2021 Diamond Award Winner – New Pokémon Snap
What makes an accessible game? Robust features? Simple design? Easy-to-understand gameplay? The answer is all of these and more. As I hope I’ve demonstrated for the past ten years, the best accessibility always grows out of a developer’s vision, rather than...
Developer of the Generation – Naughty Dog Studios
One of the mottos I use when describing the accessibility movement is “progress, not perfection.“ After all, game development is a highly complex endeavor with many facets, and at the end of the day, it’s simply a business; if games don’t sell, games don’t get made....
2020 Diamond Award Winner – Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales
There are other ways to say it, but plainly, 2020 was a tough year for most people. And for many, their best escape was video games. Thanks to the massive boom in accessibility, even players with physical impairments could find solace in games throughout a pandemic,...
Barrier Breaker – Game Speed Controls – Insomniac Games 2021
Barrier Breakers are typically given out to studios who perfect or add new best-practices to an existing game accessibility feature. A new Barrier Breaker award goes to Insomniac Games for the game-speed controls featured in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart which are...
DAGERSystem Barrier Breakers
The Barrier Breaker Award is presented to development teams who implement exceptional accessibility features that we view as industry leading. Unlike the DAGERSystem Diamond Award, Barrier Breaker Awards are not given out annually, but only given when a game exhibits...
Accessibility Game Review – Gears 5
Visual Barrier Free Fine-Motor Barrier Free Auditory Barrier Free Barrier Free In preparation for this, I reread our review of Gears of War 4, which was the first time developer The Coalition worked on Microsoft’s storied third person shooter franchise. When...
2021 Editor’s Choice – Deathloop
Every year, I look back on the games I’ve played and try to figure out which game I most enjoyed. You would expect most games that I choose as my favorite each year to be both highly accessible and high quality, but as I think I illustrated last year with my Editor’s...
2021 Editor’s Choice – Ikenfell
I absolutely love turn-based RPGs, but they've been harder and harder to find in the last few years. Then came Ikenfell, a turn-based RPG about witches and wizards released for the PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. The creators over at Happy Ray Games...
Editor’s Choice – HyperDot
HyperDot came out of nowhere for me! It's an action-arcade game by solo developer Charles McGregor. I wasn't too familiar with this genre, but the game's bright visuals and electronic music drew me in. However, what really stood out to me was the creator's dedication...