Hey!
With Word Play less than one month away, I wanted to check in and talk about an important part of the game: accessibility.
Accessibility refers to options, features, and design decisions that open a game up to people who have specific needs or requirements. And I've tried to pack the game with this stuff so that as many people as possible can enjoy the game.
Let's look at some of the main ones...
Visual Accessibility
The options menu features a bunch of ways to make the tiles more readable. That includes...
- Lowercase Letters
- High Contrast Colours
- Multiple Dyslexia-friendly fonts
- Colourful tags on vowels
Mix and match them to find a set-up that works for you.
There's also a feature to turn off the spotty animated backgrounds if those prove too distracting.
Motor Accessibility
Word Play should be effortless to interact with. So with that in mind, I've tried to make the game work across a number of input types. You can play Word Play entirely with...
- A mouse
- A keyboard
- A controller
- A touchscreen
The game can be played with a single hand. And while you can drag and drop tiles, you never need to do it. For instance - instead of dragging and dropping a tile onto the upgrade card, you can just click the card and then click a tile.
Other Accessibility
There are no punishments for taking too long to find a word, pick a perk, or choose your strategy. And there are no modifiers that provide a bonus for playing faster. So take as much time as you need to play.
There is also no punishment for spelling a word incorrectly - and the game will even try to suggest a close match word in a little "Did you mean...?" bubble. Handy!
Difficulty Modes
Word Play can get pretty tricky - just try the Legendary or Marathon modes! But there's also an Easy Mode that's lots of fun too.
Plus - there's the more casual Quick Play mode. This one doesn't require as much strategic thinking, and there's no fixed score requirement to hit - instead, it's just about how many points you can score. The only thing you need to beat is your own high score!
I hope these features will make Word Play more accessible to more people. If you have a certain request or requirement that I might be able to implement please get in touch and I'll see what I can do.