How Accessible is Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical?

Accessibility in games has been getting better as of late, so you might be wondering how it is in the latest titles. In this article, I’ll go over the accessibility options available in Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical!

Ahead of the game’s launch, Summerfall Studios published an accessibility page, explaining how it has prioritised accessibility to ensure Stray Gods can be enjoyed by many people, while also acknowledging that there are some features that still need work. Let’s take a look at the various in-game menu options, content warnings, gameplay mechanics, and more.

When it comes to gameplay, Stray Gods doesn’t require any long-presses, button mashing, or heavy menu interaction. Pausing can be done at any time via the Space Bar by default. You can alter the control scheme with keyboard remapping at launch, changing your inputs for Skip Line and Confirm Selection, for example. However, be aware that the ability to change the default controls on console is a feature that will be patched in after the game’s release.

During songs, you’ll be given choices to determine the direction and tone of the music. Each choice corresponds to a trait, and you’ll have a timer ticking down underneath them. If you’d like more time, there is a Timed Choices option in the menu that lets you turn this timer on or off, so you can take as long as you need to contemplate each of the choices. It’s also important to note that your traits are connected to a colour: Charming is green, Clever is blue, and Kickass is red. Additionally, you’ll always find the choices in the same location, as Charming is located on the left, Clever is on the right, and Kickass is at the top, so you don’t need to depend on the colours to know which is which. Outside of songs, trait-based dialogue options are represented by a colour and a unique icon, but do note that their position on the dialogue wheel can change.

In the menu you’ll find a Subtitles option, allowing you to turn subtitles on and off, as well as Subtitle Size, which gives you a choice between regular and large text. The font used throughout Stray Gods is Sans-Serif for improved readability, and this is currently the only font available for the game. The language of on-screen text can also be changed to French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese (Simplified).

Stray Gods is not fully blind accessible, but it does offer some auditory captions with the Audio Description option, which provides text-to-speech descriptions and close captions, reading out loud what’s happening in the scene that is critical or core to the story. At launch, this will only be available in English, and choice options cannot be read out with this setting. However, the team is looking into expanding upon this for future updates.

With any game, it’s good to make an informed choice about the experience you’ll be playing. There are heavy themes explored throughout Stray Gods’ narrative, including Alcohol Use, Violence, PTSD, Death, and Suicide. The team has released details about each category on the accessibility page for players who want to review them, though they might contain spoilers.

I hope this write-up helps you play! It’s great to see more developers designing videogames with accessibility in mind, and I’d love to see teams follow Stray Gods’ transparent approach, making the information available before players buy the game.