Life is strange: true colors: empathy is accessible

Andrew James, Brand Manager Life is weird: real colors The central new game dynamics – the use of others’ emotions through the use of glowing, color glowing – illustrates how it has become accessible to a wider audience.

The power of empathy

Alex Chen, the new protagonist, can see, hear and experience the strong emotions of others as her own – a psychic, supernatural force. The Tech Nine sports team knew from the beginning that this ability would manifest itself in the form of colored light around NPCs.

The look and feel of the game’s four emotional sparkles – blue for sadness, red for anger, purple for fear and gold for joy – changed again and again during development, but never deviated from the team’s creative vision.

The developers also focused on the question of how a game that uses color as an emotional story can better support and engage players with color vision impairment (CVD).

Limit of accessible colors

About 300 million people worldwide are color blind and have one of three major types of CVDs. The team has created a number of specific, customizable filters that include the access menu and the main types:

• Deuteranopie: Filter that makes it easy to distinguish green tones from red tones.
• Protanopia: A filter to distinguish red and green tones well.
• Tridanopia: Filter that easily distinguishes blue and yellow.

During optimization, players can see examples of the functions of the filters in all four haloes and adjust the strength of the filter according to their individual taste. You can adjust them at any time during the game.

Of course, improving Aras’ accessibility is not just about filters. Other aspects of the accessibility of colors include the development of Aras’ unique texture design so that they differ significantly from each other in grayscale.

Create nova moments for everyone

It is especially true that the “Hero Aras” players interact during the main emotional scenes of Alex’s journey – scenes that begin as “Noah Moments” by the team: the moments when the strength of emotion is so strong distorts to reflect the inner emotional reality of the character.

She needs to find out the scenes that help Alex overcome Ethan’s fear in a frightening and life-threatening situation or the real cause of Stephen’s grief in order to help her heal.

The characteristic properties of different radii, such as the twists or turns of fear, the waves of sadness like the ocean, are clearly visible here.

The user interface plays a role in every moment of power: the communication logo changes its style, showing the respective emotion when Alex approaches and stimulates her abilities.

Life is Deep: Strange: In this story of true colors it is even more important to ensure that all of these deeply rooted story resources and experience are accessible to all.

As Tech Nines Games producer Rebecca Basel points out, access is not just a field job, it comes only after the rest of the game is over:

“It was a multi-disciplinary effort from the beginning, from art direction to programming to the user interface and of course QA testing,” he explains. “As in a game, the whole part is the result of merging by giving more than the sum of its parts.”

Access testing during an outbreak

Traditionally, almost finished code is tested by teams of small attention testers around the world, ensuring that everything works as planned, targeted at the audience. As this option was not questioned due to the tight locking, the teams returned to its own staff, one of Square Enix ‘best resources.

The primary concern is to develop better access to all development teams around the world, as access to the square Enix West is confirmed by leading Amelian Siason:

“The field of access to Square Enix West is new. We are still working to access more learning and games. So life is strange: we are very happy to support the True Colors team. But we also know that there is still a lot of work ahead of us. This insight is very important and covers more of our experiences.” This will help us in our mission.

Life is Strange: True Colors – Access to Empathy:

But our access options do not end with color filters. Many features of the game can be modified, from customizable subtitles, text sizes and fonts to adjusting the speed at which you need to make temporary dialogue decisions.

Create access beyond the game

Together with the Xbox team, we explored many more ways to add access to the game. Talking to Katie Joe Wright about gaming for everyone on Xbox, she shared her vision of how developers like Tech Nine Games can make a big impact on many aspiring gamers:

“When we focus emotionally on those who can’t enjoy the joy of a game and try to find solutions for it, we often inadvertently open a door for many who want to join,” he says. “This inclusive and accessible design team is the core principle of Xbox, because we want to provide experiences that anyone can play. It’s always inspiring to see groups like the creators of life are weird: Drew Colors is beyond regulatory compliance to create a happy experience for all players.”

At the end of the development process the game was subjected to the Microsoft Game Access Access Testing Service (MGADS) for detailed feedback on all access features. Anita Mortaloni, Access Director at Xbox, spoke about the project’s potential and what it means for more and more accessible games in the future:

“Getting quality access ideas from both an expert and players with disabilities is now much easier, with the common goal of making all topics more accessible to our communities. We would like to inform you that our project and other similar projects exist, and we are pleased that more developers are using it.”