This is not meant to be a hate post, more a plea to get sensory accessibility in the game so that this community can join in on the fun! Palworld is a newly released Early Access game on steam which combines elements of Survival and Monster-hunting/catching type games.
UPDATE: February 19th, 2024
As mods have been coming out, two amazing modders have so far come up with some accessibility features for Palworld. The first mod is a UI overhaul, which in particular addresses the blinking arrows when hovering items, allows for more colors/scaling, and other tweaks. The second mod gets rid of the spinning animations when throwing pals and pal balls! Both mods are absolutely amazing!
The first thing I’ve noticed with Palworld is the lack of accessibility features, which is something that I’m unimpressed with since this game has been receiving a lot of attention. I do think these features should be added including the ability to turn off UI blinking features (like those surrounding the buttons). There is no practical reason for these features, yet they are distressing for people with autism, sensory processing disorder, and other persons that have issues with visuals. I do appreciate the ability to turn off the motion blur and shake-scales as these would be absolutely abhorrent for persons with sensory disorders.
The ability to change the UI to be more sensory-friendly is something that many modern video game companies are not taking into consideration when building games for a general public. This leads to distress levels for players who have sensory issues, and thus makes it harder for a huge portion of the market that might want to play the game (autism, adhd, sensory processing disorder, misokinesia) that make up a huge portion of the population.
The loading icon is also something that is hard to handle for persons with sensory disorders.
There are numerous little UI features and game features (basically anything that obnoxiously blinks to get attention) that could be reduced or removed with an “accesibility feature”.
Furthermore, an option to turn off sounds like chewing, whistling, howling would be beneficial for these communities as well.
Other accessibility features that would be nice are color blindness settings and text size settings (for visually impaired).
You can view a review of the game here.
