I started playing #BluePrince a few wheeks ago on a whim and it turned out to be one of the most engaging games I've experienced in years. I love it to bits. Still, I hesitate to recommend it. Why?

It's an #accessibility nightmare.

Let me explain.

The game is riddled with unintentional barriers, many of which could have been avoided entirely or at least removed with retrofitted accessibility features. I’ll focus on the most obvious ones which would have been absolutely possible to tackle by a single developer.

To start with the worst: You cannot pause the game or add manual saves, meaning that you have to complete a run you already started or lose progress (because if you save and quit, the game will automatically skip to the next day).

Some runs will be shorter, but my current average is 50 minutes and the longest one took two and a half hours from start to finish. That’s pretty bad from a usability standpoint, because forcing players to continue is a surefire way to frustrate them. But it’s so much worse in terms of accessibility, because players with a range of cognitive or motor impairments need breaks on a regular basis, or risk bodily harm. So when, for example, a person with chronic pain needs to stop playing, they will be punished for it.

This is the options menu. It offers next to no useful options for lowering barriers, except for look sensitivity and field of view sliders, which may help mitigate the massive motion sickness some players experience. I’m usually not prone to motion sickness outside of VR experience, but Blue Prince made me feel really nauseous initially and still does when walking down circular staircases.