Thank you for taking an interest in Mail Time’s accessibility efforts. Mail Time is a game made by mainly one person (hi!) which means I was a bit limited in what I could do. However, I’ve attempted to include as much as possible in Mail Time and will be looking to add more after launch.
If you have suggestions or are experiencing issues please let me know via email ( kela@appelmoes.games ) or via Discord.
I will do my very best to make the game playable for you!
I've been following the game accessibility guidelines as my main frame of reference for accessibility in Mail Time. You can view how their checklist is implemented in the game here:
With the button above you can see a full checklist of accessibility efforts in Mail Time.
At the bottom of this page you can find a breakdown of all the configurable settings in Mail Time.
Allow me to highlight a few features!
-
Camera Assist
With camera assist the camera dynamically turns with the player on movement input. It is less harsh than locking the camera behind the player but does allow you to play completely without the need to control the camera.
-
Automatic Camera Reset
The camera in Mail Time can always be reset to it's default position by clicking the mouse but with automatic camera reset the camera will reset after 3 seconds of no input.
This can be a good way to reframe the camera regularly if you have difficulty doing so yourself.
-
Color coded characters
Due to the large amount of characters to meet and deliveries you’ll be doing it can be hard to keep track of who’s who.
Mail Time includes a few features to help you:
Each character has a distinct color used anytime their name is mentioned in dialogue or UI.
A little icon of a character’s face will appear next to their name the first time it’s mentioned within a conversation or anytime in a UI.
Active deliveries can be seen at any time in the handbook (H to open)
More and more hints on what to do will be given if you return to talk to the character that gave you a delivery.
-
Quick start
From Mail Time’s main menu you can select ‘Quick Start’ instead of ‘New Game’ to entirely skip player creation and get straight into the game.
A random player character will be created for you alongside a name and some pronouns. This can then be changed anytime from within the game’s Handbook menu (‘H’/’escape’ to open).
quick access
These are settings that are very quickly available on the left side of the settings page.
-
You can adjust the game’s music, sound effects and ambient sound volume separately with sliders.
Moving the sliders all the way to the left will mute the game.
-
The language can be switched at any time. Available languages:
English (original language)
European Spanish
European French
German
Brazillian Portugese
Japanese
Simplified Chinese
Korean
When you change your language to French you might have to re-select your pronouns.
This is because the French language currently does not support gender neutral language so if you had selected they/them pronouns you will have to switch to something else.
-
You can at any time access this page to change anything about your player character that you customized at the start of your game.
There’s currently not a preview of your player character available within that menu but that’s something that will be added in the next update.
-
At any time can you switch pronouns between they/them, she/her and he/him. For the French language gender neutral pronouns are not available.
-
A big red button to reset all settings to default. This will exclude player customization, pronouns and language as those don’t have a ‘default’.
-
Hopefully you never have to use this but with the yellow triangle button you can access a menu that includes a ‘reset location’ button in case you are stuck.
Additionally, this menu displays your system information (GPU, CPU, RAM and FPS) in case you need to fill out a bug report where that info is relevant.
For bug reports please join the Discord or email me: kela@appelmoes.games .
General settings
On the right side of the settings page there’s a sub menu selector, this concerns the top section ‘General’.
-
With ‘Autosave’ you can toggle the game’s automatic saving function on and off.
By default this feature is on and will save the game at various moments throughout the game; finishing a conversation, picking up items, closing the handbook. The benefit of this feature is that the game saves frequently and thus you’re unlikely to lose progress.
The Autosave Interval slider allows you to adjust the interval at which the game will save automatically without any input. By default it’s every 15 minutes (this can be adjusted from 1 to 30 minutes using the slider).
-
Using these sliders the game’s contrast and brightness can be adjusted respectively. This doesn’t affect UI (any menus) but can be helpful if you have difficulty seeing things in the game environment.
-
When you stand still for 10 seconds the player character will automatically sit down. With the Idle Sit time slider you can set it anywhere from 0 to 20 seconds. Setting this slider to 0 will disable to feature entirely.
Graphical settings
On the right side of the settings page there’s a sub menu selector, this concerns the second section ‘Graphics’.
-
Using this toggle you can switch the game between windowed (unchecked) and windowed fullscreen (checked).
Windowed (unchecked)
Includes the toolbar at the top should you want to minimize the game or close it using the X (note that this will lose any unsaved progress).
Windowed fullscreen (checked)
Gives you the benefit of a fullscreen game (no toolbar) while still allowing you to tab out of the game without it disappearing from your screen.
-
with the resolution dropdown menu you can select the resolution the game runs at.
The game automatically selects the resolution of your monitor but you can choose to run it at a different resolution of course. Choosing a lower resolution can improve performance.
-
Vertical Synchronization (VSync), helps create stability by synchronizing the image frame rate of the game with your display monitor refresh rate.
If this is turned off it could cause the game to look glitched.
-
You can limit the game’s framerate (FPS) if you want! The benefit to limiting framerate would be to force the game to use less of your PC’s resources.
-
This limits how far the game displays 3d models in the game.
Limiting this can help performance a lot. -
this reduces the post processing effects on the game (slight color correction, brightness and contrast settings) and turning it down could help performance slightly.
-
‘Shadows’ determines how nice the game’s shadows are.
Limiting these can help performance but will affect the look of Mail Time quite a bit. The game looks best with this setting on High or Epic.
This setting doesn’t take full effect until you save and restart the game.
-
‘Effects’ determines how nice the game’s particles are, limiting these can really help performance if you notice a lot of lag near waterfalls or collectible items.
-
‘Textures’ determines how nice the game’s textures are, limiting these can help performance.
-
‘Shading’ determines how nice the game’s shaders are, mostly affecting the water. Limiting this setting can help performance if you notice issues when near or looking at water.
Camera settings
On the right side of the settings page there’s a sub menu selector, this concerns the third section ‘Camera’.
-
the camera in Mail Time can always be reset to its default position by clicking the mouse (or a joystick on controller) but with automatic camera reset ON the camera will reset after 3 seconds of no input.
This can be a good way to reframe the camera regularly if you have difficulty doing so yourself.
-
With camera assist the camera dynamically turns with the player on movement input. It is less harsh than locking the camera behind the player but does allow you to play completely without the need to control the camera.
Camera assist is enabled by default but can be toggled off in the settings for complete control over the camera.
Turning this off helps some people with vertigo/motion sickness.
-
The camera can be locked to behind the player. In comparison to camera assist this is a bit more harsh but can be a great option if you have real difficulty controlling the camera and want a more static solution than camera assist.
-
When moving the camera will by default pull back a bit to show more of the environment around the player. The intent is to allow better platforming and more visibility for finding collectibles.
However, this might not be convenient for you so you can adjust how much the camera pulls back with the slider.
Moving the slider all the way to the left (when the number shows 0) will disable this feature entirely.
Turning this off helps some people with vertigo/motion sickness.
-
The game automatically applies some smoothing to whenever the camera turns. You can increase or decrease this effect with the slider.
Moving the slider all the way to the left (when the number shows 0) will disable this feature entirely.
Turning this off helps some people with vertigo/motion sickness.
-
Field of View (FOV) is essentially how much you can see without turning the camera.
What a natural FOV is depends on how far you are from your display and so I would encourage you to play around with it. By default the FOV is set to 90 which would be good for when you are close to the display like a PC setup.
accessibility settings
On the bottom right side of the menu you can find the “accessibility” sub-menu. (This menu will soon be renamed to “Controls” as it’s more apt for the contents.)
-
This is by default on and allows you to view any deliveries that are ready to be delivered on your screen at all times. The letter icon also features a tiny portrait of the character it’s for so you can easily recognise them when you walk past.
-
This option is not turned on by default but can be enabled to have a convenient overview of the game’s controls on screen at all times. The game will adapt the displayed controls to the input device you’re using (keyboard, xbox controller etc.).
-
Using this slider you can make the game more or less sensitive to input, specifically this can really help if you find the camera too slow to react or too fast.
Currently, this does not affect regular button input. An additional setting is planned for the future to allow a button cooldown so things cannot be triggered again accidentally.
-
If you would prefer the joysticks on your controller to respond the opposite way (switch camera and movement) you can toggle this!
-
Some players, especially those that grew up with older generation games, will prefer the horizontal movement of the camera to respond the opposite way. Toggling this can help you customize the controls to your liking.
-
Some players, especially those that grew up with older generation games, will prefer the vertical movement of the camera to respond the opposite way. Toggling this can help you customize the controls to your liking.
-
The game will attempt to detect what type of controller you are using but in case it gets it wrong you can use this dropdown to easily switch. Changing this will affect all button prompts shown in the game to correspond with your chosen controller.