The Access-Ability Summer Showcase premiered yesterday. The event focused on highlighting games created by disabled developers and featuring accessibility settings designed to help gamers with disabilities play. It strove to ensure that disabled gamers could make informed decisions about whether a game would be playable or not before its release.
The showcase provided English audio description and BSL and ASL interpretation, and was sponsored by I Need Diverse Games. It featured fifteen games, as well as stories from disabled developers and disabled gamers. These stories ranged from advocates like Radderss to consultants, speakers, and writers such as Vivek Gohil.
My favorite games were Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island, which offers a haptic radar for locating puzzle components, and Bossgame: The Final Boss is my Heart, a “lesbian romance boss rush” that allows settings to be fine-tuned to create a tailored experience. Himig’s creative range of movement options and Solace State’s arresting visual creativity made them stand out, while Space Boat, an investigative narrative game set on an intergalactic cruise ship, offers various audio and colorblind options. The game can also be played comfortably without the need for multiple button combinations for people with physical disabilities.
In closing out the show, Laura Kate Dale expressed her hope to make the Access-Ability Summer Showcase an annual event. Vivek Gohil touched on the importance of accessibility features in video games, stating that they showcase ability instead of limitations. Here is the list of showcased games:
- Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island
- Skye Tales
- Bossgame: The Final Boss is my Heart
- Space Boat
- Sniper Elite 5
- A Knight in the Attic
- Upheaval
- Princess Farmer
- Botany Manor
- Brok the InvestiGator
- Himig
- Solace State
- Pine Hearts
- Blinnk and the Vacuum of Space
- Stories of Blossom