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Accessibility in Word Play

Hey!

With Word Play less than one month away, I wanted to check in and talk about an important part of the game: accessibility.

Accessibility refers to options, features, and design decisions that open a game up to people who have specific needs or requirements. And I've tried to pack the game with this stuff so that as many people as possible can enjoy the game.

Let's look at some of the main ones...

[h3]Visual Accessibility[/h3]



The options menu features a bunch of ways to make the tiles more readable. That includes...

  • Lowercase Letters
  • High Contrast Colours
  • Multiple Dyslexia-friendly fonts
  • Colourful tags on vowels


Mix and match them to find a set-up that works for you.

There's also a feature to turn off the spotty animated backgrounds if those prove too distracting.

[h3]Motor Accessibility[/h3]



Word Play should be effortless to interact with. So with that in mind, I've tried to make the game work across a number of input types. You can play Word Play entirely with...

  • A mouse
  • A keyboard
  • A controller
  • A touchscreen


The game can be played with a single hand. And while you can drag and drop tiles, you never need to do it. For instance - instead of dragging and dropping a tile onto the upgrade card, you can just click the card and then click a tile.

[h3]Other Accessibility[/h3]



There are no punishments for taking too long to find a word, pick a perk, or choose your strategy. And there are no modifiers that provide a bonus for playing faster. So take as much time as you need to play.

There is also no punishment for spelling a word incorrectly - and the game will even try to suggest a close match word in a little "Did you mean...?" bubble. Handy!

[h3]Difficulty Modes[/h3]



Word Play can get pretty tricky - just try the Legendary or Marathon modes! But there's also an Easy Mode that's lots of fun too.

Plus - there's the more casual Quick Play mode. This one doesn't require as much strategic thinking, and there's no fixed score requirement to hit - instead, it's just about how many points you can score. The only thing you need to beat is your own high score!

I hope these features will make Word Play more accessible to more people. If you have a certain request or requirement that I might be able to implement please get in touch and I'll see what I can do.

What's in the full version?

Hey! Thanks so much for checking out the Word Play demo.

As you can imagine, the demo only gives you a small sample of what the full game will contain. So here's a rundown of what to expect in the full release when it launches next month.

[h3]More Special Tiles[/h3]



You've gotten to play with Golden Tiles in the demo, but the full game features a bunch of other upgraded tiles too.

Like Dot Tiles, which double the word's score if used as the final tile. And Diamond Tiles, which power up every time you don't use them. There are others to discover!

[h3]More Perks[/h3]



The demo features just 27 perks (that means the modifiers, upgrades, and gifts you can grab when finishing a round). But the full game has over 100 of them!

Want to hold on to some tiles when refreshing? That's a perk. Want a tile that can mirror the letter to its left? That's a perk. Want to permanently destroy tiles? That's a perk!

These perks will change the way you play, open up new strategies and synergies, and create almost infinite replayability.

[h3]More Special Rounds[/h3]



The demo has a few special rounds which force you to play in a specific way - like "Words Shorter Than Six Tiles Score 0 Points" and "Tiles Refresh After Submission".

The full game will have even more devious special rounds to test your spelling skills, and scupper your high score plans!

[h3]More Modes[/h3]



The demo gives you access to Word Play's easiest and most basic mode. The full game has a slew of more difficult modes to play (just try and beat Legendary mode!), plus a daily challenge, and more.

[h3]More Music[/h3]

The amazing composer Zach Jones (who did the music for Mind Over Magnet) has composed a brilliant soundtrack for this game. You can hear a couple tracks in the demo but the full score will be heard in the final game.

[h3]More More![/h3]

The full game will also have Steam achievements, Steam Cloud support, and more quality of life and accessibility features.

There will also be more words in the dictionary. If you spell a word that's not in the Word Play dictionary, you can hit a button in game to petition for me to add it. I've already implemented some of the words you've suggested, including ZOOMER, OUIJA, VAPE, EMOJI, and WIFI. More will be added before the final release!

[h3]But When?![/h3]

Word Play will be released in July. If you add the game to your wishlist you'll get an email when the game goes live - and you can also take advantage of the launch week discount. But you should also subscribe to Game Maker's Toolkit on YouTube - I'll release a video when the game is released.

[h3]Future Plans[/h3]

Don't worry - I've heard your requests for translated / localised versions of Word Play. I'd love to support this but as a solo developer I have to focus exclusively on the English version for launch. After that - I'll see what I can do. Even if it's just helping people mod additional dictionaries into the game.

And I've also heard your requests for a mobile version! And I totally agree - that's why Word Play will be released on iOS later this year, and Android sometime after that. As for consoles (it sure would be nice on that Switch 2 screen...), we'll have to wait and see.

Patch Notes - Demo 1.04

Hello! I've just applied the final patch for the demo, ahead of Next Fest on Monday. So here's what is new and fixed.

New

  • You can now open the letter bag and peek at the game board while the shop is open, using two new buttons.
  • Options menu lets you change volume settings from the title screen


Fixed

  • You can now input "ing" tiles with the keyboard, by using the I key.
  • Volume and music sliders now save properly
  • Various other fixes


That's the final update to the demo, outside of perhaps a few invisible bug fixes if anything major gets dredged up during Next Fest. Otherwise... I better finish up the actual game!

As always, if you'd like to report a bug or suggest a feature, please visit the GMTK Discord where we have a few forum rooms for Word Play.

Mark

Patch Notes - Demo 1.03

Hello! I've just applied a quick patch to the demo, mostly with bug fixes. So here's what's what:

New

  • You can now revert a glass tile after making one. Drag and drop the glass tile back onto the upgrade card to smash it and start again


Fixed

  • Holding the shuffle button to sort the tiles alphabetically now works on controllers and keyboards, too
  • Various other fixes


Also - because this update made some under the hood changes to the codebase, save games from previous builds won't work and so they have been ruthlessly and carelessly deleted. Sorry!

If you'd like to report a bug or suggest a feature, please visit the GMTK Discord where we have a few forum rooms for Word Play.

Thanks so much for word playing!

Mark

Patch Notes - Demo 1.02

Patch Notes - Demo 1.02

Hey! I've just applied a patch to the demo, ahead of Next Fest in a couple weeks. Here's what's new and fixed:

New

  • If you spell a word that's not in the Word Play dictionary, you can petition for its future inclusion from the options menu
  • You can now spell words longer than 10 tiles. Just keep adding tiles to reveal a secret second set of submission slots!
  • Added volume sliders for music and sound effects
  • The title screen now shares some helpful tips for advanced options
  • You can now click and hold the shuffle button to sort the letters alphabetically
  • 
"+4 Refresh" gift now shows you how many refreshes you currently have
  • "Covert All [X] Tiles to Golden Tiles" gift now shows you how many tiles you have with that letter


Fixed

  • The "Preview upcoming letters" modifier now shows the "Ing" tile correctly
  • Fixed an issue with glass tiles and the Midas Touch modifier
  • Using a controller / keyboard to re-order the modifiers no longer makes the entire game explode


If you'd like to report a bug or suggest a feature, please visit the GMTK Discord where we have a few forum rooms for Word Play.

Thanks so much for word playing!

Mark