History Main / ColorblindMode

* Games in the ''Dots'' series (including ''Two Dots'' and ''Dots & Co'') have a color blind mode which changes the color palette so that the different colors of dot are more distinct, and also marks each type of dot with a distinct glyph (red dots have a horizon line, green dots have a cross, and so on).

* ''Flow Free'' and its spinoffs, which normally have the user connecting same-colored dots, has a mode it adds letters to the dots. So instead of connecting dark-blue to dark-blue, you connect A to A.

* The Polish puzzle game ''Kulki'' has a "[[https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/kulki/screenshots/gameShotId,312860 "mono monitor"]] mode, which desaturates the colors, apparently to make the game easier to play on a computer with a monochrome monitor.

* The ZX Spectrum puzzle game ''Mam Plan'' has an alternate graphics mode, where the tiles were indicated not by colors but [[https://www.mobygames.com/game/zx-spectrum/mam-plan/screenshots/gameShotId,569883/ by patterns]].

* Toggling colorblind mode in ''VideoGame/{{Wordle}}'' turns green tiles (and the option toggles) orange and and yellow tiles light blue. When shared, the normally green and yellow square emojis will also be orange and blue.

* Wiki/ThisVeryWiki has one: The ''Highlight Links'' toggle in the Display Options. Turning it on gives page links a yellow highlight and an underline.

* ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' and its [[VideoGame/Splatoon2 sequel]] have a "Color-lock" option, which locks the team colors to [[OrangeBlueContrast bright orange versus dark blue]]. While [[YellowPurpleContrast yellow and purple]] would likely be a better option thanks to the colors being the closest to black and white in terms of colorspace, orange and blue are the colors that appear most in the first game's marketing.

This also has the weighty advantage of game developers not having to manually adjust the colors for every part of the game. Part of the reason why modern 3D Games avoid recoloring the texture for color blind players is at least in part motivated by keeping the collective file size of a game down. In general, most 3D models in a given game have at least 3 textures associated to them; The Diffuse Map (that's the color and pattern you see) a Normal Map[[labelnote:*]]or a Bump Map, the terms are basically interchangeable at this point, though there is a difference; bump maps are greyscale, instead of using the [=RGB=] spectrum[[/labelnote]] (adds finer detailing to a model without modelling), and the Reflection Map (controls the reflection strength, go figure). A fair amount of games go even ''further'' to include other textures that control other functions (Occlusion maps, Specular Maps, Emissive Maps etc.), so as you might imagine, taken all together, any given model is gonna look pretty large if you also start to add six ''separate'' colored textures, which would lead to absurd file sizes for each model[[labelnote:*]]In general, 1K textures (1024) will be less than 512kb, 2K textures (2048) are about 2MB, 4K textures (4096) are often 16MB[[/labelnote]], which is just unfeasible as a solution for most developers to add, not to mention the time taken to make and bake these colorblind oriented textures to begin with. In 3D games at least, color filters are here to stay.

* The Polish puzzle game ''Kulki'' has a "[[https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/kulki/screenshots/gameShotId,312860/ mono monitor]]" mode, which desaturates the colors, apparently to make the game easier to play on a computer with a monochrome monitor.

Not every single person on the planet can see every color in the visible spectrum, or at least, not properly. This is known as Color Blindness, and it comes in many flavors. Some have protanopia[[note]]the inability to distinguish between colors in the green-yellow-red spectrum[[/note]], deuteranopia[[note]]similar problems to protanopes, but without the abnormal dimming[[/note]], tritanopia[[note]]seeing short-wavelength colors (blue, indigo and a spectral violet) as greenish and drastically dimmed, plus yellow is indistinguishable from pink, and purple colors are perceived as various shades of red[[/note]] or the rarest of them all, monochromacy[[note]]seeing everything as black, white, or gray[[/note]].

When it comes to 2D games, like ones that use old 16-bit sprites, the filesize issue is basically non-issue, as those sorts of games rely on sprite sheets that are significantly smaller. Not to mention the nature of these games means there are less textures to begin with, as level usually repeat the same tiles again and again. Another solution is to simply do in-engine color picking to a sprite sheet, as sprites of this nature lack complex shading, so they can change the color to a different hue in-engine.

* Later entries in the ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyo'' series allow you to change the designs of the Puyos. They are normally differentiated primarily by color, and subtly by shape and eye design, which can be easy for a colorblind player to miss. The most visually distinct designs are the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' theme, which uses the heads of various ''Sonic'' characters, and the Alphabet theme, which changes the Puyo shapes to resemble the first letter of their respective color (R for red, G for green, and so on). ''Puyo Puyo Champions'' and ''Puyo Puyo Tetris 2'' have direct menus that can adjust the Puyo colors specifically for various types of colorblindness; in ''[=PPT2=]'', the Tetris pieces can also be swapped to their more visually distinct Game Boy designs.

[[quoteright:320:[[VideoGame/{{Linx}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/0000000000000linxcblind.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:320:Pattern recognition > color recognition, in terms of frequency.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Linx}}'' has a mode which gives a pattern to colored lines. Yellow lines lack a pattern, red lines are dotted, blue lines are striped vertically, green lines are striped diagonally, etc.

This also has the weighty advantage of game developers not having to manually adjust the colors for every part of the game. Part of the reason why modern 3D Games avoid recoloring the texture for color blind players is at least in part motivated by keeping the collective file size of a game down. In general, most 3D models in a given game have at least 3 textures associated to them; The Diffuse Map (that's the color and pattern you see) a Normal Map[[labelnote:*]]or a Bump Map, the terms are basically interchangeable, though bump maps are greyscale, instead of using the [=RGB=] spectrum[[/note]] (adds finer detailing to a model without modelling), and the Reflection Map (controls the reflection strength, go figure). A fair amount of games go even ''further'' to include other textures that control other functions (Occlusion maps, Specular Maps, Emissive Maps etc.), so as you might imagine, taken all together, any given model is gonna look pretty large if you also start to add six ''separate'' colored textures, which would lead to absurd file sizes for each model[[labelnote:*]]In general, 1K textures (1024) will be less than 512kb, 2K textures (2048) are about 2MB, 4K textures (4096) are often 16MB[[/labelnote]], which is just unfeasible as a solution for most developers to add, not to mention the time taken to make and bake these colorblind oriented textures to begin with. In 3D games at least, color filters are here to stay.

This also has the weighty advantage of game developers not having to manually adjust the colors for every part of the game. Part of the reason modern 3D Games avoid simple texture recoloring for color blind players is at least in part motivated by keeping the collective file size of a game down. Most models you'll see in games have at least 3 textures associated to them; The Diffuse map (that's the color and pattern you see) a Normal Map (how light reacts to a model), and the Reflection Map (take a wild guess), with some games and models going even further to include other textures that control other functions (Occlusion maps, Emissive Maps etc.), so as you might imagine, taken all together, a given model is gonna look pretty large if you also start to add six ''separate'' colored textures, which would lead to absurd file sizes for each model[[labelnote:*]]1K textures (1024) will be less than 512kb, 2K textures (2048) are about 2MB, 4K textures (4096) are often 16MB[[/labelnote]], which is just unfeasible as a solution for most developers to add, not to mention the time taken to make and bake these colorblind oriented textures to begin with. In 3D games at least, color filters, sadly, are here to stay.

* The [[Vaporware unreleased]] Game Boy and Game Boy Color versions of ''VideoGame/SutteHakkun'' would have contained a number of changes from the Satellaview/SNES versions to make it easier to tell apart the three different paint colors and their effects when injected into blocks without having to solely rely on color. Jars of paint use double-sided arrows that face either vertically (red), horizontally (blue), or diagonally (yellow), and the blocks they fill in are marked with stripes to indicate the direction they travel in.

* The UsefulNotes/GameBoy port of ''VideoGame/DrMario'' could be seen as this in comparison to its [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem NES]] counterpart, albeit out of necessity due to console limitations. Rather than the NES that strictly uses color patterns the Game Boy uses both shades ''and'' patterns to differentiate between the pills, with them also appearing as hollow (yellow), checkerboard (blue), and solid (red) in addition to using different shades of green. Undoubtedly there were color-blind fans who were ''very'' happy to learn that there was [[https://i.imgur.com/P9OLOc4.png a version of this game they could actually play]].

As you may expect, this trope is most commonly found in puzzle games that rely on colored objects, or games with ColorCodedMultiplayer that require you to know the color of what you're looking at, like distinguishing between abilities and team colors. Modern games studios started to commonly add color blind modes into their games in TheNewTens and beyond, simply for the sake of accessibility, even if the game didn't really require such an option to make the game playable. In older games (even as late as TheNineties), such a mode was sometimes implemented not with colorblind players in mind, but rather players who didn't have color displays.

A very easy way of developers implementing a color blind mode is by overlaying a color filter preset on top of the game, which shows only specific colors to simulate different types of color blindness. The advantage of this is that it's ''good enough'' at replicating different colors for specific types of color blindness to get the job done, which has the weighty advantage of game developers not having to manually adjust the colors for every given sprite or a 3D models' texture in the game. The disadvantage is that color filters don't always work as expected, with certain colors still seeping through that could confuse color blind folks.

Part of the reason modern 3D Games avoid simple texture recoloring for color blind players is at least in part motivated by keeping the filesize of a game down. Most models you'll see in games have at least 3 textures associated to them; The Diffuse map (that's the color and pattern) a Normal Map (how light reacts to a model), and the Reflection Map (take a guess), with some going even further to include other textures to control other functions (Occlusion maps, Emissive Maps etc.), so as you might imagine, taken all together, a given model is gonna look pretty large if you also start to add six ''separate'' colored textures, which would lead to absurd filesizes of 200MB+ per model (resolution depending, of course), which is just unfeasible as a solution for most developers to add, not to mention the time taken to make and bake these colorblind oriented textures to begin with. Color filters, sadly, are here to stay.

A very easy way of developers implementing a color blind mode is by overlaying a color filter preset on top of the game, which shows only specific colors to simulate different types of color blindness. The advantage of this is that it's good enough at replicating different colors to get the job done, without having to manually adjust the textures of every given sprite or model in the game (which for modern 3D games, is often unfeasible as that'd require going through ''every single texture'' and make four to six types of it '''per model.'''). The disadvantage is that the filters don't always work as expected, with certain colors still seeping through that could confuse color blind folks.

* Website/ThisVeryWiki has one: The ''Highlight Links'' toggle in the Display Options. Turning it on gives page links a yellow highlight and an underline.

As you may expect, this trope is most commonly found in puzzle games that rely on colored objects, or games with ColorCodedMultiplayer that require you to know the color of what you're looking at, like distinguishing between abilities and team colors. Modern games studios started to add color blind modes into their games in TheNewTens and beyond, simply for the sakes of accessibility, even if the game didn't really require such an option to make the game playable.

As you may expect, this trope is most commonly found in puzzle games that rely on colored objects, or games with ColorCodedMultiplayer that require you to know what team you're on to avoid friendly fire, as well as to know colors of certain abilities that originate from your team. Modern games studios started to add color blind modes into their games in the TheNewTens and beyond, simply for the sakes of accessibility, even if the game didn't require such an option to make the game playable.

A very easy way of developers implementing a color blind mode is by overlaying a color filter preset on top of the game, which shows only specific colors to simulate different types of color blindness. The advantage of this is that it's good enough at replicating different colors to get the job done, without having to manually adjust the textures of every given sprite or model in the game.