Game Maker's Toolkit

1Designing games for players with cognitive disabilities

• Offer many options, because no single fix suits every cognitive disability. Mark Brown's Designing for Disability episode argues that cognitive disabilities span epilepsy, dyslexia, learning difficulties and more, so players need settings to build their own setup.

  Even for simulation sickness alone there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so several settings are needed. Options cover motion, sensory load, text, information, pace and difficulty.

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• Let players switch off camera motion that causes simulation sickness. Simulation sickness comes from the eyes and inner ear disagreeing, mostly in first and third person 3D games. Make weapon bob, head bob, screen shake and motion blur optional, and add field of view and sensitivity controls.

  A crosshair option helps even in gunless games like The Witness, and cameras should use smooth transitions rather than quick snaps and fast zooms. VR makes the problem much bigger and is treated separately.

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• Find flash and pattern triggers and make them switchable. Sensory overload, which affects autism, migraines and photosensitive epilepsy, mostly comes from quick flashes and regular moving patterns. Just Shapes & Beats can turn off flashes and Stardew Valley lets players change its falling snow pattern.

  Ubisoft and other big publishers run recorded gameplay through the Harding analyser to catch flash and pattern problems.

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• Make text readable, player-advanced and available in a dyslexia-friendly font. Use a clean sans serif in mixed case, 1.5x line spacing, lines under 70 characters and a solid background, and wait for a button press before advancing text. 14% of players who finished The Last Door chose the Open Dyslexic font.

  Fonts built for dyslexia include the free Open Dyslexic and the premium FS Me.

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• Repeat objectives in plain language and keep guidance on screen. Players with slower information processing need simple instructions, direction and room to practice. Assassin's Creed Odyssey restates the cutscene's objective in a few plain sentences with key words highlighted and keeps it up for the whole mission.

  Other aids: Red Dead Redemption 2's GPS line, Super Mario Odyssey's blue floor arrows, map filters, optional waypoints, Cities: Skylines tool-tips, replayable tutorials, offline bots, Bayonetta's loading-screen practice menu and hub worlds like Super Mario 64's castle.

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• Give control over pace, saves and difficulty so players can recover. Celeste's assist mode changes game speed, The Sims lets players stop time and Fallout's VATS turns shooting tactical. Manual saves with screenshots let players retry strategies and remember where they saved.

  Dishonored tunes enemy damage, attack frequency, potion strength and guard bravery; Darkest Dungeon removes blocking corpses; SOMA can turn off enemies; Furi offers invincibility in boss fights. A pause screen can show the objective or a static scene image.

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• Shape accessibility options by testing with players who have these disabilities. Brown argues cognitive accessibility is not the astronomical task it seems, and that testing with affected players shows which options actually help.

  "The best way is to get your game in front of players who live with these disabilities and work with them."

  GGame Maker's Toolkit▶ 8:39