Sensoidvania: Increasing Awareness Towards Visual Disability Through Metroidvania Experience

Abstract

Raising awareness towards social issues through literary means have always been practiced but as a relatively new medium; the storytelling elements of video games which are being utilized to provide such an awareness raising effect, are still mostly unexplored. Separating from other non-interactive media, a video game that aims to achieve this must be designed to convey the message through both its story and its gameplay and mechanics, while keeping the entertainment factor of a video game. As it is designed to influence the player to thoroughly explore the game and its story beneath, the adventure platformer games, also known as Metroidvanias is a ripe genre to exploit in this context. In the scope of this study, a concept design for a metroidvania game, designed to raise awareness towards visual disability, while influenced by the mechanics of some popular titles of the genre, was created and evaluated through a series of surveys.