‘Vale: Shadow of the Crown’ is an action-adventure set in a dark fantasy world, developed by Falling Squirrel and Creative Bytes Studios. It’s simultaneously neither first, second or third-person in perspective, yet also arguably any of the three. I say this because Vale runs on the greatest graphical processor known to humanity: The mind… 🎵Dun dun duuuuuh🎵.

How Does it Work? Vale is a sort of mashup between radio drama and video game, not even having any kind of visuals besides optional subtitles on an ambient night-time background with occasionally colour-changing dust specks. You can go on quests, explore dungeons, fight off enemies in Daredevilish fashion, all that good stuff.

Vale aims for appeal to blind and visually-impaired gamers, which is a good step in the right direction regarding accessibility in video games, which I go more in-depth on here. I also recommend the video by Game Maker’s Toolkit ranking the accessibility of this year’s games if you want a better grasp of it’s presence in the industry.

On accessibility in Vale and other games: Vale earned a nomination at The Game Awards for its accessibility, though Vale creator and Falling Studio director Dave Evans admitted the game’s creation wasn’t entirely ‘altruistic’ in its initial reasons for production. Leveraging his past writing experience for film and TV, part of his reason for presenting Vale in the way he did was to “specifically play with narrative and character development on a scale I could afford”. But hey, can’t fault him too much for that, the profit motive is less a ‘Dave’ thing and more a ‘Yayyy Capitalism’ thing.

Vale had gone through play testing from SightlessKombat, a sightless gamer who’s acted as an accessibility consultant for many other games. He discusses in an interview with DigitalTrends how most blind characters in media are either villains or one-dimensional characters, so Alex as a confident protagonist is a great change of pace. SightlessKombat is also a twitch streamer, so hell yeah, Comrade Accessibility Gaming Representation!

Lukáš Hosnedl, another sightless Vale consultant, made note of how despite adding accessibility options for most big-budget mainstream games will take time, there are some simple changes that aren’t too hard to implement, such as optional magnification of text and colorblind modes. There’s also discussion of how many sightless players are missing out on more mainstream gaming experiences like Apex Legends, Phasmophobia, Among Us and Fortnite. Lukáš and SightlessKombat urge for greater inclusion of sightless gaming testers in the industry for important feedback and improving gameplay experiences from people’s multiple perspectives.

Speaking of accessible games, despite my little dig about how The Last of Us Part 2 won Game of the Year in a product poem about how everyone fancies Lottie, I’ll admit that The Last of Us Part 2’s accessibility options for blind and deaf players are pretty good. Have a butcher’s round our store if you want in on the action. Far Cry 6 also starts off players in the accessibility menu once first installed, so I’m told.

How’s the story stack up? Vale follows one princess Alex and her companion, Sheppherd, on a quest to save the land from death, destruction and dick-munching merchants haggling a 20-copper price out of a 100-copper cloak! From what I can tell from the Vale trailer, the performances are quite well done. There’s some theatrical exaggeration from a few characters, but it feels believable as far as fitting the in-game world goes. Very intriguing and immersive, especially with headphones at the ready!

Product Poems:

Very very Vale… Oh, the T is silent? Django called!

It takes two to tango, three it is not and four is what it has caused. What am I?

Dank Souls. Dank memes. Freddy? Liz? Dank Queens. Smash both. LEGO Ninja team.

There was once an AMIIBO called Belmont. Who loved to yeet axes in Vermont. With a whip and a thong, Chrom soon came along, and said “Lottie promised me a bouffant”!

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The post The Brilliant Accessibility of Vale: Shadow of the Crown first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Accessibility in video games is varied and interesting topic to discuss. Not just in terms of “let me access all the games”, but also in the sense of “hey, a lot of games aren’t easily playable for folks with some disabilities, what’s up with that”.

There has recently been a report a study on needs and habits of disabled gamers in the UK, performed by the charity organisation Scope and written up by Vivek Gohill. The study included 1,326 people (812 disabled, 514 not disabled) with the goal of exploring issues faced in the gaming world. You can view the full report here.

Common complaints regarding lack of accessibility include:

• The high expense and low availability of assistive technology.
• Lack of in-game accessibility options.
• An inability to return games upon discovering it does not have contextually essential accessible features.

The report also showed disabled individuals often purchase in-game extras more often in games they do play, as well as watching Esports and engaging in social media more often. Gohill also pointed out the some 14 million disabled gamers in the UK alone spend combined billions in disposable income, so there’s an ethically sound reason for broadening accessible features across more video games. On a similar note, there’s a great Jimquisition episode on how loot boxes and gambling mechanics in gaming effect discourse on accessibility.

Prominent video games praised for their accessibility options include Forza Horizon 5, the latest Ratchet and Clank, and The Last of Us Part 2 (featuring options tailored for players with hearing difficulties, sight impairment and difficulty with physical mobility). We have some of those games, so poke around our store if you’re looking for any deals.

In true Paralympic fashion, Microsoft has also announced plans for an ‘inclusion-based’ Esports tournament, as well as having released an Xbox Adaptive Controller for players who struggle with the standard controller.

Given the toxicity of of many online spaces, the Scope report also highlights that “doing more to tackle negative attitudes about disability online” should be a top priority based on responses from its participants. For more on online safe spaces for gamers and reducing hate, have a look at my past article on Paidia.

As someone on the autistic spectrum, I agree that more should be done to dismantle negative preconceptions about people with disabilities. Not everyone will react the same to having those conversations and progress can be very small on an individual scale, but every little helps.

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The post Accessibility in Games And Why It Matters first appeared on Get2Gaming.