Now in its third yr, the Entry-Skill Summer season Showcase is again to redress the dearth of significant accessibility info throughout the continuing online game showcase season. As we see progress broadly slow down, it’s additionally a well timed reminder of the great work that’s nonetheless occurring in pursuit of better accessibility in gaming.
“At a time the place we’re seeing a slowdown in accessibility adoption within the AAA video games area,” organizer Laura Kate Dale says, “we’re displaying that there are attention-grabbing accessible video games being made, video games with distinctive and attention-grabbing options, and that being accessible is one thing that may convey a further viewers to buy and play your video games.”
The showcase is rising, too. In 2025, it’s longer, extra full of video games, and streamed concurrently on Twitch, Youtube (the place it’s additionally accessible on-demand), and on Steam’s entrance web page. That development comes with its personal challenges — mitigated this yr by Many Cats Studio stepping in as sponsor — however the AA Summer season Showcase supplies an accessible platform in response to the eye-watering prices of showcasing elsewhere (it has previously been reported that presenting trailers across Summer Game Fest starts at $250,000), whereas offering disabled viewers with the knowledge they should know if they’ll really get enthusiastic about new and upcoming releases.
It’s lesson Dale hopes different platforms may tackle board. “I develop the present within the hopes that different showcases copy what we’re doing and make this the norm,” she says. “If I might give up internet hosting the AA Summer season Showcase subsequent yr as a result of each different present in June dedicated to speaking about accessibility as a part of their bulletins, that will be great information.”
To assist that alongside (sorry, Laura, don’t give up simply but), The Verge has collated the video games featured on this yr’s Entry-Skill Summer season Showcase under.
Visible accessibility in focus
A significant theme that emerged from this yr’s showcase is colour blind concerns. The showcase kicked off with ChromaGun2: Dye Hard by Pixel Maniacs, a first-person color-based puzzler. In its colour blind mode, colours are paired with symbols for higher parsing and people symbols mix when colours are combined.
An analogous spirit is echoed in Sword and Quill’s Soulblaze, a creature-collecting roguelike that’s a little bit of Pokémon combined with tabletop RPGs (cube included). It additionally pairs colours and icons, including a excessive stage of customization to paint indicators, issue, and an in depth text-to-speech perform that helps native text-to-speech methods and NVDA.
Later, Gales of Nayeli from Blindcoco Studios, a grid-based technique RPG, showcased its personal colour blind concerns and a formidable array of visible customization choices.
A welcome development carried over from last year, video games proceed to eschew time strain and fail states. Dire Kittens Video games’ Heartspell: Horizon Academy is a puzzle courting simulator that seems like Bejeweled meets Hatoful Boyfriend. Maybe its most welcome characteristic is the flexibility to skip puzzles altogether, although it additionally options customization for puzzle issue. Sunlight from Krillbite Studio is a chill mountain climbing journey that duties the participant with choosing flowers whereas strolling by a serene forest. It does away with navigation as you’ll all the time be heading the appropriate method, whereas sound cues direct you to close by flowers.
This yr’s showcase featured two titles from DarZal Video games. Quest Giver is a low-stakes administration visible novel which casts the participant as an NPC handing quests out to RPG heroes, whereas 6-Sided Stories is a puzzle recreation involving flipping tiles to disclose a picture. The video games have been introduced by Darzington, a developer with persistent hand ache who develops with these wants in thoughts and, apparently, with their voice (due to Talon Voice). Each video games characteristic no time strain, no enter holds or combos, and permit for one-handed play.
Single-handed controls are additionally a spotlight of Crayonix Video games’ Rollick N’ Roll, a puzzle recreation during which you management the extent itself to get toy automobiles to their purpose with out the burden of a ticking clock.
Talking of highlights, this was one other attention-grabbing development to emerge from this yr’s showcase. Spray Paint Simulator by Whitethorn Video games is, in essence, PowerWash Simulator in reverse. Amongst a collection of accessibility options that assist gamers sit back and paint every part from partitions and bridges to what seems like Iron Man’s foot, the sport permits you to spotlight portray duties and grants a major stage of management over how these highlights seem and the way lengthy they final. Whitethorn Video games supplies accessibility info for all its video games here.
Cairn, in contrast, is a difficult climbing recreation from The Sport Bakers which seems like transplanting Octodad onto El Capitan. Because it encourages gamers to search out new routes up its mountains, the sport permits gamers to spotlight their character’s limbs, in addition to skip fast response minigames and rewind falls fully.
Highlights are additionally essential to Half Sunk Video games’ Blow-up: Avenge Humanity, during which gamers can desaturate the background and customise the scale and tone of enemy outlines to make its chaotic gunplay extra seen. One thing Qudical’s Coming Residence, which debuted throughout the showcase, additionally provides in its tense horror gameplay as you evade a gaggle of murderers. You may change on a high-contrast mode that highlights objects to tell apart them from the setting (together with stated killers).
If this yr’s been difficult for accessibility, it’s been much more disappointing for blind gamers relating to video games which are playable independently. The AA Summer season Showcase, nevertheless, included an interlude displaying off the very best titles from the latest Games for Blind Gamers 4, a recreation jam during which all video games are designed with unsighted play in thoughts and judged by blind gamers. 4 video games have been featured: Lacus Opportunitas by one of last year’s standouts shiftBacktick, The Unseen Awakening, Barista, and Necromancer Nonsense. This was chased by a take a look at Tempo Labs Video games’ Bits & Bops, a group of rhythm video games with easy controls and designed to be playable in its entirety with out sighted help.
Accessible indie video games usually favor the comfy, however this yr’s AA Summer season Showcase introduced a standout recreation that bucked that development. Wednesdays by ARTE France is a recreation that offers with the aftermath of childhood abuse. That’s definitely in line with the host of trauma-driven indie video games on the market. Wednesdays, nevertheless, positions itself as a extra hopeful examination of that trauma, each by its visible novel fashion reminiscences and theme park supervisor gameplay.
Like so lots of the showcase’s video games this yr, Wednesdays contains mitigations for colour blindness — although no important info is tied to paint in-game — in addition to a complete textual content log for cognitive help, guide and automatic textual content scrolling, and customization choices for cursor velocity, animations, fonts, inputs, and extra. Higher but, all these choices are displayed at launch and the sport all the time opens in a windowed mode to permit for simpler setup of exterior accessibility instruments.
It’s a curious title, for its wealth of accessibility options, naturally, but additionally for the way it handles its material — as a result of perhaps all of us want just a little extra hope this yr, yeah?