I was glad to see the subtitling wasn’t hastily thrown in at the end, that it included those great atmospheric sounds, and actually indicated direction. Those are little touches that make a huge difference to players that need them.
Pyrophex, via Kongregate
Communicating all sound by text is usually neither practical or desirable, but anything that’s important should be. To judge this, consider whether the sound could be totally removed without much impact to story, gameplay or atmosphere. If not, reinforce them with either captions or visuals.
Captions is the name given to subtitles that represent sounds, rather than speech. I.e. solely for accessibility, and not part of localisation work. They are usually delivered through the same mechanism as subtitles, but it should be possible to turn them on or off independently of whether subtitles are turned on or off.
The Last Door provides all speech as text, and then an extra option to represent all important background noises as text. 14% of their players chose to play through to completion with this option chosen.
Best practice examples:
- Even The Ocean options
- Portal 2 closed captions
- The Last Door - Reducing accessibility barriers on an adventure game
Category & Level:
- Hearing (Intermediate)