Accessibility Menu

Why an Accessibility Menu?

I’ve wanted to make games very accessible for a long time, and Hell of a Racket was my first opportunity to finally begin doing this. From the very get go on this game, I pushed hard for accessibility features to be added, and so I was put in charge of what to add and was also the one who programmed all of them. The main type of accessibility I wanted to address was low vision accessibility, as I myself am legally blind and the FPS genre is one that historically hasn’t been very accessible to this demographic. I wanted to make this game something I, and other visually impaired people could play with the right support.

HUD Customization

One of the biggest features I wanted to add since day one was the ability to let the player customize the HUD. I got the idea from this obscure game called Dameon X Machina back in 2019. That game had an incredibly in-depth HUD customization tool, the likes of which I still haven't seen any other game come close to. I thought that was one of the best accessibility features I'd ever seen, and am hoping to see more games include features on par with it. So I did so with Hell of a Racket. While not as crazy in depth, you can edit the size and color of elements, and toggle whether they're on the HUD or not. You can also remove the shear of HUD elements. With it, players can customize the HUD to their needs. If say, the map is too small, the player can make it bigger, if they find the score too distracting, they can remove it from the HUD, if they find the red of the health bar hard to see, they can change its color. It’s something that can attend to so many players needs in many different ways, and can even just be something fun for the player. While I'd love to add more customization like being able to move the icons on screen, I had to stay in scope for a student game, and some of this took a long time to figure out how to incorperate properly.

Making Visual Timing Based Gameplay Accessibile

The next big accessibility feature I wanted was some kind of way for people with motor skill difficulties or sight related issues to handle the reflection mechanic in our game, since it's such a core mechanic to gameplay but requires good reflexes. Originally I thought to just have an option that swings the racket automatically for the player when a projectile comes near, however after an amazing discussion I had with Mila Pavlin (the UX Designer on God of War Ragnorok) at GDC, she taught me that when tackling this problem to make it accessible, but to keep agency for the player. So instead of just a button you hit that does the work for you, I added a slider that extends the players range for reflecting projectiles. It keeps the element of timing based gameplay, while also making it much easier for people who struggle with reflex time. Very simple feature but it goes a long way.

Enemy Highlights

The last major unique feature I added was the Enemy Highlights. As someone who is visually impaired myself, I've always struggled with FPS type games due to enemies being hard to spot, or having trouble judging how far away they were from me. Thus the idea for Enemy Highlights came to mind. I specifically created the highlights to stand out, while also subtly showing how far you are relative to the enemy. The outline is thicker when you're further away from an enemy, and gets thinner as you approach them. It's a very helpful tool for finding enemies, and I've even seen a fair amount of players who don't sturggle with seeing love this feature too. It was so popular in fact that we discussed for a bit making it on by default.

Other Features

While those were the main features I wanted to highlight, other areas of accessibility were addressed. Subtitles were added so that players with hearing issues can still enjoy the dialogue in the game. There's also volume sliders for the player to turn up or down different sounds. For people with motion sickness issues, I added things like the ability to turn off the camera shake in the game and to adjust the FOV. Graphics settings and brightness settings were also added for any visual needs. And to help those with any form of motor skill issues (or even just for players who want it), me and one of the engineers worked hard on adding full control mapping and controller support. All these features as well as the main three highlighted have helped Hell of a Racket be a far more accessible FPS style game then many of it's contemporaries, and I hope to help develop more features for the game in the coming future.