Accessible Vibes: Lessons from "Take The Stairs"

A week into August, I started to wonder if I were becoming a game jam addict.

I had already signed up for too many, and I was trying to convince myself I absolutely did not need to also do the Trijam that weekend. The theme wasn’t confirmed yet, but there was one theme far in the lead for voting: “Climbing to the Top.” And if that theme ended up winning, I had an idea.

When I get Ideas, I can become a problem for myself. I know this about me.

The idea I had wasn’t super unique. There wasn’t anything really special about the vibe. I thought it would be kinda fun, and the kind of game I like to play, and I thought I could make it with the skills I’d learned in the past month. 

And it was an idea, and ideas want to live.

I had the urge to apply my skills and make the thing. I was starting to enjoy the fact that I could think of a game idea and turn it into reality, because that’s not something I could do before. 

I know how to make games now! I’d made several already, somehow. 

But this particular idea didn’t really need to be made, by me, that weekend, for that jam.

I put so much effort into convincing myself I could let go of that one game.

And I did.

So where did “Take The Stairs” come from?

As the weekend approached, there was a massive power outage. Suddenly it didn’t matter whether I wanted to make that other game, because I wouldn’t be able to use my recording setup to record the music that was motivating me.

I couldn’t work, either. Or do much of anything.

But I could take the stairs, unlike some of my neighbors. I could get out and about. Go somewhere to charge my laptop and check my email.

And when I had the idea for this game, it needed to be made. It wasn’t just a fit for “Climbing to the Top,” it was the essence of “Climbing to the Top.” It was completely, totally unlike the first idea I’d had, in pretty much every way.

The idea for “Take the Stairs” wasn’t as fun of an idea as that other unmade game, but it was stronger in its essence. And it was timely, reflecting my feelings and situation of the moment. 

Animation was on my to-learn list, and this was a game where playing through the animation is the main game mechanic. 

Also on my list was working on atmosphere that doesn’t rely on my musicianship skills. The real life atmosphere in the real life stairwell had such a particular vibe, I wanted to capture that and practice building diagetic in-game vibes using foley.

I had luckily just installed Godot onto my laptop days before I lost internet access due to the outage, and the built-in microphone would be good enough for the foley I needed.

The base game came together quickly, and I had time to start adding secrets and story branches and vibes.

Conceptual Art and… something about Accessibility.

I love conceptual art. I love conceptual games. I considered making “Take the Stairs” a stairs climbing game with an absolutely unclimbable number of stairs, 100 floors, why not a thousand. That would be a vibe. That’d be a concept.

I also considered having it be something more manageable, like 4.

Did I need people to actually climb to the top, to feel like they had played my game correctly?

No.

Did I know that in reality, there’s some people who are completionists and who would feel bad if they couldn’t “win”?

Yes.

I went with 12 floors because it’s small enough to be manageable—it takes less than 4 minutes to climb, once you’re in the flow. But it still feels unreasonable. It’s still big enough that anyone not up for some conceptual art bullshit is going to bail.

It’s a fairly true to life number, and I tried to make the heaviness and mental barrier feel similar to reality.

And despite that it feels unreasonably large, it’s a totally reasonable challenge for anyone who really wants to get to the top. The game tries to make 4 minutes feel interminable, but 4 minutes is still 4 minutes.

So I wasn’t that worried that I was asking too much of players, as far as art stuff is concerned.

But I still have opinions about completionism, about what counts as legitimate when engaging with art, and something in the vibes just felt off about making a game that appears to expect people to climb so many stairs.

Accessibility was on my mind, and it took me a while to figure out what exactly the problem was. I was feeling ideas about accessible vibes, and it turned out to be partly about the accessibility of the vibes, and partly about the vibes of accessibility. Once I managed to identify and separate these two concerns, I was able to design for both.

I’m naming these with question marks because I’m not trying to coin words here, I don’t even know what I’m talking about yet; it’s just me trying to describe and separate the difference between the two different things I’m designing for: 

Diagetic Accessibility? Accessibility Vibes?

This is a game about taking the stairs. It’s pretty transparent in its intentions.

So the first problem was that I was trying to make a game that felt true to life (at least in some parts), and in real life part of the problem with having no power for so long is the real life accessibility issue for people who just cannot reasonably be asked to go without an elevator for days.

I have heard the idea that anyone who can’t take stairs in an emergency should live on the ground floor. I have heard the idea that some people who complain about having to take the stairs are people who could benefit from the exercise. 

But do I want a game with those vibes? No. Those are bad vibes. I don’t like them.

The reality is that getting an accessible place isn’t necessarily easy, and moving is expensive and stressful and doesn’t necessarily make sense if you can survive in an emergency but will still suffer without elevator access. The reality is that people live up stairs and then a symptom unexpectedly flares up, people live up stairs and then get older, people live up stairs and then get a knee replacement, or get a temporary injury, or have children, or have dogs that got old and are too big to carry, or can walk down in an emergency but can’t carry groceries up, or, or, or.

So yeah, it’s a game. You don’t need to be able to take real stairs to be able to climb my digital stairs. But forcing people to interact with the game as if everyone can take game stairs would make it feel like a game.

I wanted my game to feel legitimizing of the idea that maybe you can’t, or don’t want, or shouldn’t, take the stairs. Even if you do take the stairs, I still want there to be an option not to. And I want that option to be kind, and to have there be enough meat to it that the player can feel my intention that it’s a successful win state, that you completed the game if you play that way, that you found a special and substantive ending that I thought a lot about and put many hours of work into.

The first game jam version of the game had multiple endings and more story/dialogue if you didn’t climb the stairs than if you did. And I honestly thought pretty much no one would find those options. I thought most people would either climb the stairs, or if they didn’t want to, they’d quit out instead of exploring all options.

But from what I heard from playtesters, and then players, pretty much everyone found those options. Either the first time they played, or if not, they tried a second playthrough just to see what other options existed. 

Since that version, I’ve made updates to add more top-of-stairs content, and so I’ve added more to the bottom of the stairs options to balance that out.

Earlier today I finally made that update public, and there’s more in there than I had even planned. I just really like validating that option, I guess. That’s my vibe.

I know it doesn’t actually make my game literally more accessible. But accessibility vibes are a good vibe, and it has made my game so much better than it would have been if it forced all interaction toward stair climbing.

Actual accessibility includes things like controller support, which I finally got working properly earlier this week, and adding text size options, which is on my list of things to learn how to do. Gotta have real world accessibility too, to not kill the accessibility vibes.

Conceptual Accessibility / Completionist Inclusivity / Being An Art Snob But Hopefully Not An Insufferable Art Snob

The other type of accessibility-adjacent concern on my mind was about gatekeeping around game completion and art appreciation.

I’m into conceptual art and I like making conceptual art. But I understand the worry many people have about whether they’re doing it “right” when they interact with art in forms they don’t entirely “get”, or when people think the art is demanding something from them that they don’t want to give.

Conceptual art can ask you to climb 100 flights of stairs, while not actually wanting or expecting you to. But many people will still feel it as a literal request, because after all that’s what the words are saying! And they might get a bad vibe. 

It’s not fun to be asked for something unreasonable, when you’re not sure the asker is okay with hearing no.

So I wanted my game to show and not just tell the player they can do whatever they want, and that I’m good with it!

For this game at least, I decided that if I don’t want or expect every player to climb all the stairs, I needed another option that is clearly a winning option.

If someone climbs one flight of stairs and says to themselves “Yeah, I get the idea, I’m ready to be done with this now,” I want that to be a complete interaction with my game. And while I could leave it up to the individual to quit out of a game part-way through and decide for themselves whether they think they “played” it or not, I know the reality is that some people might feel unsatisfied and excluded because they “failed”, even when they actually did it right as far as I’m concerned. 

I wanted to design the game to make clear my opinion that someone who bails on stair climbing did, indeed, interact with my art in a correct way. And for my vibe as a designer, that means I’ve got to do more than just say it’s fine with empty words. I want to show love and care into that option. It should feel like an option I want people to take, so that they can see the work I put into it. I want to show that I’m not severing our designer-player connection the moment they decide not to do what they think I want them to do.

This is why, in addition to being able to choose not to climb the stairs to begin with, you can also bail at any point and get a substantive ending.

And it turns out to have been effective! 

Players who didn’t want to climb all the stairs still engaged with the game in good faith, seeing what else it had to offer instead of giving up and quitting out, and found the options I thought would be functionally theoretical when I first added them.

In other games, I’ve shown my willingness to put time and thought into hidden gameplay that’s just for my own good vibes and satisfaction, but, it turned out that all this overthinking led to design choices that were incredibly worthwhile for my players as well as myself.

There’s also other potential story moments where I give one option that’s more on the side of the conceptual, while also giving other options, on other story branches. The hope is that the player can appreciate the conceptual part and imagine what it would be like if they chose it, and then move on without actually having to do it if they don’t want.

Establishing the initial vibes in the right way gives me more power to play with the vibes later. And I do try to always be kind. I try to treat the player with respect. 

(Even if my players are also mostly conceptual, because I don’t think anyone has touched most of the content in this game, at this point.)

Conclusion

The game is still, at its core, a game about taking the stairs. 

The stairs vibe is the main vibe. 

But the thing I learned from making it is that this other vibe, the accessible vibe, is a thing I like and a thing that has given the game a lot more depth than I had originally planned for.

It’s become one of my favorite of my games. I’ve worked on it more consistently than any other, adding to it between doing other game jams. 

I love it more with every update. Even if most of it is just for me.

And there’s still more I’d like to add.

I’m very glad that I managed to convince myself not to get attached to that other game idea, because letting go of that idea made room for this one. It’s evidence that all this overthinking I’m doing about my process is good for at least something.

The end.

To recap the blogs and takeaways thus far:

1. I Will Set: “Vibes First” as my guiding light
2. Even Shadows Into Gold: cutting to the essence, and having a meaningful relationship with the games I make
3. Depths of Jupiter: Secrets and Going To Bed On Time
4. Take the Stairs: accessible vibes
5. A Burp To Remember. “I just want to.” (upcoming)