Schim: How the shadow-jumping adventure prioritizes accessibility, out July 18

blog.playstation.com:

Accessibility is a very important element in any game, as games are amazing and should be able to be enjoyed by as many as possible! We are super excited about the release of Schim and wanted to shed some light on the way we have included accessibility in the design process from the start of the project.

With this article we would like to give you some insights into the thoughts and challenges we (Ewoud van der Werf and Nils Slijkerman) faced along the way. We will split them up into a couple of different angles.

Schim has a distinct art style, which is also feedback we hear from players. The art style itself was heavily influenced by the fact that Ewoud has a form of color blindness. He had a clear vision of how he wanted the game to look. The visual style is built up out of multiple custom-made shaders. Ewoud originally wanted to create one color palette for the full game. This would make it easy for him, since color is challenging for him. We did eventually test multiple color palettes and playtesters responded really well to those, so we added a unique one for each level. They are all contrasting which makes the shadows and thus the platforms pop and easy to read. 

The line thickness can also be adjusted in the settings. Ewoud made a tool in the engine so we could easily create and load color palettes. This tool made its way into the game. So anyone who feels the need or the urge to make their own color palette can fulfill that. The custom color palette tool can be brought up in any level in the game. The touchpad on the PlayStation controller makes it super convenient and fun to change the hue to a desired color.

As we developed the game we decided on rules we should follow for Schim. Potentially, the most challenging of all these rules was our desire to create a game with little to no words on screen. We love games and movies where animation tells everything you need to know, so we wanted to tell Schim’s story this way. The challenging part was that creating