Legend of Grimrock developers Almost Human have taken Reddit by storm. A thread started by meandertal, details how the developers quickly implemented a request from a disabled fan that would enable him to play the game easier.
Rich (also known as, HarpoonIPA) posted a comment on the developer blog asking if Grimrock will have "old school movement with a click of the mouse on the arrows". Much like what can be found in Dungeon Master games from the "Amiga and Atari ST".
Lead developer Petri replied saying they do not "have on-screen arrows", but asked why Rich wanted to know.
Rich replied:
I’m disabled and use a mouth stick for typing, I always used the mouse in DM just easier for me, but I will learn to play you’re way.
To which Petri wrote:
I didn’t see why the arrow icons couldn’t be added, so I went and added them for you. They can be enabled from settings menu. Hope you like the game!
Community Reaction
The thread on reddit exploded with support and praise for the developer:
The fact that he basically told the developer exactly what would make it easier for him is the best part about it.
As someone that could be considered 'disabled' - this is just, straight-up fucking awesome.
Hard to get the attention of major players in situations like this, so seeing the indie dev go above and beyond is just awesome.
I will buy it now solely because of this man's kindness. Any fun I get from the game is bonus.
It also highlighted a section of gaming that is rarely thought about by the wider community, but it very serious to many developers.
Redditor Amablue detailed in a comment what his team do to make the experience for colour blind players as enjoyable as possible.
We have post-processing filters that affect the entire game that are available to devs so that we can test out UI's in the way that colorblind people would see.
There are a lot of places where color is used to indicate things (like item rarity, or when something is special and needs to be highlighted).
Amablue also went on to highlight the importance of being able to remap keys on a keyboard, "it makes a big difference to people who don't have full use of their hands".
Legend of Grimrock is set to come out on PC, Mac and iOS in early 2012.
