Guiding Star

When a magical child falls ill, the sun sets on the land and the wizard is called to find a cure. In this blind-accessible game, our cat will lead us through the darkness of the night in search of ingredients for a healing elixir.

Trailer

PLAY GUIDING STAR ON ITCH.IO

A big moon with two pink-leaved trees on each side, at night. A tiny black cat and a wizard's hat peek out from between their leaves.

Summary

Guiding Star was a blind-accessible game developed by an 8-people team during one month for the Minigame a Month Jam (May 2024), with the theme "Wizards."

As a Creative Co-Director, I assumed leadership tasks of the project by guiding the game development process, aiming for a focus on accessibility, with the main goal of creating a blind-accessible game that would be a positive experience for sighted and non-sighted players.

This page will highlight some of solutions and tasks I took on to ensure the fulfillment of the accessibility goals of Guiding Star.

Other roles:

Game Designer,
User Experience Research and Design,
Writer,

Artist (assistant).

Roles and responsibilities

While the decision-making and development was a cooperative effort, I took on a few roles that I shall highlight.

As a creative co-director, I regularly updated our Design Document and plans, wiith reminders and directions for each phase of development. I also worked with all teams in an effort to ensure a coherency between the gameplay and its mechanics in all areas.

As a Game Designer, I co-designed all game mechanics and levels.

As the User Experience Research and Design Lead, I led the process of ensuring the game's accessibility. I conducted moderated playtests, defined accessibility goals, reevaluated priorities, and designed solutions.

As the Writer, I created a rich storyline, including the intro and ending poem, in-game dialogues (with integrated audiodescription) and an immersive and clear tutorial script (not yet implemented).

As an Art Assistant, I adapted the original cutscene illustrations to create Photosensitive Epilepsy Safe alternative cutscenes (Book Mode) and video edited the intro and ending cutscenes.

Overall, I was involved in many parts of the development process. This page will highlight some parts of it.

A discord message posted by Patricia with bold text saying "Last 2 Days", and then a list. The first one reads: Level Design: we have: Level 1 (w/enemies and cat) - check. Level 2 (no cat or enemies) - check. Level 3 - in the making.

Reporting on the game goals

A table of contents including headings such as: Story, Brief description of the game, levels (plan), script cave level - tutorial, gameplay technicalities, art, options, and game modes.

Design Document's Table of Contents

A handrawn map starts at a meadow from which two paths stray from. One leads to an end soon and the other follows a maze onto a second meadow, from which three paths lead to dead ends and the exit. Mushrooms icons are pasted onto several parts of the map.

First Draft design of the third Level

A cat nearby faces us, in a forest with pink-leaved trees. There is a compass-looking radar in the corner, with an icon of a cat near its center.

Forest Level, showcasing the radar.

01
The scope of the project

Accessibility was considered right from the start. The main initial goals we had were to make it:

Accessible for the blind, centering the main mechanics on following audio cues for all players;
Accessible for people with upper limb impairments who played one-handed (not fully achieved);

Some extra features we also included:

A visual compass indicating the locations of key NPCs (cat and enemy);
Customizable controls;
Ability to enable auto-aim.

We walk down a dark cave up to a river. A giant mushroom creature approaches us and we fire spells at it until it dies. The camera rotates left, where there is a cat sniffing a mushroom. We walk up to it. We keep following the cat until we cross a river and pick up another mushroom.

A blind playtester follows Star around the cave.

02
Blind Accessibility

To ensure the game would be playable by people without sight, we created the following mechanics:

Upon pressing C, we send Star to search for a mushroom. Pressing C again brings her back.
She sniffs and meows on a loop when she finds a mushroom.
She stops at halfway points on the way to the mushroom, and meows, never getting too far from the player.
She meows if she is stationary in front of us for a few seconds (while not searching for a mushroom).

A text reads: "Photosensitivity warning. The following cutscene uses patterns that may induce seizure in people who have photosensitive epilepsy. Immediately stop playing and consult a doctor if you experience any symptoms. For a safer experience: skip the cutscene ot toggle it to the Book Mode (with reduced animations)." Below the text, there is a preview of the buttons with a caption.

Photosensitivity Warning before the cutscene.

Original Intro Cutscene (Photosensitive Epilepsy warning)

Safe Intro Cutscene - Book Mode

03
Photosensitive Epilepsy: Book and Movie Mode

The lead artist (RafazCruz) created a gif animation for the intro cutscene.

However, the patterns and speed used on this animation weren't deemed safe for people with photosensitive epilepsy.

Solution

I drew pixel art illustrations for each verse of the intro poem, based on the original art, and edited a video on Shotcut combining them with a pixel art book (drawn by Rafa) in smooth transitions.

Warning

The youtube trailer was edited to include a photosensitive epilepsy warning.

Limitations: Toggle Book Mode / Movie Mode

The original plan was to have both cutscenes available to toggle between before and during each cutscene.

However, upon discovering incompatibilities with the game engine last-minute, the first version of the game didn't include any video, but only a still frame.

WASD + Mouse control schemes, in the menu.

Control Schemes (Default)

Mouse-Only Controls, including the enabled features: Move with mouse; Same button for Use and Strafe.

Control Schemes (Mouse-only)

04
Mobility

One of the early goals was to allow for people with upper limb impairments to play one-handed.

Game controls kept simple: only three buttons needed (send spell, pick up/interact, and Send Star to search);
Customization of controls: people may adapt the input keys to their needs and controllers;
Playtesting with people with mobility impairments.

Cydeamon, another teammber, should be credited as the researcher who proposed the solutions and commands for an intuitive mouse-only control scheme.

Limitations

As time went on, the gameplay with the default controls scheme took priority over the controls.

The first version of the game didn't fully work with alternative control schemes such as mouse-only.

A question in a survey form asking: "Do you experience any difficulties when playing videogames, in general? Of what kind?" and the checkbox options: Does not apply, processing and understanding the context (e.g. dyslexia), perceiving visual information, hearing the audio information, mobility-wise, with the controls, vestibular problems (motion sickness, etc), and other.

Screener Survey for Playtesters

05
Playtesting

Early on, I distributed a screener survey over a variety of discord servers related to gaming and game accessibility (e.g. DisabledGamers), to recruit a pool of potential playtesters for the game.

Recruited playtesters with a screener survey distributed over gamers and disabled gamers' discord servers;
- This survey asked whether the person experienced any difficulties when playing videogames.
Designed questions for playtest sessions to understand the usability and enjoyment over the game;
Conducted and moderated playtest sessions with people with mobility or visual impairments.

A table with the columns: Sound (e.g. Footsteps), Owner (e.g. Wizard), variation, (e.g. grass), Type (e.g. locomotion), notes, and a checklist column called "Got it?" (e.g. Yes/No).

Sound Effects Main List

A google sheets table displaying 9 actions and the respective sound effects and lines we should hear from the wizard, for example: Action: When sending the cat to search. Line: "Guide Me, Star!"

Sound Effects - Wizard

A google sheets table displaying 9 voice acting lines from the Wizard and when to use them.

Voice Lines - Wizard

07
Other Tasks (Sound Design)

Part of my tasks were to coordinate efforts with the rest of the team to ensure a complete and fulfilling gaming experience.

A key task related to this was assisting the sound designers by collectively creating a thorough list of required sound effects, to ensure a rich and immersive experience for sighted and blind players. This list aided the programmers in knowing exactly where to implement each sound.

Main Sound Effects List

This list included locomotion sounds, the owner of the sound (player, level ambience, enemy, etc), and variations (e.g. footsteps on grass, footsteps on rock, etc).

Wizard Sound Effects and Wizard Lines

I created specific list of sound effects for the Wizard Voice Actor to follow, including low health grunts and commands triggered when interacting with the cat.

I also created a list with all the voice lines related to the story and tutorial in each level.

Wrap-up

With a focused and devoted team, one month was enough to create a blind-accessible game that was fun to play for gamers with and without sight.

Within the first 5 days of its publishing, we received much positive feedback, including an article published by the japanese website Automaton Media, highlighting the story and accessibility features that are the pride of our project.

With a few bugs and unfinished features, the game finished in 10th place (in 70 entries) in the jam results:

#4 for Innovation/Theme;
#13 for Polish/Completion;
#20 for "Overall/Fun".

It was the most popular and most reviewed game in the Jam.

I hope you may try it out yourself and take some enjoyment from it as well :)

Guiding Star, a magical FPS game where cats become voice navigators, is now available. Petting cats will restore your health, and you'll get a lot of help from cats in this fantasy shooter game. By Yuta Tanaka.

Automaton Media Article (auto-translated)

Itch page. Guiding Star - Ranked 10th with 15 ratings. Innovation / Theme: rank #4 Overall rank #10 How polished/complete is it? #13 Overall / Fun: #20

Minigame a Month Jam Results: 10th place.