My grandfather had tremendous influence over me as a boy, spending summers with him out in the woods of New England. He would marvel over the structures of leaves, molds, and tiny forest creatures. At dinner he’d go on and on about how fascinating the world was, and had a particular interest in minerals, metals, and soap bubbles. I didn’t know until later that he was a rather well known scientist at M.I.T. His work inspired the bubble clusters and strange physics in Tiny Bubbles. He was also color blind. Color blindness is not rare, in fact almost 1 in 10 males has some degree of color disability, usually in the red-green part of the spectrum. My grandfather’s color blindness was never a disability, in fact it helped him appreciate structures in nature where others did not. When I was 13 years old he sent me some bubbles to color in for a lecture he was giving. He needed my help because of his color blindness. He would have had the same problem playing Tiny Bubbles, had I not taken the effort to make a color blind mode in the game. While many developers use patterns or icons to make their games accessible, it was important to me to make a colorblind mode that was authentic to the original game. After a lot of testing, my color blind friends and I came up with a new color palette that works for all 3 color blindness types and defines new color mixing rules that are easy to remember. When showing Tiny Bubbles at shows like PAX or SXSW, people come by and play in groups. Often I notice a gamer standing behind a friend watching the friend play. Later they would come up to me and tell me how they had dismissed the game, like so many others before, when they first saw it. The gameplay was based on color. But while watching their friends play, they noticed this prompt appear:
If you have the most common color blindness type (Protanopia), you'll see that a lot of the colors are the same (simulated):
When you select the [Too Similar] button, you get this next screen:
I like this approach, it's similar to how first-person shooters sometimes have a test for reversing the Look Y-Axis while you're playing the game. I hope you agree it was worth the extra effort. You can help us by telling our story about color blindness in games. Share this article. Maybe it will convince other game developers to think more about color blind players. -Stu Creator of Tiny Bubbles Sign up for Tiny Bubbles news on our website