Version 1.4.1 OUT NOW! + ♿Addressing “Colourblind Correction” news

Happy Thursday, my fellow gamers!

I’ll be going on another short vacation this Friday! But before that, we’ve got a new hotfix for the game, mostly containing some general additional accessibility changes that we only got around to implementing after the previous update.

You can find the full changelog at the bottom of this article!

That’s right, more accessibility changes!

This was an idea that just came almost directly after we released 1.4.0 that felt obvious, but it’s here now!

Roof Turrets have a colour strip that indicates their current state. Now, in addition, the strip also now pulsates depending on the state the turret is in!

• If calm, the strip slowly pulsates between Cyan and a darker shade of cyan.
• If scouting, the strip pulsates between orange and black at a steady pace.
• Lastly, if targeting, the strip pulsates rapidly between red and black.

So not only is there a different colour for each state, but there is also a constantly changing motion to the colour for each state as well.

Gates now also have a similar overlay to Stage Triggers, indicating that it is indeed a gate.

As we mentioned previously, this is useful for both new players and those with cognitive impairments, and even to colourblind players since the triggers info isn’t solely communicated with just a colour.

“Colourblind Correction” is admittedly not a great solution

As of the last update, there is now a "Colourblind Correction" setting that uses a filter to improve the contrast of the game's colours for both fully and partially colourblind players.

But, as pointed out kindly by Accessibility Specialist Ian Hamilton on Twitter, it's admittedly not a great solution. Game Accessibility Guidelines have been really useful to us when deciding what we can add and adjust in the game to make it more accessible, but we missed a part of this article that talks about palette-shifting filters.

While they can be the correct option in certain cases, in general, other solutions should be investigated first before deciding on using a filter. Filters are difficult to implement effectively and are negatively perceived by colourblind gamers.

To quote the article directly “They are a blunt instrument, can change colours of elements that do not need to be changed, unnecessarily affect aesthetics, and introduce new clashes. And as they’re based on fixed sets of colours, they only allow conditions specifically designed to be catered for, without a way to reach edge cases.”

We have future plans to replace this setting with the ability to fully customize the colours of vital game info such as triggers, turrets, UI, etc. And we've always been committed to not representing game info with just colours alone, and we will keep improving in that aspect with upcoming updates, such as this one! 😊

Itch.io Summer Sale

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. We're participating in the Itch.io Summer Sale!

For the same price you'd pay for a good ol' Cup O' Joe ☕or Soda🥤, you can support the development of Just Keep Running, and you'll get access to high-quality downloads of the soundtrack, any future bonus content or related products, and once the game gets released on Steam or any other storefronts, you will be sent a healthy amount of keys that you can use or share to redeem the game on those platforms!

This game is developed by a very small but passionate team, and while our main goal is not to make a profitable product (which is why our goal is only $25), it would be nice to get some sort of return on our hard work. It's a very small gesture, but it goes a long way, and we deeply appreciate it! :D

Full Changelog

[1.4.1] - 2023-07-06

CHANGED

• Roof Turrets: Their colour strip now pulsates to indicate their current state. If calm, slowly pulsates between Cyan and a darker cyan. If scouting, pulsates between orange and black at a steady pace. If targeting, pulsates rapidly between red and black.
• Gates now have an overlay explaining that it is a gate, similar to Stage Triggers.
• Landing sounds play in relation to the location of the player’s feet rather than from a generic location on the player’s body.
• Internal changes to how Campaigns and Levels are stored and loaded in the main menu.

FIXED

• Player’s foot-related sounds (Footsteps, Landing, Sliding, Wallrunning/climbing) sometimes being sharply interrupted when attempting to play a new sound.
• Outlines not rendering if the game is running on the Vulkan API. This should now be fixed.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Currently, we have no other known issues. If you spot something that looks like an issue, please let us know!

Changelog formatting is partly based on [Keep a Changelog] (Keepachangelog.com). Version numbers are formatted as such…

• MAJOR.MINOR.HOTFIX

• • Major releases tend to include extensive visual & technological additions, or overhauls of significant systems that might invalidate older game versions, such as save files.

• • Minor releases include changes that are significant but likely do not include anything that may invalidate older versions of the game.

• • Hotfix releases include Quality of Life changes or fixes to other bugs and issues.