The Vale: Shadow of the Crown proves you don’t need visuals to make a great video game
Games are often lauded for their art style, visual effects, or the stunning landscapes that they employ. After all, the world of video games often comes down to the video. It’s all about what game can provide the most realistic visuals that will draw the most people in at once. Elements like sound, voice acting, and storyline often take a backseat in importance to the question: Does it look nice?
The Vale: Shadow of the Crown, which was released 19 August 2021 on PC, doesn’t have the luxury of good graphics. The developers, Falling Squirrel, made a highly unusual decision when it came to their game, and because of that, it doesn’t have anywhere to hide. The game was designed for blind and visually impaired players and features a blind protagonist. As such it has no flashy cutscenes or jaw-dropping vistas. In fact, there are hardly any visuals at all. Just sound, story, combat, and a cast of humorous characters.
The game is simple but enveloping, with only a few keys to press and quite a lot more to understand and execute. Placed in the shoes of a young Princess named Alex and sent away from home to live a quiet life in a vale, you need to learn very quickly that blindness is not a limitation after everything goes wrong. Plunged into a long and arduous cross-country battle, you and Alex must remember everything you’ve ever learned in order to survive and make it home.
The strength of The Vale: Shadow of the Crown is in its ability to make players feel like their universe has shifted. With visually nothing more than some pretty floating lights that change the color occasionally and the item menus, which are fully audio-guided, there’s nothing about this game that screams eye-catching. Yet, it draws a player in. Though I
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