Recommendations #
Offer a wide choice of difficulty levels #
Offering a simple choice of difficulty is a fairly blunt but still good first step in accessibility, allowing some flexibility in the main challenge involved, such as level of AI, speed of enemies or difficulty of puzzles. This can be taken further by offering more detailed options for individual elements of game difficulty.
Allow as wide a choice as possible, at both ends of the scale, and avoid giving demeaning names for lower levels or or mocking players who use them. Bear in mind that difficulty is about allowing people with different levels of ability the same level of experience, even the easiest setting you can possibly implement will present a significant challenge for some.
Allow gameplay to be fine-tuned by exposing as many variables as possible #
Opening up as many existing variables as possible to player configuration can allow the same basic mechanic to be opened up to a huge range of abilities.Through settings the same base game can become everything from a simple cause and effect activity all the way through to a complex highly motor-demanding game.
It also allows gameplay to be tailored to the unique needs of each individual player, rather than being funnelled into simplistic general “difficulty” buckets which may not match up with the areas of gameplay that each player finds a particular barrier and which they do not.
The more settings exposed the greater the degree of personalisation possible, although care must be taken to avoid an overwhelming array of options. Presets and grouping can help greatly with this.