Video games are a medium that can be enjoyed by a diverse audience, but sometimes, Deaf or hard of hearing players can struggle to enjoy a game due to information not being conveyed to them properly. Audio cues without visual indicators or captions, spoken narrative or direction without subtitles, for example.
However, games that include well-illustrated subtitles or captions can enable these players to understand what's being spoken through dialogue, and what's going on in the surrounding area.
Providing subtitles and captions is a good first step. But also important is that subtitles are readable and stand out from the game. Some games do this by adding a background, or a heavy drop shadow behind the text while others use colours to separate different meanings. Metro Exodus, for example, will inform the player where an enemy is located in the world through captions.
Where audio is used to locate events in the game world, a visual representation of this information is helpful. Games such as Fortnite have an audio visualiser ring that identifies where key audio (and the related event) is coming from. Assassin's Creed Odyssey uses a similar feature to indicate nearby dangers.
Games that enable Deaf and hard of hearing players with subtitles, captions and visual indicators are hugely welcomed by the community, with wider accessibility benefits for other players who can opt to benefit from these interface enhancements as well.
This list includes 29 games from the last 19 years, with 953 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to play games with Deaf/HoH features.