Spot the difference (original above, potentially colour-blind friendly below).
Justin Ma, one of the designers behind FTL, has posted a request on the game's forums for colourblind players to check out and comment on some new colour-swapped images from the game. The team is hoping to produce a colourblind-friendly mode for those players, but will need feedback before it's implemented.
From a quick glance, it looks like a lot of the items that are green in the standard-colour mode of the game – including the spaceship's hull meter, the health bars of the crew, and the power bars for the ship's various systems – have been changed, often to white. The team is presumably aiming to cater for those with a form of red/green colourblindness, which affects 7 to 10% of the male population.
The Game Accessibility Guidelines list this kind of feature on their Basic level, stating that developers should “ensure no essential information is conveyed by a colour alone” and “reinforce with a symbol or offer a choice of alternative colours”. It's good to see the team behind FTL paying attention and trying to make the game more accessible, but will it work? If you have a form of colour-blindness, even if you're not interested in FTL, you can help out others by checking out the images and heading to the forums to tell Justin what you think.
