Schim: How the shadow-jumping adventure prioritizes accessibility, out July 18

Accessibility is a very important element in any game, as games are amazing and should be able to be enjoyed by as many as possible! We are super excited about the release of Schim and wanted to shed some light on the way we have included accessibility in the design process from the start of the project.

With this article we would like to give you some insights into the thoughts and challenges we (Ewoud van der Werf and Nils Slijkerman) faced along the way. We will split them up into a couple of different angles.

Contents

Visuals

Schim has a distinct art style, which is also feedback we hear from players. The art style itself was heavily influenced by the fact that Ewoud has a form of color blindness. He had a clear vision of how he wanted the game to look. The visual style is built up out of multiple custom-made shaders. Ewoud originally wanted to create one color palette for the full game. This would make it easy for him, since color is challenging for him. We did eventually test multiple color palettes and playtesters responded really well to those, so we added a unique one for each level. They are all contrasting which makes the shadows and thus the platforms pop and easy to read.

The line thickness can also be adjusted in the settings. Ewoud made a tool in the engine so we could easily create and load color palettes. This tool made its way into the game. So anyone who feels the need or the urge to make their own color palette can fulfill that. The custom color palette tool can be brought up in any level in the game. The touchpad on the PlayStation controller makes it super convenient and fun to change the hue to a desired color.

Text, language, and interface

As we developed the game we decided on rules we should follow for Schim. Potentially, the most challenging of all these rules was our desire to create a game with little to no words on screen. We love games and movies where animation tells everything you need to know, so we wanted to tell Schim’s story this way. The challenging part was that creating the story required a lot of testing different variations to find the best way to convey it.

We purchased a motion capture suit and spent many hours recording custom animations. The benefits of having as little text as possible is that younger audiences don’t have issues with language. Visually impaired players also don’t have to focus on corners of the screen without heads up display. We ended up having only 291 words in the game. This made it very feasible to localize the game in a total of 32 languages and we will explore adding more.

Controls

The core of the game was clear from the first month of development – the player jumps from shadow to shadow. The jump button and steering the schim character are the primary things. The jumping itself is forgiving and control input is never hectic or stressful. Every level can be achieved with a decent interval between jump and interact inputs. A player can finish the game by inputting their actions one by one.

After the jump button, the secondary action the player can perform is interact, which will activate the essence of the shadow the player is in. These interactions can trigger something the player can use to progress in a level, at other times it activates a fun animation or a sound that causes interaction in the scene. Some examples are a car horn, a parasol that launches the player, a trash can that spills out trash.

Audio

The audio of important objects can also be spotted by visual cues. The player can trigger shadows that generate a sound. This can be heard and seen by a musical note above the triggered object. Characters around the object will respond to it if they hear it as well. This can create new paths. And of course, you can also adjust the levels of the different audio elements.