39 Days to Mars Accessibility Report - Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

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39 Days to Mars

Accessibility Report

34 Accessibility Features

We've documented 34 accessibility features for 39 Days to Mars, including Fully Voiced (Or No Speech), No Button Combos, Remap Buttons, Play Without Hearing and Colour Blind Friendly. Its accessibility is strongest in Controls and Getting Started but it also has features in Reading, Navigation, Visual and Audio to reduce unintended barriers.

This report is created with input from accessibility experts and the player community to help people find games that have the accessibility features they require. Once you have found potential games on the database, there are excellent specialist accessibility sites that offer in-depth reviews to guide your purchasing decisions.

39 Days to Mars is a two-player puzzle adventure game where players cooperate to build and fix a nineteenth-century steam-powered spaceship en route to Mars. With another player, you play one of two full voice-acted characters and solve puzzles by interacting with switches, levers and pulleys.

External examiner, Philip Buchanan, first checked 39 Days to Mars accessibility 9 months ago. It was re-examined by Andrew Robertson and updated 9 months ago.

Accessibility Notes

In two-player cooperative mode, the game can be played with two buttons and one joystick each. In single-player, it requires two buttons and two joysticks.

There is no difficulty option, but the game dynamically adjusts difficulty as you play to ensure that everybody can complete the story without getting stuck.

There is an automatic hint system that detects when progress is slow and offers the next hint from the 2-tier hint system.

Initially this is a subtle hint animation of something lighting up or being revealed.
Then a clearer hint is shown, usually arrows pointing to things, or button prompts.
Finally, if you are still stuck the puzzle is completely skipable and you are prompted to skip and return later or continue on with the game.

You can save anytime in the game, but progress in a particular partially completed puzzle isn't saved. Worth noting that about half of the puzzles don't have intermediate states anyway so no progress would be lost.

There are visual directional cues in the form of:

Spotlights that show important locations to inspect, or places that haven't been explored.
Next puzzle is always highlighted with a bright exclamation point.

The game ensures high contrast because it's in sepia (effectively black and white). There are low-contrast details in the background, but all menus, puzzles, and interactable objects are in black and white, or black and sepia.

Game Details

Release Date: 29/10/2019

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Players: 1-2

Genres: Brain Game, Puzzle and Narrative

Accessibility: 34 features

Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made

Developer: Philip Buchanan (@PhilipBuchanan)

Costs: Purchase cost

Controls

We've documented 13 accessibility features for Controls in 39 Days to Mars which deal with how you control the game, different options for alternative inputs and whether you can remap these settings to suit your needs.

Gamepad

Can play with the following:

Multiple Buttons & Single Stick: Can play with multiple buttons and a stick.

Multiple Buttons & Two Sticks: Can play with multiple buttons and two sticks.

Mouse And Keyboard

Can play with the following:

Mouse and Keys: Can play with mouse and multiple keys.

Mouse and Controller: Can play with mouse and controller simultaneously.

Remap Controls

Can customise the controls for the game as follows:

Remap Buttons: Can re-map all buttons so that you can use alternatives that better suit your play.

Swap Sticks: Can swap the sticks over so that you can use the opposite sticks to control the game.

Remap Mouse and Keyboard: Can remap mouse and keyboard key bindings, on systems that support these controls.

Remap Extra Mouse Buttons: Can remap additional buttons on mice that provide more than the two standard buttons, on systems that support these controls.

Remap Mouse Wheel: Can remap the mouse wheel to control aspects of the game when you move it up/down, on systems that support these controls.

Remap Game Menu Access: Can remap buttons to pause, access and navigate the game menu. This enables you to specify which buttons pop-up the game menu.Whether you can remap menu navigation buttons isn't considered here.

Button Combinations

Specific button operation required to play

No Simultaneous Buttons: Only one button or key required at a time, in addition to direction stick(s).

Controller Vibration

Vibration Optional: Controller vibration not used in the game or you can disable it.

Informative Vibration: Controller vibration indicates events or interactions in the game, echoing visual and audio cues. This can provide additional information about progress, approaching enemies or hitting a target.

Difficulty

We haven’t documented any accessibility features for Difficulty in 39 Days to Mars which deal with how you can adjust the challenge of play, and whether this is locked once chosen or can be adjusted as you play. The following games are similar to 39 Days to Mars, and offer accessibility features for Difficulty:

Please, Touch The Artwork (2 Difficulty Features)
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (2 Difficulty Features)
Dear Reader (1 Difficulty Feature)
Koala Boutique (1 Difficulty Feature)

Getting Started

We've documented 7 accessibility features for Getting Started in 39 Days to Mars which deal with what support is offered to get started with the game. This includes customising the experience when you first open the game via any onboarding processes it provides as well as tutorials and other assistance when you first start playing.

Assistance Getting Starting

These features aid your play of the game in terms of cognitive load on learning controls, dealing with pressure and coping with the environment and challenges.

Tutorials: There are helpful tutorials and instructions on how to play. Information is provided in a timely manner, with appropriate level of detail.

Practice Area: You can practice freely without opponents or time pressures. This can be a specific practice option, or the ability to play levels with the easiest opponents to improve understanding and skill.

No Jump Scares: No sudden loud noises or popping-up scary visuals that unexpectedly appear without warning, or the option to disable them.

Assistance For Progressing

These features aid your progress through the game offering different ways of maintaining your progression.

Bank Progress With Frequent Checkpoints: If you fail you can retry that level or aspect of the game without losing a lot of progress (less than 5 minutes). This is often provided via Frequent Checkpoints combined with restarting without losing time, equipment or score.

Assisted Progress With Boosts: If you fail frequently the game automatically gets easier to ease the likelihood of failure. Or there’s an option to start this happening, like giving more health, lives or power each time you fail. Sometimes called Rubber Banding.

Assisted Progress With Hints: The game notices if you get stuck (or you can press a button) and provides information to help you progress. This can offer hints or tutorials popping up during play. This includes hints after you have died, where it can suggest strategies or difficulty settings to adjust or offer to skip past problematic levels.

Save Progress Anytime: The game automatically saves progress or you can save any time. This doesn’t mean you never lose progress, but it does mean you can stop whenever you want (without having to get to a save point) without losing progress.

Reading

We've documented 5 accessibility features for Reading in 39 Days to Mars which deal with how much reading or listening comprehension is required, how well the game provides visual and audible access to the text and whether subtitles and captions are a good fit for purpose.

Reading Level

How much reading is required to play the game's main path or story and how complex the language is. The presence of voiced characters doesn't reduce this requirement, as it's recorded as a separate datapoint.

Moderate Reading: Moderate reading required. The quantity and complexity of reading are at a level that a high school student (14-year-old) would appreciate.

Text Visibility

High Contrast Text: Text colour contrasts to the background or can be adjusted to be. The text in menus, instructions and other information is presented in high contrast with a solid background.

Subtitles

All Speech Subtitled (Or No Speech In Game): All spoken content has subtitles, or there is no speech in the game. This means there is no requirement to hear spoken dialogue or narrative to play the game.

Captions

Speaker Indicator: Textual captions indicate who is speaking (or there is only ever one person speaking). This can also be indicated visually in the game with character icons or placing text in speech bubbles next to the person speaking.

Voice Acted

All Dialogue is Voice Acted (Or No Speech In Game): All of the game dialogue and narrative can be voiced, or there is no speech in the game. This means there is no requirement to read the dialogue and narrative text to play the game.

Navigation

We've documented 4 accessibility features for Navigation in 39 Days to Mars which deal with how the game provides guidance and assistance to navigate its worlds. These are only for games that have traversal and exploration in 2D and 3D spaces.

Clarity

Visual Directional Cues: Additional in-game visual cues that signpost where to go next and how close you are to arriving. This can be with camera movement to focus on your destination or important items. It can use light, breadcrumb trails, in-world pointers to identify your mission's target location.

Menu Navigation

Digital Menu Navigation: Menu choices with Gamepad can be made without using an analogue stick to guide a cursor to a selection. For example, using D-Pad, buttons or the Stick to change menu selection in a single action.

Menus Don't Wrap: Menus don't wrap and stop the cursor at the bottom of the list if you press down. Or menus do wrap but make it clear that you are back at the top of the list with sound or narration.

Similar Games With More Accessibility Features for Navigation

If you want to play 39 Days to Mars, but it doesn't offer the Navigation accessibility features you require, this similar game extends the Navigation accessibility:

Rescue: Mayday (5 Navigation Features)

Visual

We've documented 4 accessibility features for Visual in 39 Days to Mars which deal with how you can adjust the visuals to suit your needs, and offer additional information if you can't hear the game.

Contrast

High Contrast: There is high contrast between elements that need to be distinguished from each other, such as characters, interactive objects and game environment, either by default or a high contrast mode. This is different to a slider that increases contrast or brightness between light and dark.

Visual Distractions

No Flashes: No flashing strobe effects or you can disable them. This includes the absence of flashing from dramatic visual effects, explosions or weather effects like lightning.

Audio Cues for Visual Events

Audio Cues for Visual Events: Audio is provided to indicate visual events. Game events or progress highlighted by visual icons, effects or animations are also accompanied by audio to signify that progress. This is useful for blind players.

Colour Options

Colour Blind Friendly: Game doesn’t rely on colour or can switch to colour blind friendly mode with double coding or similar way to avoid colour dependance.

Similar Games With More Accessibility Features for Visual

If you want to play 39 Days to Mars, but it doesn't offer the Visual accessibility features you require, these similar games extend the Visual accessibility:

Rescue: Mayday (9 Visual Features)
Luna The Shadow Dust (6 Visual Features)
Please, Touch The Artwork (5 Visual Features)
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (5 Visual Features)

Audio

We've documented 2 accessibility features for Audio in 39 Days to Mars which deal with how you can adjust the audio of the game and whether audio cues compensate for aspects of the game that are hard to see.

Adjustable Audio

Balance Audio Levels: Set music and game sound effects separately. This enables you to select your preference as well as ensure critical game sounds aren't obscured by other audio.

Play Without Hearing

Play Without Hearing: No audio cues are necessary to play the game well.

Similar Games With More Accessibility Features for Audio

If you want to play 39 Days to Mars, but it doesn't offer the Audio accessibility features you require, these similar games extend the Audio accessibility:

Get Together (3 Audio Features)
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (3 Audio Features)

System Accessibility Settings

In addition to the accessibility features provided in the game, you can also use system-wide accessibility settings:

Nintendo Switch
Nintendo Switch has some built-in features, including a lockable zoom, that can be used on all games.

PC
Windows has extensive accessibility features. Some, like colour correction, work with games. Lots of accessibility software can be used with PC games, from voice recognition to input device emulators.

PlayStation 4
PlayStation 4 has a range of accessibility settings. Some are system only, some work in games (invert colours and button mapping).

Xbox One
Xbox One has a system features, the excellent co-pilot share controls mode and adaptive controller support for all games.

Read more about system accessibility settings.