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No Barriers to Fun!
We met our friend Giddeon at the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade in Atlantic City, New Jersey. When he first sat down with the AbleGamers crew, Giddeon didn't want to play any games. He told us that with his disability gaming was difficult. Giddeon has a rare disease that caused the growth of his arms .. Read More -
A Window to the World
Shepherd University invited the AbleGamers Foundation to come on campus and do one of our Accessibility Arcades for the students and local disabled community. The event was a roaring success with hundreds of children and adults coming out to see the technology and in some cases experience gaming the first time. Read More
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About the AbleGamers Foundation
Since 2004, the AbleGamers Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, has served more than 56 million members of the disabled community by advocating greater access in video games. Today, AbleGamers is a leader in the development of equipment, programs and services to those living with disabilities, hardships, and quality-of-life issues that are a result of chronic illness or trauma. It is our goal to ensure that all people, regardless of their disability, can use gaming as a tool to have enriched social experiences with friends, family, and the world at large.
{sidebar id=1}AbleGamers’ Rob McCaulley had the opportunity to sit down with the CEO of Sandswept Studios, creators of Detour, for a one on one interview about life, love and blowing stuff up.
Rob McCaulley: From what I can put together, Sandswept Studios was founded less-than 5-years ago by a 17-year-old developer. How about a quick history lesson on Sandswept Studios?
Geoff Keene: That's somewhat accurate. I founded Sandswept Studios when I was 17, about 3 and a quarter years ago. DETOUR had released about 5 months after my 20th birthday, so we've been working for quite some time on it.
RM: Math is fun… DETOUR is the first game from Sandswept Studios. What’s it all about?
GK: DETOUR is primarily about having fun. The concept is a little crazy, and the gameplay is chaotic. Players are charged with the role of having to build roads to escort trucks across the map. If a player scores the set number of trucks, they win. Of course, while they're doing this, they're trying to stop everyone else from doing the same (trying to get their trucks across the map, and over the finish line). You can launch bombs and other crazy weapons at each other. It's definitely a clash of genres.
RM: DETOUR gets pretty under-handed at times: demolishing the competition’s roads, trucks, buildings, hiring protesters to get in the way, and other things the Better Business Bureau might frown upon. What inspires an RTS based on construction warfare?
GK: The original idea was something turn-based, simple in design, with a few additions. Our co-founder and lead engineer, Richard, pitched me the idea early on for a 'bridges' style game. Some people may remember an old board game where players would take turns placing bridges to block their opponents and connect to the other side before they do. Saying that DETOUR has grown and branched from that original idea is an understatement. I think we definitely have grown an entirely different tree, though we're quite happy with the result. We can safely say there was very little external inspiration for DETOUR.
RM: One of the items in the options menu of DETOUR is “Super Simple,” which takes all the detail out of the game, and makes it easier to look at. That’s not a really a standard console feature, and not something I’ve encountered in the many PC games I’ve played. Was there something that played into its inclusion in the game?
GK: That was actually a quick attempt to lower the graphics requirements so some PCs could play it with better frame-rate (we don't recommend it though), without having to get into all the details. DETOUR wasn't designed to be very customizable graphically, which is a problem we won't duplicate in future titles.
RM: A lot of games focus on fashion over function where visuals are concerned (small text, mini-maps). A larger font option, a full-screen map would increase playability for visually impaired players. Is there a point where fashion might meet function in DETOUR?
GK: DETOUR was originally planned for consoles (we had a goal of XBLA at one point), but we've ensured it runs as a PC game ever since the decision was made to go all PC. That said, there are some artifacts in DETOUR from its console past, such as larger font in some places and mini-map not being integrated within the HUD. I can definitely say the art style of DETOUR is intentional, in order to keep everything very easy to see. For example, some RTS games make the units very hard to distinguish from the details of the terrain. That's something we were very clear about in DETOUR. Tile types and vehicles all have a very specific theme and look to them, so the player would never get one confused with something else, or lose track of things they needed.
RM: Do you feel that the ability to slow the speed of the gameplay against AI opponents would take away from the real-time nature of the game?
GK: We've actually heard this requested a few times. In hindsight, we can see many RTS games have a speed option, but we've never considered DETOUR to actually be in the same genre as a unit-based RTS, but if it makes gameplay more fun for more players, it's definitely something to be considered.
RK: Could we see patches for any of the aforementioned issues in the future?
GK: We've been patching, fixing, and adding things to DETOUR post-release, but there's a point where it no longer becomes very viable for us, and we simply have to move on to our next project. If there was a louder clamoring for this sort of thing, and if our multiplayer base rapidly increased, we would definitely consider continuing updates past the ones we already have planned.
RM: Closing comments?
GK: We're definitely interested in including options (HUD scale for bigger font size, color-blind modes, and so on) in our future titles, and possibly implementing them as we see fit for DETOUR.
Thanks for the interview. :) Pardon Our Dust!
RM: Thank you for the interview, and providing AbleGamers.com with FIVE Steam codes for DETOUR. Don't forget to read our detailed Accessibility Review of Detour.
Readers, all you’ve got to do to pick up one of these codes to download DETOUR on Steam is be a registered AbleGamers.com user and leave a comment below. Winners will be chosen at random on June 5th. Good luck!
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