‘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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