Michael Langford - For the Squishies: Making Roguelikes Accessible to Children and their Parents
10The "year" of March 2020 has made parents experts in finding any source of reliable entertainment that doesn't drive themselves batty, yet keeps the kids engaged and learning something.
Roguelikes are an excellent solution to these problems with a few accessibility nods that make the games better for all players.
Parents have run up against a host of software largely made for an older player base.
This talk presents a few parenting-simulations you can conduct while playing your game to judge its suitability for parents. A few examples of failures and low-cost fixes are shown.
Before your cringe breaks make you hit the abort button, I'm *not* talking about theme/blood/and other items which are far more noticeable to you.
This is about issues like small hands vs big controllers, difficulties seeing and reading text, load screen post-confirm buttons, the realities of children and embarrassing information, and pause buttons that work for parents.
Addressing these issues can also broaden your game's audience to folks with issues with visual acuity, dyslexia, color vision deficiency, and more.