The developers of Dark Atlas: Infernum have shared some of the accessibility features the game will include. Dark Atlas: Infernum (or Atlas Negro: Infernum in the original Spanish) is a first person survival horror game that was funded through a Kickstarter campaign.
Accessibility features and demo
In order to make the game playable for a wide audience, the developer is working on several features. There isn’t a ton of information available, but there being any information at all is a good thing in itself. At this point, the accessibility features that we can share seem to focus on vision, audio, and mobility.
The standout feature is a guided movement system. This allows a player to select a destination from a menu, after which the character automatically moves to that location. This should be helpful to players with less mobility, and potentially blind players as well if the menus themselves are blind accessible.
For blind players specifically there will be audio descriptions. This is done via a bot that describes the scene. How this works exactly, if it’s some form of text-to-speech or AI, is not clear.
The developers intend to help colorblind players with colorblind filters. Whether these are customizable or a fixed set of filters isn’t clear yet. Let’s hope for some kind of customization like we’ve seen from Jedi: Survivor and Prince of Persia recently.
Lastly, on the audio side of accessibility Dark Atlas: Infernum includes subtitles and captions as well as a stereo / mono system.
Steam demo
A demo available on Steam already includes some of these features and tells us some additional information. Remapping for keyboard controls is possible, and there is a mouse sensitivity setting. In addition to subtitles there are separate volume sliders for different categories of in-game sounds.
Developers Roberto González and Álvaro Aparicio are also set to give a talk about the game at Feria Internacional de Videojuegos Inclusivos. This accessibility focused event takes place in Cuenca, Spain from 18 to 20 January. The talk from the Night Council Studio developers is planned on 19 January at 17.00 (CET). Dark Atlas: Infernum is set to release in 2024, on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
