Analysis of elegant and clever accessibility features and designs

An analysis of elegant and clever accessibility features and designs

In this article, I thought it would be a good idea to go over some game accessibility features that I find elegant, clever, and useful. For each feature, I’ll explain what they are, what they do and why I think they’re good.

Celeste Assist Mode

Celeste is a popular precision platformer that requires dexterity, speed, precision and a great control of its movement mechanics. As the players progress through the game, it becomes increasingly difficult and requires them to master intricate mechanics and input combinations, some of which might be impossible for some players. For this reason, the developers, Maddy Makes Games, included an assist mode. This mode features a series of options that let the player customize the rules of the games. It offers five different options.

Game Speed: This option allows players to slow the speed of the game, by multiple of 10, to a minimum of 50%. This option gives players more reaction time, which might be necessary for people with motor or cognitive impairments, as well as for players who want to practice certain game sequences.

Infinite Stamina: This option grants the players infinite stamina, which depletes when Madeline holds on to the walls. It can be useful to dial down the level of difficulty of certain climbing puzzles as well as allowing players to take a breath and analyze their surroundings in certain levels.

Air Dashes: By default, the player has two air dashes. This option allows players to have an infinite amount instead. Having more dashes can make certain areas of the game more forgiving as well as allowing experienced players to perform some exciting and complicated maneuvers.

Dash Assist: When this option is turned on, the game freezes when the player presses the dashing button. This allows an easier combination of input (as the dash button and the direction of the dash do not have to be pressed simultaneously), more precise dashes and can also make some areas more forgiving.

Invincibility: Last but not least, this option makes the players immune to all obstacles and sources of damage. This can be useful for players with all kinds of limitations and allow anyone to experience the wonderful and touching story the game has to tell. It can also be used by players who want to practice some levels that are giving them a hard time.

What I like most about Celeste’s assist mode is that it offers a plurality of options that can be mixed and matched so that each player can adjust the game to their needs. Also, even though difficulty is a theme inherent to the game and its story, the developers did not shy away from offering an invincibility option, so that more people, no matter their gaming experiences, abilities and limitations, could gaze upon the gorgeous levels, meet the endearing characters and experience the touching story Celeste has to offer. 

Zelda Link’s Awakening DX: Colour Dungeon

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is an action-adventure game released by Nintendo. In its original release, the game had a dungeon that was based solely on colour puzzled (conveniently named the colour dungeon). Therefore, it was very difficult, if not impossible, for some players to complete it. In its 2019 remake, Nintendo added ways to tell the colours apart with diegetic and environmental elements. Here are some examples. 

In the dungeon, some tiles will be destroyed if the player walks on them too many times. In the original version, the tiles would change colour every time they were stepped on, indicating the “level of damage” they were at (green, yellow and red). In the DX version, Nintendo added a certain pattern of cracks for each colour (no cracks, three cracks, nine cracks), allowing players to better identify which tiles were intact and which had been stepped on, no matter their ability to tell the colours apart.

Another puzzle requires the players to throw coloured round-shaped enemies in holes of the corresponding colours. In the remastered version, in addition to their colour, each enemy bear a shape on their shell. Each shape corresponds to a colour and each hole is surrounded by the same-coloured shape (see picture).

What I like about the 2019 modifications is that, not only do they give the players who have difficulties or the incapacity to tell colours apart the ability to complete the puzzles, but they also blend in perfectly with the style of the game. Nintendo elegantly found a way to make their game more accessible, without being disturbing to the players who do not need the extra bit of clarity. I think these accessibility measures are an excellent example of what I like to call intrinsic accessibility (see my article on the core concept of accessibility). 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Segmented Difficulties

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Eidos Montreal had the idea of segmenting the difficulty of the game into three categories: combat, exploration and puzzle.

Combat difficulty dictates everything that is related to, you guess it combat. It encompasses everything from aim assist to the enemy’s health and damage, the amount of ammo you find, your health regeneration and even hit markers when you hit an enemy.

Exploration difficulty treats everything that is related to navigating the environment. It goes from having easily identifiable main paths with what they call “obvious white paint” indicating the way, to making base camps harder to find and reducing Lara’s “saving grab timers.”

Lastly, puzzle difficulty lets players adjust everything puzzle related. For example, on the easiest settings, Lara gives direct hints into the actions the players need to perform to solve the puzzle and give the players the “Survival Instincts” mechanic, which allows players to highlight the interactable objects in their surroundings. In the highest difficulty, Lara gives no such hints, and the “Survival Instinct” mechanic is disabled.

While these features may not seem perfect for some people (as some accessibility designers would like us to stray away from difficulty labels), they actually give a lot of control to the players in regard to their game experience. Separating the game into these categories let players mix and match the difficulties to create the experience that best fit their abilities or preferences. For example, while some players might find the combat sequences more challenging for multiple reasons, they might still want to encounter hard puzzles or having to put effort into navigating the environment. On the other hand, another player might want the combat sequences to be really challenging, since it’s their favourite parts of the game, and dial down the puzzles and exploration to streamline their progress. In both these instances, if there were only one general difficulty setting, these players might not have played the game at all.

God of War Ragnarök: High Contrast Display

High Contrast Display is a feature found in both The Last of Us Part II and God of War Ragnarök. When activated, this setting tones down the environment of the game and highlights the different important element in bright colours, offering the players three presets of colours. For example, on the first preset, enemies become a bright red and the player character turns a bright blue. This allows players with different vision levels or impairments to better read, identify and react to their surroundings. 

In God of War Ragnarök, they push the feature further by allowing players to choose the colour of each of the important elements.

This feature goes above and beyond to try and bring the experience of those games to players with all kinds of visual limitations or impairments and allow them to access an experience that was not possible to them before. 

God of War Ragnarök: Subtitles for Everyone

Nowadays, subtitles are a staple of accessibility settings. They are found in many games, which is already very positive in itself. However, in God of War Ragnarök, Santa Monica Studio pushed the bar further by allowing a deep customization of their subtitles and captions. 

They gave players the options to change the size, backgrounds and colours of the subtitles, captions and speakers’ names, and offered a direction indicators for their captions. As I said in my article “The Core Concepts of Accessibility” subtitles are mandatory for people with different levels of hearing loss and useful for people who play games on low volume, or no volume at all (for different reasons). In this case, this level of customization not only allows players with hearing loss to understand what is going on, but also for people who might have low vision or a form of colourblindness. 

Closing Thoughts

I think that these features show two very important aspects of accessibility in game. The first thing they show is that accessibility is about giving power to the players in regard to their gaming experience. I’ve said it a lot and I’ll say it again, giving the players choices and agency over their experience, no matter their abilities, limitations and preferences is what accessibility is all about.

The second very important thing that these features show is that accessibility does not have to be perfect. Are any of these features perfect? No. Could they be improved upon? Yes. Does this mean that they did not achieve their goal? No. All of these features allow more players to access the game experience that these developers wanted them to.