Sifu will be receiving a number of accessibility updates in the future it has been confirmed.
During a Twitch Gaming stream hosted by Steve Saylor on February 10, 2022, a segment involving Sloclap co-founder, Pierre Tarno detailed the studio’s possible plans for the future of Sifu and accessibility. The information came following Saylor’s comments of the high contrast mode.
Tarno shared that the studio worked with CapGame and Game Accessibility Guidelines to implement what is currently available in the game, and then went on to share some features that could be making their way to the game in the future.
One thing mentioned was making it so that footsteps stop making sounds when walking into walls and obstacles. Currently, when the character walks into a wall, the sound of footsteps can still be heard. Tarno shares that fixing this would be helpful for those relying on sound cues.
There looks to also be plans to implement closed captioning that subtitles the ambient sounds surrounding the player, and there was a mention of potentially pausing the game during dialogue, which would help players follow the story more without having to contend to combat on top of reading.
Another feature shared is that the studio seems to be looking into adding difficulty levels in the game to allow players to enjoy the game at a level that suits them. Sifu’s difficulty has been a hot topic with the studio choosing to not have difficulty options at launch with the intention to challenge players. However, this echoes Tarno’s own comments in an interview last year where post-launch difficulty options were hinted about being added. It does appear that this could be certainly happening.
Hopefully, upcoming updates can fix a number of bugs with HUD size breaking subtitles and remapping breaking inputs. For now, an update that’s coming “very soon” should bring high contrast to PlayStation versions of the game.
