Thoughts for Consideration: Using Accessible Gaming to Teach Navigation Skills
Aaron Preece
In the Netflix adaptation of All the Light We Cannot See, the father of the blind protagonist builds a scale model of their section of Paris and uses it to teach her orientation and mobility. I appreciated the scene since it used actual orientation and mobility principles, such as using physical and audible landmarks to orient yourself, but it is also a good example of how maps and other tools can be used to teach navigation skills.
Inspired by the thought piece on accessible fencing in this issue, I was thinking that it may be possible to use video games (audio games in this specific case) as a way of teaching navigation skills to blind O&M students. In this article, I'll discuss several games that have environments that lend themselves to training someone to learn navigation skills that could also be applied to the real world.
For this article, we'll specifically be looking at games that are designed explicitly to be played by someone who is blind or has low vision. Many video games are now accessible through the efforts of the developers themselves or through people modifying the game after release for accessibility. Games designed specifically for blind and low-vision players oftentimes have the features we're looking for when it comes to instilling efficient navigation principles.
Before we dive into individual games, there are some overall attributes that all of these games share to some degree. As might be expected, all use 3D environments or pseudo-3D environments. Some use true 3D audio environments, while others use a two-dimensional playfield, such as New Horizons, discussed in the Winter 2025 issue of AccessWorld. The vast majority of 3D audio games use cardinal directions to assist in navigation. Those that do not are usually navigated in what would visually be a top-down view, so that up always moves north, left always moves west, and so on. One major principle of audio games is to provide ambient sounds for nearby objects. These are often meant to help direct the player to the object, but can also intentionally serve as auditory landmarks.
We'll be breaking these games down into categories. The first category consists of games that provide no additional feedback aside from potentially direction and auditory landmarks. In these sorts of games, navigation itself is part of the challenge, and using environmental cues to determine where you are and where you're going is part of the gameplay. The second category of games provides some GPS-like features, such as being able to identify the distance to a point of interest and set a beacon there that provides directional feedback as you navigate. Finally, some games go as far as to provide step-by-step instructions in addition to a locator beacon for points of interest. Such games reward independent navigation but don't necessarily require it for progress.
Games without Virtual GPS
Manamon is a duology of role-playing games by the developer VGStorm. In Manamon, you capture and battle monsters in a secondary fantasy world. In each game, you travel across the full breadth of a country, including towns, roads, and other biomes.
The game is played from a virtual top-down perspective, though it doesn't have traditional graphics. The maps for each area in the game are somewhat representative, so towns don't have the full number of buildings, proper roads, and so on. For example, in the first game, your hometown contains your house and your neighbor's house, but little else, despite being meant to represent a full city. Part of the challenge of the game is navigation, so as you continue further into the game, the towns become more and more complex, generally featuring more buildings and detailed layouts. In between towns, you're generally traveling through various wilderness locations, from fields to mountains, volcanoes, jungles, and deserts.
Navigation is part of the challenge of this game. Many of the connecting locations or places you must visit for the story are somewhat labyrinth-like, and part of the challenge is finding your way through while solving puzzles. The game doesn't provide a one-to-one recreation of realistic locations, but it does challenge the player's spatial awareness and navigation skills.
Because navigation is part of the difficulty of the game, there isn't any sort of GPS or easy navigation system when traversing environments. The player is given various audio-based methods for finding their way around. Walls play a consistent tone whenever they are in line with the player at a certain distance, while ambiences and differing footstep sounds are used to indicate general location and add atmosphere. All important items play a looping sound effect to identify their location to the player. This includes people, doors, signs, gates, collectible objects, and more, all with their own unique tones. Combining these sound sources allows users to paint a mental picture of the area and use them as landmarks when navigating. Though the game environment is somewhat abstract, a player needs to have or develop spatial awareness skills and a sense of direction to effectively play the game.
Shades of Doom by GMA Games was one of the first audio games ever produced for a blind and low-vision audience and was arguably the most complex upon its publication. The game is a first-person shooter in the vein of classic Doom, hence the name. In the game, the player navigates eight floors of a scientific facility, fighting various corrupted creatures to shut down an out-of-control experiment.
The game presents itself in first-person auditorily, but in older versions it could be played with extremely simple, high-contrast graphics to aid low-vision players, which were viewed from a top-down perspective. As a first-person game, the player can turn freely 180 degrees, but can also snap to cardinal directions instantly to aid in navigation.
When moving, footsteps echo differently depending on the environment. For example, when walking down a hallway, the footsteps would be centered, but when an opening appears on either side, footsteps will echo from that direction. There are also various machines and devices placed throughout the facility that aid navigation by serving as auditory landmarks.
Similar to Manamon, part of the challenge is navigating the facility and remembering where you are. The different hallway layouts and rooms, along with their various shapes and audio landmarks, are used to help you understand your location. Compared to Manamon, the environment in Shades of Doom is a bit more realistic, though confined to a single building. The size of each floor and the first-person perspective lend it additional realism, but challenge the player in a similar fashion and require many of the same skills.
Games with Simple Tracking Systems
These next two games provide more extensive navigation assistance through announcements of the player's current location via speech, as well as providing access to points of interest whose distance and direction can be tracked.
Swamp is a first-person audio survival shooter by Aprone. In Swamp, you navigate a near one-to-one-scale map of a fictional town, separated into different maps, as you battle zombies and collect supplies and equipment. Each map covers roughly a couple of blocks or the interior of a building.
For example, the first map includes several intersecting streets, multiple businesses, a couple of houses, as well as other buildings and objects. Similar to the games we've mentioned previously, the game includes sound sources placed throughout the maps to aid in navigation, such as blowing winds, ticking stoplights, or the persistent honking of a car alarm.
In addition, as the player navigates maps, their location is identified through their screen reader. For example, the player is told when they enter Green Street or the gas station parking lot.
It is also possible to track points of interest, allowing the player to determine the distance and direction to the point of interest, as well as hear a consistent beep that gets faster the closer they get to it. The beep is positionally placed in the stereo field in the direction of the point of interest. For example, if I was standing on the street south of the gas station and tracked it, I would hear the beep coming from the northwest, positioned toward the left side of my stereo field.
To help identify walls and other obstacles, the game includes radars somewhat based on the movement of a long cane. Radars sweep in a specific direction, such as left to right in front of the player, playing distinct sounds for open space, solid walls, or permeable barriers such as railings or open windows. This allows the player to, for example, run while trailing a wall and know when the wall opens up because the sound at the edge of the radar sweep changes from a solid wall to empty space.
The game heavily rewards memorization of the maps, as minimizing the amount of audio you're listening to at a given time is crucial for identifying and taking out zombies. Players memorize maps based on various sound cues, but also based on the names of the various zones on the map. For example, a player is likely to know which businesses lie along Green Street and use those locations as landmarks while navigating.
Sketchbook(Your World) is a game in which players can create detailed two-dimensional or three-dimensional maps. Importantly for our purposes, it is the first game we've discussed that includes full 3D movement, including a Z-axis. Players create maps to challenge others to complete them, but also for others to explore and enjoy.
The game uses many sound cues, both environmental and informational, to help the player navigate effectively. Various sounds indicate ledges, staircases, doors, signs, and other objects.
Text can be assigned liberally to different zones of a map, allowing for rich descriptions. These descriptions can be used for flavor or for navigation. In addition, much like in Swamp, players can view a list of points of interest or other objects on a given map and track their distance and location with a beacon, which similarly identifies their location relative to the player as they move.
The game has extensive map development tools and could be used to create a near one-to-one recreation of a building or even a section of a city. In some ways, this game may have the greatest applications for orientation and mobility, as it is possible to use it to build audio-based maps. Some players have even done so for fictional environments with varying levels of detail.
GPS-Style Navigation: A Hero's Call
A Hero's Call is a turn-based role-playing game set in a traditional fantasy world. The game prominently features the city of Farhaven as its main hub and is where players spend much of their time.
The game is played from a first-person perspective and provides detailed audio feedback in the form of text announcements for different areas as they are entered, audible landmarks, non-player characters that speak as they move around, and a sophisticated navigation system that alerts the player to nearby walls, openings, doors, and other objects of interest.
Outside the city, the player traverses more complex environments, including a graveyard, forest, and mine.
This game specifically stands out because it includes a system that allows a player to select a point of interest and be guided to it step by step. A voice, placed positionally in the stereo field, continually announces the direction the player needs to travel to reach the selected point of interest. For example, the voice might repeatedly say "south" as the player heads south and then shift to the left and say "east" when the player needs to turn east.
This system not only helps a player determine the distance and direction to a point of interest, but also directly finds the path there for them in much the same way a GPS does in the real world.
It is possible not to use this system, of course, and navigate independently. Doing so can be rewarding and becomes somewhat necessary later in the game. Much like Swamp, learning the layout of the city and where different points of interest are located is helpful for efficient navigation. Once the layout is understood, a player can often navigate more quickly than if they were relying entirely on the guidance system, rewarding memorization and spatial understanding.
The Bottom Line
These games vary in the level of assistance they provide to the player when navigating to specific points of interest, as well as in the level of realism found in their environments. That being said, all of them have something to teach that is applicable to the real world, whether that be using landmarks for navigation, developing general spatial awareness, understanding cardinal directions, or other related skills.
Sketchbook(Your World) may have the most promise in this area, as it is possible to create custom maps within the game. This feature could be used to create a semi-scale model of a student's school or even a set of city blocks.
If you're interested in hearing how these games play in practice, audio demos are available for several of them in this AccessWorld article introducing the principles of audio game design. Also, I have previously reviewed both Manamon and A Hero's Call.