Hello Ability Powered, gamers! Today we are looking at Ubisoft’s latest addition to the Anno franchise: Anno 1800. This is a city building strategy game where you are trying to explore, survive, and expand your cities while keeping your citizens happy. But, what about accessibility of the game? Let’s take a look.
Settings
If you read the Options for Accessibility you already have some idea of how the game runs. It starts in full screen mode, but can be easily changed to window mode before the game starts by only clicking a setting with your mouse. The game works with on-screen keyboard and VoiceAttack for any keybinds you wish to use. Subtitles are on by default and show most text.
I say “most” because I did notice a few times when I heard a character say things, but the text wasn’t on the screen. For example, when the first newspaper comes out our sister is angry because of the bad press. The journalist apologized and said that he was forced to write it. You never see text for the apology though, and to me, it added depth to the story. Seeing subtitles for it would be really nice.
Difficulty
Anno 1800 has different settings for difficulty, but the easiest is normal. However, you can play the campaign using the custom game setting to tweak the difficulty a bit more. For example, you can turn off pirates completely to have less you have to worry about while you are trying to get through the game’s story.
During the game, you can also adjust the game speed which includes pausing the game if you need to take a break for a minute. The downside is that you can’t actually build anything while the game is paused. It would have been nice to be able to pause the game and place roads and buildings for those of us that need a little extra time to click things.
Gameplay
The game is mostly mouse only friendly, but the use of on-screen keyboard is helpful for some parts of the game. Sometimes you need to zoom in or out, rotate buildings, and more. It’s also amazing to rename your cities or ships to really personalize the game. So far, I haven’t run into anything that was difficult to do just playing with the mouse.
Another nice option is the right click command menu. With the option enabled you can right click your mouse and a menu opens at the mouse pointer with actions you can quickly access such as “Demolish” or “Upgrade”. Having this open at the mouse pointer reduces mouse movement since you don’t have to move to the toolbar before changing tools.
Gameplay has been pretty relaxing. The only real sense of urgency I have felt was when pirates started attacking in a multiplayer game. I disabled the pirates in my single player campaign and so far I haven’t felt rushed. There is also a sandbox mode if you just feel like a solo adventure without playing through story objectives. Expect a more in-depth look at the multiplayer experience soon here on Ability Powered!
Early Thoughts
While there are a few things I noticed which could be added to the game to aid accessibility, like playing while paused, so far playing has been a ton of fun. As a matter of fact, as soon as I wrap this up I will definitely be heading to my settlement to build more! Before I head off to play though, let’s look at the Anno 1800 notes one more time.
Anno 1800 Notes
- Has window mode.
- Works with on-screen keyboard and VoiceAttack voice commands.
- Most* voice overs are shown as subtitles.
- Mostly mouse only friendly.
- Totally awesome quick access menu.
Have you tried Anno 1800? If so, leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts!
You can find many other accessibility options for other games on our Accessibility First Looks column!
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