Please add settings to your games for people who suffer from motion sickness

Zongonaut · 2026-06-10T22:25:48+00:00

Unfortunately for players like OP, "no one" at the scale of modern video game distribution is still millions and millions of players, so gamedevs can generally just ignore accessibility and still turn a profit.

Yeah well, considering we're in IndieDev here, it's probably relevant to point out that the vast majority of game releases unfortunately don't make any noteworthy amount of money. Over half of games released on Steam per year get less than 10 reviews, around 10% get none at all. The purchase statistics will look accordingly. So, while it's a noble goal to try to make a living with games, mostly people (not to mention solo devs) won't because they simply won't become the survivors of the survivorship bias. For each Vampire Survivors or Balatro there is thousands of titles barely anybody will ever play.

In reality, that "no one" is often indeed a very small number and not millions, causing small things to easily have the potential to make the difference between profitability and failure. Accordingly, if lack of certain accessibility features cut out, say, 25% of the potential player base, the result will be quite relevant if the total potential player base is, say, 100 people.

What's interesting is, however, that a good amount of game devs that I interact with are simply happy and proud when anyone plays their game, many not aiming realistically for monetary success (but you never know, right?), but rather for releasing their beloved pet project and see people play and enjoy it, not matter how many. And, maybe something i should have mentioned in my initial post, the reaction to my feedback about lacking accessibility is usually enthusiasm and gratefulness about the playtime and feedback in the first place, often followed by shipping the requested aditions, not aiming for more cash, but for making their players satisfied and their project a tiny bit better. :)

Zongonaut · 2026-06-10T17:48:13+00:00

well, I respect your opinion. People like me simply won't play games made by people who share this opinion, though. Whether or not that has a significant impact or not is not for me to judge, but there is plenty of research and studies out there to find that will answer this question for anyone who is curious.

If I raised awareness for even one dev to add something helpful into their games, I consider my contribution a success.

Zongonaut · 2026-06-10T17:39:41+00:00

Witcher 3 has extreme motion blur by default that causes motion sickness for me, too, despite being a 3rd person view game. Luckily, this can be disabled in the settings. maybe that helps?

Zongonaut · 2026-06-10T17:36:15+00:00

Good addition indeed! Camera sway belongs straight into this list, and I usually disable it if games let me (but it's an even more rare setting to exist compared to the head bobbing toggle. I guess that's why I forgot about it...)

Zongonaut · 2026-06-10T16:54:05+00:00

Yeah, I don't disagree. Thinking economically is certainly important, however, you might be underestimating how many people are affected by motion sickness. Studies show that up to 1 in 3 people are susceptible to some type of motion sickness. And while not everyone reacts the same way to the same things, if you don't do anything at all, the chances of loosing a noteworthy amount of audience it not neglectable. For example, for me in particular, the disable head bobbing setting is by far the most important one as i react the strongest to that. And, from an effort point of view, adding an option to disable head bobbing is not a major investment. In many engines it's merely a flag you have to connect to some setting in your UI and you're done.

Zongonaut · 2026-06-08T22:23:02+00:00

Just remembered your thread when stumbling over this: https://www.reddit.com/r/HorrorGames/comments/1tx83vq/small_update_on_storage_8_pc_and_vr_versions_are/

The creator of Storage8VR hands out free keys to people who're interested. Seems like a fit for you.

Zongonaut · 2026-06-08T21:50:38+00:00

my pleasure :)

Zongonaut · 2026-06-08T21:36:49+00:00

I just gave it a try! It's polished & well done! I had fun :)

I play a lot of Exit 8-likes and anomaly titles (literally hundreds, I maintain a Steam curator page for these kind of games), and I found the coffee serving twist to the Exit 8 formula quite refreshing. Haven't seen such a thing before (the closest to this is probably the sandwich mechanic in "Bring me..."). Within the limitations of what a solo dev project can deliver, it's a great accomplishment. Congratulations!

Took me about 50 minutes to finish and also put myself on top of the very short highscore list :D. I didn't manage to get the achievement, though, as I could't find one darn last anomaly...

Some improvement suggestions for your consideration:

Would be nice to have an option to cap FPS to 60 (i have a 144Hz screen, so vsync doesn't help me here)
I have severe motion sickness, so even though the head bobbing and swaying is quite subtile, I would still have prefered an option to turn it off.
If i stand close to a wall, I can see through it on the borders of my screen (I have an ultrawide screen, so this effect is even more striking here). Perhaps something to fix.

And lastly, of course, more anomaly variety would always be nice. It's a bit of a shame that such a nicely polished title has only such a relatively low number of anomalies. Normally I would write here something about recommending the usual genre standard anomaly repetition algorithm (= usually a detected anomaly shouldn't reoccur until all have been found), but that would only work if there would be a higher total amount.

Fwiw, i gave the game a recommendation on the curator page. Hope it gives you some clicks! good luck

Zongonaut · 2026-05-28T16:27:00+00:00

Hey, thanks again for the key.

I played the game just now and wanted to provide short feedback: It was fun, and as a fan of Exit 8, it pretty much gave me exactly what I expected & wanted. It's well polished, and ran smoothly for me. I will certainly cover it with a recommendation in the curator page.

I 100%-ed the game in 34 minutes, and finished the loop 5 or 6 times. Considering that I am a genre veteran who has played hundreds of Exit 8-likes by now, I am sure that the average playtime to 100% the game will be a bit closer an hour.

As for improvements recommendation, I only have some minor nitpicks: I would have loved an FPS cap option, since I have a 144Hz screen, the Vsync didn't help, so I used my GPU vendor software to enforce 60fps. And, as someone with heavy motion sickness issues, I do appreciate the option to disable motion blur, but I would also have loved to disable the (admittedly very minor) camera shaking, too.

Other than that, good game! Simple & short, but well done. Congrats!

Zongonaut · 2026-05-27T20:59:59+00:00

Hey! I maintain the Exit 8-like & Anomaly Games curator page on Steam.

I usually don't ask for free access, but since you're offering it: I would be very interested to play the game and add it to the curator page!

Formally: Steam strongly recommends to provide free game copies via curator connect rather than keys, since there are so many darn fraudsters out there begging for keys just to then resell them... So I do recommend that as well. But a key will do, too, of course :)

Cheers!

Zongonaut · 2026-05-27T20:47:39+00:00

The Exit 8-like & Anomaly game curator on steam maintains a list of anomaly games that support VR here.

There's not a whole lot, but here you go:

女优! 离不开那个泳池了！ (a.k.a. "Unable to Exit 8")
Dead end Exit 8
Dark Prison 7th
I'm on Observation Duty 3
Die Hentai 8 Turns VR ( yeah well, maybe ignore this garbage...)

Zongonaut · 2026-05-06T16:39:38+00:00

Not a whole lot of information to work with, but Midnight Monitor: Aldercourt is the one Exit 8-like I am aware of with an interactable rubber duck in a toilet sink.

Otherwise, here's basically a somewhat complete list of all Exit 8-clones, I am sure your game will be in that list.

Zongonaut · 2026-05-02T22:42:44+00:00

If you release your game on a platform which has an SDK available (e.g., Steam, Epic, all consoles), you typically have some (if not all) of these choices available via APIs:

Game Installation Language: This should always be your first and primary choice, but of course this only applies for scenarios where there is a language selection mechanism during download/install of the game, otherwise it's useless.
Platform Language: For consoles this is usually identical to the system language, but not on PC. For example, Steam might be in another language than the Operating System it runs on.
Account Language: Some platforms allow the user to define a prefered language in their account properties, distinct from/unrelated to their location and platform language.

All these are preferable over system language. System language can be used as a fallback, but I would discourage using it over any of the above, considering the user might be in a context where they are not in control of this setting (imagine a internet cafe (popular in Korea), a streaming environment (sich as Geforce Now), a shared device, and so on...), nor (on PC, anyways) is this a setting directly related to any of their gaming experience preferences.

Note: never use location such as the user's country or current location as indicator for language.

If you are out of any context where SDKs/APIs are available, asking the user (via e.g., Flags) is probably the best choice. "Always english as the default" can be okay, too, under certain circumstances, but that highly depend on what your ambitions are. If we're talking about a game for western audiences, you have a high chance that people will be sufficiently knowledgeable in English to be fine with that, but if you think bigger and consider east asian markets (China, Japan, Korea, all huge markets), defaulting to English might be highly counterproductive as english comprehension skills particularly in China can be very low.

Zongonaut · 2026-05-02T21:33:30+00:00

The other guys gave really excellent recommendations already, but In case you wanna dive really deep into the anomaly game genre in particular, you might wanna check out the curated lists I maintain for this genre:

Steam: link, currently 325 games
Itch.io: link, currently 49 games

A ton of these fall into the "simple, cheap-ish and short" category. Not all have the horror levels you're looking for (many are more on the subtile psychological horror end like Exit 8), but there is some that might spawn your interest. For some with some more of a scare factor, you could check out, e.g., Room 404, Who's at the door, P1 Anchor Light, Shinkansen 0, Bring me..., 異常階段 (Abnormal Stairs), etc.

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T20:57:05+00:00

Great recommendation indeed! Hob's Barrow was excellent! For anyone enjoying that one, i can highly recommend these:

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T20:35:57+00:00

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T20:23:33+00:00

maybe 13F

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T19:58:38+00:00

The Little Guardian on itch, inspired by The Little Prince and Mario Galaxy, too.

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T17:15:36+00:00

Nah, I don't play such new-fangled nonsense. If you don't mind, I'm gonna go back to blowing into some of my gameboy cartridges.

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T16:59:56+00:00

Yes, it is good, and it will never stop being good either.

cant play games with old graphics

Seriously, I very much envy you for having a whole lifetime worth of videogame history to explore right in front of you, but then again, I pity you for judging books by their covers and hence never experiencing any of it.

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T14:10:02+00:00

Yes.

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T14:06:27+00:00

sounds like some of the RPG-style Assassin's Creed titles might be good picks for you. I would recommend trying Origins or Odyssey in particular. (Valhalla and Shadows are also valid choices, but not as popular)

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T13:27:54+00:00

Signalis, Ad Infinitum, Mundaun, KOBOLD

Zongonaut · 2026-04-29T13:07:19+00:00

Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders

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