Those of you who have been following my accessibility videos for a while will be aware that I’m often pretty critical of accessibility in first party Nintendo games. There are obviously exceptions to that, I recently had positive things to say about Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World for example, but as a general rule of thumb I tend to go into playing Nintendo developed games with low expectations for their level of accessibility.
When I booted up Donkey Kong Bananza for the first time last week, I was pleased to see some surprisingly modern accessible game design choices were present that feel worth taking some time this week to praise. The game’s certainly not setting a new industry wide standard for accessibility efforts or anything, it has some accessibility barriers present worth attention, but overall I was pretty pleased with the improvements to accessibility seen in the newest 3D platformer from the Mario Odyssey development team.
On your initial boot of Donkey Kong Bananza, the game offers you a choice between Normal and Assist gameplay modes. Assist Mode if selected helps players by showing a trail of notes on screen at all times leading them toward core story progression, and constantly highlighting the next key location on screen with a bright yellow indicator.
Interestingly, both the waypoint marker and progression path indicator functions of assist mode are available in normal mode as well – The waypoints have to be activated in normal mode by speaking to NPCs about where to go, and the note path leading you to progression is activated in normal mode by holding down the L1 button. Assist mode essentially just mashes the progression path button continuously to keep the note path leading to progress visible, and skips the step where you have to talk to NPCs to lead to the progression waypoint marker updating. Neither navigation tool is absent in normal mode, both are simply manually triggered.
In the options menu, which can also be accessed at this point during initial setup, a number of common accessibility settings options can be found.
Camera controls can be inverted and have their sensitivity altered, with motion controls also available as a camera control option which can be toggled off or altered in sensitivity.
I played Donkey Kong Bananza at a preview event for the Switch 2 back in April of this year, and one of the issues that I had was that the build of the game present at the preview event caused me to be motion sick, something that’s really uncommon for a 3rd person platformer, particularly one developed by Nintendo. At the time I put this down to framerate inconsistency issues. Those issues have thankfully been largely fixed in the full release of the game, with small dips in framerate still present in moments of high particle disruption, but those moments are notably less consistent or jarring. I have found that the game seems to run more smoothly in handheld mode, potentially as a result of the Switch 2’s Variable Refresh Rate screen, so if you do find yourself experiencing motion sickness triggered by framerate dips, playing in handheld mode may help somewhat with this.
The main setting available to help mitigate motion sickness for those still experiencing it is a toggle and sensitivity selection menu for screen shake visual effects. While it is great having the option to lessen or deactivate screen shake during gameplay, this setting doesn’t reduce or remove screen shake in cutscenes or game menus which is less than ideal.
With that all said, for me personally, my issues with motion sickness in the preview build of Donkey Kong Bananza have largely been fixed. I’ve played the game in lengthy play sessions including late at night while physically exhausted without incident, the combination of which is usually a recipe for issues if they are going to arise.
Players can also toggle rumble strength, switch the functions of the A and B buttons on their controller to change which governs interaction prompts, and alter the functionality of the L3 and R3 stick click buttons, a common sticking point for accessibility issues in control schemes.
By default the L3 button on the controller is not mapped to any inputs. R3 is mapped by default to toggling between Bananza transformation forms, but you can safely disable this R3 stick click functionality and instead use the D-Pad to switch between transformations instead.
I do appreciate that the only stick click functionality in the default control mapping profile is a rarely used function that doesn’t need to be used under pressure and won’t cause major issues if accidentally clicked. I’m glad that it can be disabled, but it is at least a sensible default mapping option.
Lastly, the settings menu offers players the option to decide whether subtitles are constant, hints only, or off entirely, and select their spoken language for voice acting separate from their system language.
Getting past the settings options, one of the big accessibility worries that I had about Donkey Kong Bananza after my April hands-on experience was whether the game’s collectathon nature and destructible environments were going to combine to create a stressful experience for me as someone with a number of different cognitive disabilities. I’m someone who’s prone to obsessive tendencies and completionism based anxiety, and games of this nature can at times get me hooked into unhealthy play patterns that impact other areas of my life negatively.
These fears were basically set off during the preview event the first time that I punched a random patch of ground and found a treasure chest buried just under my feet that I hadn’t known was there. This was when the fear set in, am I constantly walking right past important collectables mere feet away? Will I need to destroy every inch of the level to feel confident I am ready to move forward and haven’t missed something important?
In my experience, this issue hasn’t been nearly as bad as I expected in practice now that the full game is out for a few reasons.
Donkey Kong Bananza features a radar function, where slamming DK’s hands down on the floor triggers a shockwave and illuminates important collectables briefly so that their location can be seen, even if inside of solid rock. This is upgradable as you progress to increase its range of effectiveness, making it easier to avoid panicking that you’re walking past something important in close proximity.
There’s also the ability to purchase maps that put the location of undiscovered collectables on your overall level map, to help locate those collectables more easily.
And crucially, the opening section of the game includes a cave filled floor to ceiling with gold, helping to signal that gold is going to be so plentiful throughout your adventure that you don’t ultimately need to stress too much about collecting every single tiny piece of gold you might see.
Lastly, you’re able to restore a level to its undestroyed state at any time, helping to remove any paranoia that you might accidentally destroy too much of a stage and make an objective impossible to complete.
Donkey Kong Bananza contains a large number of different types of collectable, but they’re all present with purpose. While none are really progression vital, all of them are worth taking the time to look for as even a casually collected amount will make character customisation, skill tree progression, and item acquisition possible.
Able to be found in chests or purchased from shops, Bananza features a number of consumable failstate items designed to avoid losing progress at key moments. These range from balloons that help you to recover from falls during special stages, to drinks that refill your health completely when it runs out. Paired with rest stops that grant bonus hearts the more you engage with them, and there are plenty of ways to avoid halting your progress. If you do run out of health, the penalty is losing 10% of your gold and returning to the most recent in-game checkpoint.
In terms of physical accessibility, one barrier present in Donkey Kong Bananza is the fact that the game is very reliant on rapid and repeated button mashing inputs. The game’s focus on interacting with the environment via punches, certain materials needing multiple hits to break, and platforming designed around stringing inputs together in combination all make for a game that may not be a great fit for players with fine motor control, fatigue, or chronic pain conditions. I would love to see an update to the game in the future potentially offer the ability for players to hold down one of the punching buttons for example to have the game automatically rapidly mash that input, helping to reduce some of that repetitive input strain for disabled players.
Bananza has an incredibly robust overall moveset, the ability to sequence break the game by stringing moves together precisely really highlights its similarity to Mario Odyssey, but thankfully these more intricate forms of traversal are rarely if ever required for core story progression. There will almost always be a less input-heavy way to get to an objective if you look around or come back later, even if you could technically get there early with the right plan and level of manual dexterity.
There are a few Banana collectables in Donkey Kong Bananza which can only be collected by completing specific objectives under tight time constraints. While never mandatory, these will be a 100% completion barrier for some players.
Camera control in Donkey Kong Bananza can also at times be a little bit fiddly due to the destructible nature of the game. Because Bananza’s levels are so highly destructible there’s not the same level of predictability to the outer bounds of a stage, meaning that sometimes while tunneling unique paths through a level it may become tricky to manipulate the camera effectively.
While camera controls can be occasionally janky, I do appreciate that while tunneling through rock Bananza allows you to position your camera such that you can see through solid walls, observing where other underground tunnels and caverns exist, in order to orient yourself and correctly tunnel toward progression locations.
Donkey Kong Bananza can also be a little bit visually overstimulating, due to its highly destructible nature. As an autistic player there have been a few moments where I’ve had to pause and take breaks while playing due to the sheer number of bright and colourful particles flying across the screen being slightly overwhelming. It’s mostly very satisfying, the hit stop effects when you punch enemies and the particles flying through the air do a great job of providing a sense of power and strength for your character, even if they can be slightly exhausting if you’re prone to visual overstimulation.
Lastly, Donkey Kong Bananza features a co-op mode where one player fires shouts which can destroy elements of the environment. The targeting reticle for this can be aimed using analogue stick inputs, motion controls, or mouse pointer controls. These shouts can be transformed into different elements to increase their overall damage output, and provide a way of rapidly destroying terrain that can be useful even in solo play as an optional tool in your arsenal.
Compared to the studio’s previous game Mario Odyssey, or recent 3D platforming darling Astro Bot, Donkey Kong Bananza isn’t as instantly strong of an experience to play. Both Odyssey and Astro Bot are incredibly consistent quality 3D platformers, and Donkey Kong Bananza takes some time to find its initial footing. The destructible environment gimmick can be a little aimless and overwhelming at first, the opening sections are a little railroaded, and it takes a little bit of time for the game to open up its scope and start introducing its most interesting and memorable tools. It’s not that Bananza is bad at the start by any means, but it doesn’t hit the ground running as instantly as the greats of the genre.
That said, I do think Donkey Kong Bananza is a game that gets continually more interesting the further you get into it, and in some ways its peaks may ultimately outshine Odyssey and Astro Bot. I feel like Bananza does a better job of building in scope and tension than Odyssey does, with more mechanical tools doled out over time to help the late game feel climactic. While Astro Bot is a truly special 20 or so hours of gameplay, Bananza I feel has a more rewarding collectathon tail. Where I left Astro Bot hungry for more, far from the worst problem to have with a game, Donkey Kong Bananza does a great job of making me want to keep exploring in the post game, to keep the adventure rolling long beyond initially rolling credits.
Donkey Kong Bananza does feel like a decent step in the right direction for Nintendo when it comes to accessibility considerations. Looking back on Mario Odyssey, that game had very little if any tools in place to help support disabled players. It’s refreshing to see Bananza open by offering an Assist Mode on first boot, and offer settings options that while commonplace elsewhere in the industry, are still rare to see in Nintendo developed software.
It’s not perfect, but it’s progress, and I’ll celebrate that as the win that it is.