Disco Elysium has added dyslexia-friendly fonts for those million words
Devs want to "ensure everyone can have the best user experience"
Detective RPG Disco Elysium is not short on words, and now that text is a little more inviting. A free update yesterday added the option to display text in fonts which are intended to be easier to read for some people with dyslexia. The popular OpenDyslexic typeface is used for many languages, while Russian and Korean have their own fonts. I have a touch of the ol' dyslexia myself and do find this font helps me a bit.
Disco Elysium's new "dyslexic font" option uses OpenDyslexic for (most) text in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese-Brazilian, and Polish. As the font's website explains, it was created to "help with some of the symptoms of dyslexia," with letters shaped to help readers recognise the correct letter and prevent swapping or flipping letters.
OpenDyslexic does help me a bit but I do find it looks similar enough to the Team Fortress 2 font that part of me always imagines I'm reading the words of a TF2 character. It's hard to take text seriously when you're hearing it in Scout's voice. This is less of an issue since Disco Elysium added full voice acting in the massive 'Final Cut' update, but still. The big question is: which Team Fortress 2 character sounds like which of the detective's internal voices?
I took a few snaps to demonstrate the font in action:
The dyslexia-friendlier font option also uses Nanum Square Round for Korean and Adys for Russian. The developers say they're still investigating options for traditional and simplified Chinese.
"These fonts were chosen after careful consideration and consultations with translation teams and academics, but as always, feedback is welcome," the devs say.
"It's important, especially for a game with over a million words, that we continue to make improvements to ensure everyone can have the best user experience during their time in Revachol."
Game's a good'un. Our Disco Elysium review called it "a great, bleak rumination on the failings of humanity on a macro and micro level", and we've since declared it one of the best RPGs.