hoodieaidakitten (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hoodieaidakitten) wrote2018-07-17 11:25 am
hoodieaidakitten) wrote2018-07-17 11:25 am
Accessibility in video games, and Celeste
Hey, hoodie here. This article might be a bit of a weird one, for many of you. I found my passion in writing, somewhat recently, and realized I would totally do this full time. A little while before that, I asked patrons what they wanted to see from me, and most all said they would accept game design article-type writings, so that's what I'll be trying today. Gonna do two of these, interspersed with the rest of my writing, and hopefully we all will enjoy it.
Today, I want to talk about Celeste, and how accessibility intersects with some really clever game design on it's part. To do that, we'll have to work up some terms to use and agree on, so this first article will be a bit of a reference as well, for those words. In games, you can do things, and for the purposes of this article, we will be focusing on that quite a bit. Let's call them verbs.
So, in video games, a Verb is an action the user can make. Actions are verbs, in the english language, after all. In celeste, the game does quite a bit of work with treating things as Verbs, in fact, the game is so simple that it has just a few verbs, and this leads to the game as a whole being very very accessible.
Let's get into it, and lay out some example verbs, using celeste as our example game. We'll start with the Jump which is sorta self-explanatory. you press a button, and your character goes up. But now we can twist that verb, and talk about context. See, I like verbs as a method of describing game design, because it shows one of the most clever ways to design your game. Few verbs, many contexts. A context can be as simple as a wall your character is sliding down, and then it's a wall jump! Makes sense, huh?
Second, you have the grip. If you're against a wall, or otherwise have something near you to grab, you can press a button and 'hold' or 'grip' onto the thing. Pretty self explanatory, really, but now we can use one of the other verbs i kinda slipped past to parse how this interacts with the rest of the game. Let's say I grip a wall, and use the movement stick to tell my character to move up. Now I'm climbing! it makes sense, at least to some extent, it is 'intuitive'. People like that word a lot, but honestly, things can be super 'intuitive', and slip by some people's experience and they will miss it.
Anyway, we are starting to see how Verbs can be used as a system to define games, and design them. How does Celeste keep the game from getting stale? Any other verbs I glossed over?
Well, we have the dash, which is pretty simple, and is a good way to address how we can take a simple idea and lead toward meaningful gameplay. The climb has one of these rules, or modifiers to it. You can't climb forever, in a platforming game, without trivializing some of the puzzles. So instead, you have a stamina meter to worry about. It's invisible, but it doesn't matter too much, honestly. We already have a decent understanding that the climb is limited, and the wonder of the human mind will fill in it's limits. The dash is no exception, but it's easier to understand and describe. When you dash, if you are not on the ground, you cannot dash again. It's even got a visual cue, your hair changes color when you have used a dash, and cannot dash again.
Now it's time for the twist, we can call them nouns, which you can see in the picture above. In celeste, there are these crystals, which have no name, as far as the player is told. That's one of the strengths, really, of designing like this, even if it can be worrying, you can dodge naming things, and explicit tutorials wasting valuable player time. Regardless, these crystals reset your dash as well as give you a complete reset on your climbing stamina. The reason this is fascinating is it means you can put twists on the mechanics of the game, through outside information anyone can understand after their first interaction with it.
Failure is not hammered into your mind, and you reset the level with near-zero delay upon death, so the game cuts the levels into screens that define your safe zones, where you will respawn. Each screen is an approachable gauntlet you can most often even see the entire route through, at least early on. By respecting these verbs, the game allows for accessible, easy to parse rules that are entirely set in stone, and each area adds things that modify the rules, that you can learn step by step. It's really kinda fascinating, when you look at games like this. As a counterexample, now, and to avoid me spoiling all of Celeste for someone who hasn't played, let's talk about a different game, to compare.
In dark souls, you have a different set of verbs, and that's fine, at least in theory. But let's say you swing your sword and-- welp, that seems straightforward enough. Now you hit someone with a shield and they block it, which is fine. The next person with a shield your sword suddenly has a new rule, though, you bounced off, and that left you vulnerable so, well. Now you're dead. This isn't inherently flawed, except the tutorial doesn't teach you this mechanic, and there are many, many like it. To compound this problem, death is much more of a punishment, in dark souls, in fact, if you're not careful, the game can heartlessly throw away all your accumulated souls, based on it's own flaws.
I don't mean to harp on dark souls, heck, it's a game i enjoy greatly. But it's got a lot of problems, and those problems are only exacerbated by the way it's designed. Does the tutorial need to be longer? have optional areas? What if you get a player lost due to the optional areas? You could be asking these questions, and to be fair to dark souls, it does teach you that some shields will knock your weapon away-- if you chose the right weapon, and chose to go into an optional room you will likely only see once, which also gives you a hint that means you are likely to miss this mechanic if you are unlucky and don't try experimenting with your weapon and the shield.
You see how it grows into a pervasive, systemic problem, doesn't it? I hope I've made my case for why I think Celeste is one of the better games out there, in terms of accessibility, but, at the very least, I can tell you I enjoyed it more than dark souls, and still am enjoying it, even after beating the story. It's under twenty bucks, depending on when you get it, and I would happily suggest it to nearly anyone looking to try it, including macOS or Linux users, Switch players and probably the other big consoles too. Here's a link to the itch.io page for computer players.
Thanks for listening,
- hoodie aida kitten.
here are some links to support me if you wanna send me a few bucks or support my work.
Today, I want to talk about Celeste, and how accessibility intersects with some really clever game design on it's part. To do that, we'll have to work up some terms to use and agree on, so this first article will be a bit of a reference as well, for those words. In games, you can do things, and for the purposes of this article, we will be focusing on that quite a bit. Let's call them verbs.
So, in video games, a Verb is an action the user can make. Actions are verbs, in the english language, after all. In celeste, the game does quite a bit of work with treating things as Verbs, in fact, the game is so simple that it has just a few verbs, and this leads to the game as a whole being very very accessible.
Let's get into it, and lay out some example verbs, using celeste as our example game. We'll start with the Jump which is sorta self-explanatory. you press a button, and your character goes up. But now we can twist that verb, and talk about context. See, I like verbs as a method of describing game design, because it shows one of the most clever ways to design your game. Few verbs, many contexts. A context can be as simple as a wall your character is sliding down, and then it's a wall jump! Makes sense, huh?
Second, you have the grip. If you're against a wall, or otherwise have something near you to grab, you can press a button and 'hold' or 'grip' onto the thing. Pretty self explanatory, really, but now we can use one of the other verbs i kinda slipped past to parse how this interacts with the rest of the game. Let's say I grip a wall, and use the movement stick to tell my character to move up. Now I'm climbing! it makes sense, at least to some extent, it is 'intuitive'. People like that word a lot, but honestly, things can be super 'intuitive', and slip by some people's experience and they will miss it.
Anyway, we are starting to see how Verbs can be used as a system to define games, and design them. How does Celeste keep the game from getting stale? Any other verbs I glossed over?
Well, we have the dash, which is pretty simple, and is a good way to address how we can take a simple idea and lead toward meaningful gameplay. The climb has one of these rules, or modifiers to it. You can't climb forever, in a platforming game, without trivializing some of the puzzles. So instead, you have a stamina meter to worry about. It's invisible, but it doesn't matter too much, honestly. We already have a decent understanding that the climb is limited, and the wonder of the human mind will fill in it's limits. The dash is no exception, but it's easier to understand and describe. When you dash, if you are not on the ground, you cannot dash again. It's even got a visual cue, your hair changes color when you have used a dash, and cannot dash again.
Now it's time for the twist, we can call them nouns, which you can see in the picture above. In celeste, there are these crystals, which have no name, as far as the player is told. That's one of the strengths, really, of designing like this, even if it can be worrying, you can dodge naming things, and explicit tutorials wasting valuable player time. Regardless, these crystals reset your dash as well as give you a complete reset on your climbing stamina. The reason this is fascinating is it means you can put twists on the mechanics of the game, through outside information anyone can understand after their first interaction with it.
Failure is not hammered into your mind, and you reset the level with near-zero delay upon death, so the game cuts the levels into screens that define your safe zones, where you will respawn. Each screen is an approachable gauntlet you can most often even see the entire route through, at least early on. By respecting these verbs, the game allows for accessible, easy to parse rules that are entirely set in stone, and each area adds things that modify the rules, that you can learn step by step. It's really kinda fascinating, when you look at games like this. As a counterexample, now, and to avoid me spoiling all of Celeste for someone who hasn't played, let's talk about a different game, to compare.
In dark souls, you have a different set of verbs, and that's fine, at least in theory. But let's say you swing your sword and-- welp, that seems straightforward enough. Now you hit someone with a shield and they block it, which is fine. The next person with a shield your sword suddenly has a new rule, though, you bounced off, and that left you vulnerable so, well. Now you're dead. This isn't inherently flawed, except the tutorial doesn't teach you this mechanic, and there are many, many like it. To compound this problem, death is much more of a punishment, in dark souls, in fact, if you're not careful, the game can heartlessly throw away all your accumulated souls, based on it's own flaws.
I don't mean to harp on dark souls, heck, it's a game i enjoy greatly. But it's got a lot of problems, and those problems are only exacerbated by the way it's designed. Does the tutorial need to be longer? have optional areas? What if you get a player lost due to the optional areas? You could be asking these questions, and to be fair to dark souls, it does teach you that some shields will knock your weapon away-- if you chose the right weapon, and chose to go into an optional room you will likely only see once, which also gives you a hint that means you are likely to miss this mechanic if you are unlucky and don't try experimenting with your weapon and the shield.
You see how it grows into a pervasive, systemic problem, doesn't it? I hope I've made my case for why I think Celeste is one of the better games out there, in terms of accessibility, but, at the very least, I can tell you I enjoyed it more than dark souls, and still am enjoying it, even after beating the story. It's under twenty bucks, depending on when you get it, and I would happily suggest it to nearly anyone looking to try it, including macOS or Linux users, Switch players and probably the other big consoles too. Here's a link to the itch.io page for computer players.
Thanks for listening,
- hoodie aida kitten.
here are some links to support me if you wanna send me a few bucks or support my work.