Deaf Game Review – Infernium

Infernium is a survival horror/puzzle type game. You play as a magical person who can do magical things with your hands and you seem to have a magical screw embedded in your index finger. It’s a difficult puzzler Pac-Man style (but so much prettier!) game about figuring out how to outsmart and avoid the enemies.

You navigate the various islands with a combination of walking and teleporting. You draw light from round globe-y things with your magic hand as well.

The Deaf accessibility? It’s top notch.

The on-screen instructions are readily accessible, offering you text instructions, as well as illustrations and screenshots. There are SO many games that would do well to implement this type of tutorial system.

Actions and things with which you can interact have equally fantastic and clear visual cues, and everything you can interact with, whether physically or through your magical abilities, is orange.

The accessibility menu is one of the most thoughtful additions I’ve seen in any game in a long time. In it are options to have more tutorials, slower enemies, you can turn off enemies entirely, and you can disable permadeath. There is no option to toggle subtitles on and of, but in this case it’s perfectly acceptable because there is no dialogue.

Also, the game is gorgeous, which, for me, makes all the difference in the world when I’m having a hard time getting through a game (I’m not so great with puzzles). Games that look this good encourage me to keep at it because I want to experience all of the beautiful environments.

Bottom line, Infernium is a stunning game that is very accessible for deaf/hoh players. There’s no spoken dialogue, so no needs for subs, and the visual cues and instructions are easy to see, read, and understand. This one is well worth checking out!