Screenreader Accessible Visual Novels

So playing visual novels written in Ren'Py has become my latest momentary obsession. I figured I'd create a thread to post my thoughts on the few I've played, and see if anyone else has played any good ones. If you have, let me know in the comments! I really want to hear what everyone is enjoying.

How to Play

In theory, you can just press "v" in any Ren'Py visual novel that supports self voicing. However, at least on Windows with NVDA, this isn't the best way. It will use whatever SAPI voice you have set as default in the control panel, and that's probably not what you want. First off, it makes it difficult to focus on the game, because frequently Ren'Py is talking, and your screen reader is also talking at the same time, and the game is playing background music, and some games are parcially voice-acted, and it's just a lot. Secondly, it makes it difficult to review text in detail, for example if you want to know how an unfamiliar character name is spelled, when you want to write about them later. Lastly, Ren'Py won't send text to your Braille display, if you have one.

Thankfully, there's a better way! Instead of speaking itself, you can convince Ren'Py to send all text to the clipboard instead. The best way to set yourself up with NVDA, IMHO, is:

1. Download and install the autoclip addon for NVDA.
2. Start the Ren'Py game you want to play.
3. Press "a".
4. Press "NVDA+R" to OCR the screen.
5. Find the spot where it says "clipboard", and move the mouse there (NVDA+numpad divide), and click on it (numpad divide).
6. Press control+shift+nvda+k. This will cause autoclip to read the text on your clipboard whenever it changes.
7. You should now be able to move through the menus with the arrow keys and make choices with enter, while NVDA reads out everything with your preferred screen reader voice and settings. You'll need to find "return" to get back to the main menu. Now, even if you quit and relaunch the game, the clipboard setting will be saved in that game. If you want to review something more closely (to check spelling for example), the last text you heard will always be on your clipboard. You can just open notepad and paste it in.
8. When you stop playing, you'll want to press control+shift+NVDA+k again to turn off clipboard reading. If you forget, next time you copy something to the clipboard for any reason, NVDA will start reading it.
9. Bonus: if you want to play a game that isn't written in English, you can use the NVDA Translate addon to translate any text NVDA speaks. Install it, and press control+shift+NVDA+t to toggle it on and off.

If you launch a game that you're sure is written in Ren'Py but pressing either a or v don't seem to do anything, it could be that the game was written in an older version of Ren'Py, that didn't offer the self-voicing feature. However, you can take the files from that game, and play it in the newest Ren'Py version, and it will frequently work. There is a video on getting the files from Ren'Py games and loading them into the latest Ren'Py version by @[email protected]; she's specifically talking about playing games built for IOS or Android on a computer, but the process is the same. I know, I know, YouTube tutorials. But she describes what she's doing, and there's no annoying background music.

Games I've Tried

Some of the below contain slight spoilers.

Arcade Spirits

Arcade Spirits is an excellent starting point. Self-voicing is officially supported, pictures and animations generally include descriptive text, and the story is sweet and well written. Even if the subject matter puts you off, give this one a chance; I don't have a lot of familiarity with Arcades going in, but I didn't need any. The game manages to embrace all of your choices, and wrap itself around your playstyle in a way that feels seamless, while not railroading you through the plot. Arcade Spirits likes you and wants you to have a good time, rather than the more adversarial relationship that most computer games have with players. If you've never played a visual novel, this is the one to start with. There are multiple endings, and none of the ones I've managed feel better or worse than any of the others; it's entirely down to personal preference.

Catacomb Prince

Catacomb Prince, on the other hand, isn't quite that style. There are multiple "bad" and/or less than ideal endings, and the game will kill you off quite quickly for making certain choices. I actually struggled to get an ending that I consider "good", but that says more about my lack of judgement than it says about the game itself. But even the "bad" endings are logical, well-written, and interesting. The game is also short (comparatively), so replaying it a few times doesn't feel like a burden, and the game concept never overstays its welcome.

However, while self-voicing is available by default, there are a few accessibility issues you need to be aware of. First off, the main menu doesn't respond to the keyboard. You'll need to OCR the screen and click start that way. Once you've done that, though, everything mostly works as normal, with one exception. Sometimes, when transitioning between scenes (Acts? Chapters? Not sure the official term people use) you'll get a menu with no choices for you to make. You'll just have the standard options, save, load, quit, etc. I suspect this is some kind of full-screen image or picture. If you use numpad divide to make NVDA simulate a mouse click anywhere on the screen, the game will continue as normal, and you won't have missed anything.

Katawa Shoujo: Re-Engineered

Katawa Shoujo: Re-Engineered is a game I should probably love. It's a disability centred high school romance game, with excellent portrayals of characters with multiple differing disabilities, and the process of getting to grips with your identity as a person with a disability. And yet...and yet...It didn't work for me. Maybe because I play games as an escape; I know about disability, and I'm just not that interested in exploring it in the visual novel format. Maybe because I didn't particularly like the main character; I was born with my blindness, so I don't have a lot of patients with people grieving their disability diagnosis, though I recognize that's a personal character flaw. Maybe because I didn't really like any of the love interests, and just following my natural inclinations lead to me dying alone, and I wasn't as unhappy with that ending as the game obviously wanted me to be. But these are the reasons I didn't like the game, not reasons it was a bad game. If none of these put you off (or maybe even if they do) give it a chance. You'll find no accessibility issues, thoughtful characterization of disabled students, and disabled romance, something that's all too rare.

Doki Doki Literature Club

Self-voicing is not included in this one by default, and in my personal opinion, it's not worth the trouble of getting it working. If you want to, maybe because this game is so famous you've heard about it and want to know what it is, the best thing to do is to use Doki Doki Mod Docker. Follow the installation instructions, but don't add any mods. Once you launch the game and click I agree using OCR, the self-voicing settings will work.

But everything about this game rubbed me the wrong way. Note that everything to follow could be considered a complete spoiler, even though I'm trying to avoid it. The game makes some pretty strong assumptions about who the player is (a straight dude who wants to date Japanese high school girls). Normally, that would be fine. But this game breaks the fourth wall, making the player "me". As "I" am a middle aged dude, I don't like it. I'm fine with putting myself into the shoes of a player character, but it's less fine when the game then tries to tell me that me and the player character are the same person. Second, the plot seems to be a complete railroad. No matter what you do, horrible things are going to happen. The problem is, the reason they happen is poorly explained and uninteresting. Without spoiling too much, this game explores obsession, computer games, and psychopathy, in ways that are pretty incoherent, and don't help anyone draw any knew conclusions. It feels like miserable horror, for the sake of miserable horror. Maybe if I knew more about how the love interest that's forced on the player became who she is, how she found out what she knows, or how that knowledge lead her to the conclusions she draws, it would be a more interesting game. But we're not given that. The game just wants us to be impressed by how weird and interesting it is, when it does nothing to earn that depth. I'm glad this was the second visual novel I tried, after a wonderful experience with Arcade Spirits. If it was my first, I might well have given up on the format entirely.