable instruments.
- We're opting for a colorblind-friendly approach with our visual design: information is conveyed through shapes first, colors second. We'll also be supporting a dyslexia-friendly font.
- We have fully remappable keybinds and universal controller support!
- Last but not least: our game comes equipped with an in-game encyclopedia. It’s like an Online Wiki, but offline! Revolutionary.
Closing Words:
Thanks for checking in on our accessibility plans!
If you think of other features that aren't listed here that you'd like to see in BLANKSWORD, feel free to shoot us a message.
Love from Leaf & Manon (and the rest of the team)
It always sucks to see games, specially big budget ones, have little to no accesibility features, hopefully this can serve as an example for others to follow! :) Keep up the good work!
OH MY GOODNESS thank you so much for adding a misophonia mode!! I’ve never seen developers be so considerate to its players. I wish you good luck with the rest of your progress :)