It was bound to come at some point. It has come now! A new era of gaming for blind gamers is about to begin, and it will kick off with 1428: Shadows over Silesia. It may seem strange that a small one-man studio from the Czech Republic would come up with this, but when none of the world's leading developers was going to seize this opportunity for a long time, I decided to take up the challenge.
Today I am proud to announce that the upcoming action-adventure game 1428: Shadows over Silesia will be fully accessible to blind players. This will make it the first game ever on PC and the second overall (after The Last of Us Part II) to bring full blind support to an adventure of this scale.
We're not talking about just some of the in-game text being read or about some kind of rudimentary navigation. The game will bring all-new revolutionary elements that will allow the blind to enjoy a full experience not only of the story, dialogue and exploring the environment, but also stealth or combat, including large scale battles! Although the accessibility in TLOU2 was a tremendous success and won numerous awards, Shadows over Silesia takes everything to a whole new level never seen before.
To mark the occasion, a new audio trailer for the visually impaired has just been released! The very first of its kind:
Special site for the blind: https://blind.shadows1428.com
Brief summary of the accessibility features the game will offer
Full narration of all in-game text
- Including reading pop-up hints, character properties, active quests, journal entries and inventory
- Closed captions in cut-scenes
- Subtitle narration for non-dubbed languages
- Ability to skip forward and backward in text
- Support for different screen readers
Special environment descriptions
- Most locations have their own text descriptions, so even the blind can enjoy the game's dark atmosphere while receiving additional information they would otherwise miss
Advanced navigational features
- Navigation to important story points, characters and even custom points that can be added on demand in an unlimited quantity
- Reporting of the remaining distance to the destination
- Compass narration as well as a coordinate system
- Assistance with turning towards objects or characters
Sonar
- A revolutionary feature that allows the blind to freely explore and navigate the game world
- Sonar also includes friendly and enemy characters and determines their locations
- Alerts for traps or destructible barriers
A large number of audio cues
- Alerts for objects and interesting interactions. Many of these provide additional sounds to let the player know what is around them right as they first hear it
- Alerts for the beginning and end of cutscenes, low health, leaving an area, and many other situations
- Warnings about enemies
- Signals to attack or defend
Optional simplification of some mechanics
- Accessible combat, including large scale battles
- Accessible stealth that maintains its atmosphere as well as difficulty
- More time to complete timed events
And a great deal of other extra goodies