By I was not a formal accessibility consultant on Wayward Strand, but I was still able to help improve the game’s accessibility settings all the same. In Wayward Strand, an indie game which just released at the time of posting this article, players take on the role of a 14 year
Gaming and Aging: How Accessibility Impacts Everyone Eventually
Often, when I publish episodes of Access-Ability, I’ll get someone either in the YouTube comments, or on Twitter, responding to the episode by saying something like “this is really interesting, but doesn’t affect me personally”. That’s not necessarily surprising, but I think it overlooks the fact that for many people, your current level of gaming ability will not last forever, and accessibility support that doesn’t impact you today may in the future.
Video Games Need Accessibility Standards
While the overall industry has been making positive strides forward in terms of more games becoming more accessible, as an industry we can’t so much as guarantee a game will definitely feature accurate subtitling for deaf and hard of hearing players, let alone any consistent application of more intensive accessibility support.
“The Devil in Me” and Supermassive Games’ Inconsistent Accessibility Support
If you’re a fan of interactive horror games, you’re probably aware of Supermassive Games, the studio behind the development of Until Dawn, The Quarry, and The Dark Pictures Anthology, a collection of games focused on making narrative choices and reacting to sudden gameplay prompts, in order to survive various horror
Street Fighter 6’s “Button Mashing” Dynamic Control Scheme
A few months ago, back in the summer of 2022, we here at Access-Ability took a trip to Capcom’s offices in London, to go hands on with Street Fighter 6’s new, more accessible, “Modern” control scheme, which reduces the series’ traditional input complexity and allows most of the game’s core
Shiny Hunting’s Accessibility Downgrade in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
Back in January of this year, Pokemon Legends Arceus was released, bringing with it a whole host of changes to the Pokémon formula that, in my opinion, were largely to the series benefit. From the addition of a Pokédex that required actual research to complete, to overworld encounters that allowed
Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet Accessibility Review
Just a few short days from now, on November 18th 2022, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the newest mainline entries in the Pokémon series, are due to be released on Nintendo Switch. Despite this, very little gameplay from the pair of titles has been publicly shown, outside of carefully curated trailers,
Saints Row: High Contrast Mode In a Non Sony Exclusive
Originally released a couple of months ago, back in late August, Saints Row 2022 is a somewhat more grounded reboot of a series of over-the-top open-world titles of the same name, which began as a tale of gangs fighting for power, and escalated to the President of the United States
God of War: Ragnarok Accessibility Review
Originally released for the PS4 back in 2018, Santa Monica Studio’s God of War reboot saw the titular character, former God of War Kratos, attempt to provide a better and safer life for his son, while journeying to deliver his wife’s ashes to be scattered from a distant mountaintop. Released
Bringing PlayStation Games to PC is Important for Accessibility
While first-party PlayStation games have, historically, only appeared on PlayStation home consoles, that stance has been starting to change a little over the past couple of years, as more and more of the company’s tentpole releases have been released on PC, albeit a little bit later than they’re released on
Stories of Blossom Nails Point and Click Audio Descriptions
A few weeks ago, here on Access-Ability, we published an episode of this show focused on The Last of Us: Part 1 on PS5, the first major AAA video game to attempt to include audio descriptions for major cutscenes, allowing sightless blind players a greater degree of ability to follow
Street Fighter 6 Features Ambitious Audio Accessibility Cues
A few months ago, back in the summer of 2022, we here at Access-Ability took a trip to Capcom’s offices in London, to go hands on with Street Fighter 6’s new, more accessible, modern control scheme, which reduces the series traditional input complexity and allows most of the game’s core
Return to Monkey Island’s Beautifully Accessible Subtitle Sizing
Small text in video games, particularly in menus or subtitles, isn’t by any means a new or novel issue. Back in the mid 2000’s when video games were first moving up to High Definition resolutions, even though most console gamers were still on standard definition screens, designers of video games
