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

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.

AbleGamers' Web Game of the Week: Upgrade Complete 2

Written by Steve Spohn

Published on 17 April 2011

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{sidebar id=1}Do you ever play a tower defense game only to see the upgrades of what the towers do and what they look like? If so, you're going to love our latest AbleGamers web game of the week, Upgrade Complete 2. This game is nothing original as far as your gameplay goes; you own an upgradable ship that flies in your typical vertical scrolling shooter, much like the old arcade games.

The twist is while you can upgrade your ship to do more damage and kill more enemies faster than ever, that's not the real game. The real game is to upgrade the game itself. When you start out, your game looks incredibly bad, no music, horrible graphics and very little upgrades. And that's where the real game begins.

In the upgrade screen you can pay to upgrade the game by using the gold from killing monsters. Slowly but surely you transform the game from the graphics level, HUD, gameplay and even the upgrade screen itself from horribly amateurish to your typical Armor game.

The game itself allows for multiple types of weapons, vertical and horizontal speed increases, as well as magnets to collect the coins for you. The game is not hard at all, simply run through the waves repeatedly to collect money. There is no way to die as nothing attacks you. Upgrade to a lightning cannon and start adding magnets. Before you know it, the game is actually playing itself and you can amuse yourself upgrading the hundred different upgradable things to see what they do.

Game accessibility

UC2_splash You will need both the keyboard and mouse to play this game. The mouse is needed for clicking on upgradable buttons, while the keyboard steers your ship back and forth. Once you have added enough magnets and rockets or lasers, you'll no longer need the keyboard. But you will always need the mouse.

There is voice acting and text directions. Some of the directions are difficult to read in the beginning, until you upgrade the font of course. There should be no colorblind issues, and you're not missing anything if you cannot hear the game. Actually one of the upgrades is to remove some of the annoying static.

There is one upgrade called “heartbeat” **SPOILER** if you are easily affected by seizures do not do this upgrade, it will suddenly make your screen flash to “scare you” but it could be a problem for some.

Overall, a very worthwhile game. The original was a very popular web games; this sequel does the original justice.