Accessible Games

Storming the Castle: First Impressions

Game Info

Publisher: Toy Vault, Inc.

Year Published: 2008

Number of Players: 2 to 4

Play Time: 30 minutes

Set-up Time: About 5 minutes

Learning Curve: Low

Ages: 7 and up

Table Size: Small or Medium (depends on number of players)

Impressions

Birthdays are a wonderful thing.  It is around this time each year which I find myself surrounded by new board games to play, enjoy, and write about.  This year, a family member saw fit to gift me with a board game — one of my favorite hobbies — themed around The Princess Bride — my favorite movie.  In concept, at least, it is a match made in heaven; after all, isn’t it great to combine two things you love so dearly in to one, extra-amazing product?  Well, the answer to that rhetorical question is more tricky …
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“Game Grids” Kickstarter Has Potential to Enable Gamers

Game Grids, if this project gets off the ground, is not only going to be something useful for many board game players, but *unbelievably* useful for disabled gamers.

The short of it is that these grids offer a place to put tile pieces so they don’t shift around during play.  This is *huge* for any low-vision or motor-impaired gamer who has trouble dealing with small tiles. With something like Game Grids, Alhambra (read our review) becomes less of a chore and more of a game again. Carcassonne becomes much less daunting.

This Kickstarter project is in need of a lot of help and doesn’t have a lot of time left. It’s billed as a useful way to keep organized when playing tile-based games, but it has the hidden benefit of being a great tool for disabled gamers — and that’s something we all should be able to get behind.

Can we …
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‘Take On Rules’ – Helping Other Gamers

Jeremy Friesen of the “Take On Rules” blog recently posted a wonderful article entitled “Helping Other Gamers With Consideration for the Visually Impaired.” It is an excellent post in which he talks about his experience at GenCon and helping a visually impaired woman find a game to play that isn’t a hassle for someone with a disability to get into.

Some of the games he mentions in his post are:

• Our Last Best Hope
• Fiasco
• Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
• InSpectres
• Cthulhu Dark
• School Daze

It’s a wonderful story and a great read. I highly recommend heading on over and checking it out!

http://takeonrules.com/2012/10/07/helping-other-gamers-with-consideration-for-the-visually-impaired/#comment-1197

AXSMap.com – Find Accessible Businesses

About a year and a half ago, I told you about a new website called Wheelmap that aims to crowdsource knoledge of local businesses around the world and help people with disabilities find businesses that are accessible. (View the original article.)

It was a novel new service with big goals, and seems to be doing well. Who would have ever suspected, though, that a similar service would crop up? One that essentially competes with Wheelmap to do the same thing.

That new service is called AXS Map (pronounced”access map”). AXS Map is very similar to Wheelmap, but requires registration to use. It does, however, allow more detailed ratings about local businesses; users can rate the company’s front door access, floor access, bathroom access, and even note whether or not the building is quiet or has Braille available.

One of the other great features about AXS Map is …
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Accessibility in PDF Publishing

I am currently researching and writing an article (to be posted later) about accessibility in PDF publishing. In particular, I feel that game designers need to really consider how they launch their products in the digital age.

There are a lot of disabled gamers out there, and they deserve the same access to products that everyone else does. It takes a bit of additional effort for publishers, but it’s totally worth it.

To get you started, here is a link to a great resource about tagging PDFs for screen reader accessibility. It’s just one resource and one concern, but it’s the best I’ve encountered for this so far and it’s perhaps one of the biggest and most far-reaching things a publisher can do to make their products accessible.

WebAIM.org: PDF Accessibility

Hopefully that will get you started on your road to understanding the why’s and how’s of PDF accessibility. …
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Psi-punk: A Fudge Cyberpunk RPG Kickstarter is Live

The official Kickstarter project for Accessible Games’ first full-length role-playing game, Psi-punk, is now live. Our goal is to raise $4,500 by midnight on August 28th. Please join us on Kickstarter and help out by spreading the word.

Visit the Psi-punk RPG Kickstarter Page.

Or read the official announcement on the Psi-punk Developer’s Blog.

The Blind GM

Another blog shout-out, this time to The Blind GM.

The Blind GM’s blog is aligned with the same goals as Accessible Games: to bring gaming to the disabled (in his case, more specifically to the blind).

“If my goal is to bring awareness to the issues us blind folks deal with in gaming, then I need to tell you about what my gaming is like,” says The Blind GM in his May 26th post.  He continues to detail how he will soon be writing about his play experiences in various RPGs and how he and his friends adapt to his being blind.

We expect to read great things from this blog in the future, so be sure to check it out at http://theblindgm.wordpress.com/.

Obfuscated Objective: Board Games and Speech Therapy

We wanted to share this link with everyone because we think this blog is not only a great read but a great resource. There’s a lot that can be said about speech therapy (har har), and I know that if I had these sorts of games and experiences when I was going through it as an elementary school child it would have made that time a lot more pleasant.

Check out Obfuscated Objectives at http://obfuscatedobjective.wordpress.com – it’s exactly the sort of resource that Accessible Games likes to promote!

Lost Cities: First Impressions

Game Info

Publisher: Kosmos, Rio Grande Games

Year Published: 1999

Number of Players: 2-2

Play Time: About 30 – 45 minutes

Set-up Time: About 5 minutes

Ages: 10 and up

Table Size: Medium

Impressions

I recently got to take Lost Cities for a spin during the 14th annual Gamestorm convention in Vancouver, WA.  My friend and I were looking for a quick game to pass the time, and this one was recommended by one of the people attending the Games Library booth at the convention.

Lost Cities is an easy-to-learn card game designed for only two players and was part of the Kosmos 2-Player Games series.  The premise is pretty simple: You …
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Psi-punk: A Fudge Cyberpunk RPG

It has been a while since we last updated, but we’re out of hiatus to announce our new Psi-punk Developer’s Blog.

Psi-punk is an upcoming release from Accessible Games that blends psionics and cyberpunk into a unique setting.  It is based on the Fudge RPG engine and should be released by the Fall of 2012.

Head on over to our Psi-punk Developer’s Blog and take a look!