Video Games: Overcooked 2 & Wheelchair-User Rep

The Overcooked franchise (debuting in 2016) is a game series where little chefs work together in obstacle-laden kitchens to deliver food to customers within a time limit. Each level amps the difficulty into a chaotic frenzy of tossed food (no health inspectors involved), fires, and lost orders. Players must get high enough scores to unlock new areas and characters.

The first Overcooked had a raccoon in a wheelchair (he's also unlockable in the sequel). Some people, like me, adored the furry little guy and how he could keep up with the rest of the chefs. Others weren't as thrilled, "why isn't it human?" I still don't have an answer, but it never bothered me much. 

Image: A brown raccoon with no legs sits in a gray wheelchair with a yellow seat. He is smiling and giving a "thumbs up" with his right hand (but has no arm). His chef hat is a soft blue and his uniform is white and red with six black buttons down the front. He wears a red cravat. The chair has no armrests or foot pedals (none do).

Overcooked! 2 (debuting a bit over three years ago) added another wheelchair-user to their roster with a DLC pack. She is a stunt woman... an Evel Knievel on double the wheels! I was immediately drawn to her boldness. A badass woman zipping around and killing it? Yes, more of this!

Image: A caucasian, puppet-like character faces the screen. Her wheelchair is red, white, and blue with stars on the back tires. Her hands have white gloves with a red star in the middle and her outfit is similar to the raccoon's except for the pilot's hat and goggles under her chef's hat with a star on her cravat. A cape is hinted at behind her. She has a smear of batter near the left side of her mouth. A rocket is seen by the right side of her head (attached to the chair).

Skins (changes to an existing character) brought us a Black grandmother who has a dynamite pair of glasses. She looks like she's in on the world's biggest secret which is quite a feat... considering the somewhat simplistic artstyle of the series.

Image: On a two-tone gray background sits a Black woman with full cheeks in a gray and steel blue wheelchair with grip-rims on the back tires. She's holding one hand to her mouth and holding up the other in either a "hello" or "wait" gesture. Black, curly hair sneaks out around the bottom of her light blue chef's hat. Her uniform is a medium blue and looks like the raccoon's. She wears gold hoop earrings and neon pink cat's eye sunglasses.

Every being in a wheelchair goes the same speed as everyone else. People in manual wheelchairs still have both hands ready for serving up requests... without someone pushing them. The lack of realism isn't a deal breaker when your fellow chefs are a unicorn and a walrus, though. 

I haven't seen other types of disability representation in the franchise, but that doesn't mean it won't exist down the road. It might even exist now, since there are characters I came across in my research that I never saw while playing either Overcooked game. It's nice to see a crip is allowed to burn down a kitchen just like everyone else.

Accessibility in Plants vs Zombies has Room to Grow

 When I first saw all of the accessibility features in Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, I was thrilled. There was speech-to-text! Few games have this feature for Deaf/HoH players.

Image: The accessibility menu reads: Narrate Path, Color Blind Mode, Voice Chat,
Convert Voice Chat to Text Chat, Enable Text to Speech, and Brightness.

 I wanted to rush out and tell all of you about this. Though more games are incorporating it, I've only recently seen it on this game and Wasteland 3. But, before I got too excited, I thought I would give it a try.

Image: A space sunflower stands by a fence looking at jack-o-lanterns at night. In the top left of the screen, it reads "testing food feature for you".

My husband tried about five sentences in the game at varying speeds of speech. None of the things he said picked up 100%. In fact, some sentences were so mangled, I couldn't even parse what he meant.

While aiming for inclusion is what every game developer should be doing, they are doing a disservice to the disabled community with their half-assed attempts. Features mean nothing if they do not work as they should. Maybe they should spend a little more time working on the quality of their games and a little less time on that sweet, money-grabbing DLC.

Cripple Rants: The Cripless Sims

Notes: Video game design is an art form. There is swearing.

The Sims is as a series started on computer in the year 2000. It's almost 20 years old. Millions of people around the world enjoy bringing characters of their own creation to life. But, it falls horrifyingly short for the world's largest minority. 

I am an avid Sims player. I've made people of all ages, colors, genders, etc. I've had white, cis characters climb the career ladder and I've had badass Asian, trans folx find love. There are vampires, witches, ghosts, and aliens in my neighborhoods. However, there are no disabled people. What the fuck?

Of course, they offered an extremely problematic take on mental illness at one point. You could have a Sim (character) that had an "insane trait" which had a straitjacket as an icon. After some pushback, the developers relabeled this "erratic". It's as close as we've ever gotten to representation of disabled, mentally ill, or neurodivergent Sims. 

Some people will say to me, "Everyone in The Sims is the same height, so short or tall people aren't represented. There are no nonbinary Sims." and this is true. To say gimps need representation in The Sims isn't saying other people don't deserve to be represented. It's just... shitty that so many of us can't create people like us in a game with the selling point of making who you want. Why is a purple alien more possible to them than my crippled ass?

Just like in real life, I notice a lot of the public buildings my Sims visit aren't wheelchair accessible. Will the developers have to alter too many buildings? Can they not figure out the physics of a rollator? Is it too hard to program a guide dog? My witch can clone herself, but God forbid she have crutches or need regular appointments with her psychiatrist. 

Not every game needs to exactly reflect our society. But, a simulation game proclaiming we can make the world we want to see leaving us out entirely is a huge oversight. The only other possibility I can think of is the developers are positive no one wants to see cripples in a "perfect world".