I Waited Six Years for Paralives. Then I Couldn’t Play It.

I’ve always loved playing video games, or really any computer game. However, as an AAC user, finding games that are accessible to me is quite the challenge. As a kid, it was kind of easier to find games that I could play, since games for younger people usually have simpler controls and are paced quite well. And if I needed help doing something, like earning coins in Club Penguin so I could buy the latest cool igloo, my parents were usually willing to sit with me for a few hours playing their respective favourite games, which were much higher earners than the games I could play.

A couple of years ago, I started playing Sims 4 after not really playing video games for a long while. I loved that game and I quickly fell in love with the life simulation genre. Of course I did. I’m a writer who loves to tell stories and in these games, I can be whoever I want and build families I can only dream about.

But, as I, and the millions of other Sims enthusiasts, watched the beloved game franchise crash and burn over the last twelve years, there was a new game on the horizon, whose development began being publicly shared six years ago.

I’ve been waiting for the early access release of Paralives for years now, and it finally dropped at about 3am on Tuesday morning. I, of course, did not get up that early because some of us need our sleep, and my worker really would not have appreciated a 2am start to the day. But I did buy and download it as soon as I could.

As the game is built by a team of indie developers, I’m going to try not to be too harsh. I’ve been following the game’s development for years, and I genuinely believe it’s dripping with potential. The bones they’ve already built look incredible, and I’m so excited to see where it goes.

My problems with the game are purely accessibility related, which I should have expected since it’s still in active development. However, since I know the team is committed to diversity and inclusion, I’m sure I’ll be playing this game soon enough. I’ve already sent them an email detailing exactly what is making the game inaccessible to me. And I see many of the content creators on YouTube having similar issues, even if we’re not coming with the same point of view.

I love the slower pace. I love the art style. I love how intentional and alive everything feels. You can tell this game has been made by people who genuinely care about what they’re building, which honestly makes this even harder to talk about because I want to be playing it so badly. This isn’t me dunking on a lazy studio pumping out unfinished garbage. It’s me staring at a game I’ve been excited about for years and realising my body currently can’t access it properly.

After waiting for what felt like an eternity for the game to download, I opened it for the first time and played through the tutorial. While I found the camera movement difficult because needing to use arrow keys when you can’t do press-and-hold actions is a pain in the butt, I assumed there would be more accessibility options once I dug through the settings.

I made my first Para, a woman with two prosthetic legs, because yes, they actually exist in this game, who I was going to pretend had some sort of chronic illness. Exciting, right? I literally spent an hour creating her because the possibilities were endless. For a person who doesn’t usually care for character creation, that is amazing.

And then I realised I couldn’t really play it.

Currently, there are only two ways to move the camera. The main way is to use the arrow keys, which, as a life simulation game, feels weird at best. However, as an AAC user, I find the arrow keys a pain in the butt, as we can only do one action at a time, and there really is no way to program this action, at least not one I know how to do. While most people can hold a key down and make tiny adjustments as they go, many AAC users rely on alternative access methods that don’t work nearly as smoothly with continuous movement. I’m sure there is a way, but I have no idea how to do it in an elegant way.

The other option involves clicking and holding the scroll wheel to move around. As someone who has never used a standard mouse, that wasn’t a viable solution for me either.

The best option I could find, without having to mod the game, was edge scrolling. Which, to put it nicely, sucks when your body is notorious for getting too excited in anticipation of doing anything time-based.

Of course, I’m not the only one complaining about the problems with the camera. But for me, this isn’t a frustrating gameplay issue or something that makes the experience slightly annoying. It fundamentally changes whether I can access the game at all.

The thing is, accessibility in games is rarely about one giant feature that magically fixes everything. Sometimes it’s tiny things. Toggle controls instead of hold actions. More camera customisation. Fully remappable controls. Adjustable movement sensitivity. Alternative ways to navigate menus and objects without drag mechanics. These changes probably sound small to most people, but they’re often the difference between players with disability being included or excluded entirely.

And because Paralives is still in early access, I feel hopeful about it.

I’ve already emailed the team explaining the issues I’m having, and from everything I’ve seen over the years, they genuinely seem like developers who care about accessibility and inclusion. I don’t think this is a case of people not caring. I think it’s a case of accessibility often being invisible until people with disabilities get their hands on something and explain where the barriers are. I’m sure that at some point over the next two years of active development, where there are so many different people trying the game, the accessibility issues will be addressed along with the rest of development.

I don’t think I’ll be waiting another six years to play Paralives. And when that day comes, I’ll be right back where I started on Tuesday morning, creating characters, building houses, and getting completely distracted from whatever I was supposed to be doing.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to support my writing, you can buy me a drink below. Every contribution helps me keep publishing weekly essays about disability, technology, AAC, and whatever else has captured my attention that week.