The Vale: Shadow of the Crown proves you don’t need visuals to make a great video game

Games are often lauded for their art style, visual effects, or the stunning landscapes that they employ. After all, the world of video games often comes down to the “video” aspect. It’s all about what game can provide the most realistic visuals that will draw the most people in at once. Elements like sound, voice acting, and storyline often take a backseat in importance to the question: Does it look nice?

The Vale: Shadow of the Crown, which was released on August 19, 2021, on PC, doesn’t have the luxury of good graphics. The developers, Falling Squirrel, made a highly unusual decision when it came to their game, and because of that, it doesn’t have anywhere to hide. The game was designed for blind and visually impaired players and features a blind protagonist. As such it has no flashy cutscenes or jaw-dropping vistas. In fact, there are hardly any visuals at all. Just sound, story, combat, and a cast of humorous characters.

The game is simple but enveloping, with only a few keys to press and quite a lot more to understand and execute. Placed in the shoes of a young Princess named Alex and sent away from home to live a quiet life in a vale, you need to learn very quickly that blindness is not a limitation after everything goes wrong. Plunged into a long and arduous cross-country battle, you and Alex must remember everything you’ve ever learned in order to survive and make it home.

The strength of The Vale: Shadow of the Crown is in its ability to make players feel like their universe has shifted. With visually nothing more than some pretty floating lights that change the color occasionally and the item menus, which are fully audio-guided, there’s nothing about this game that screams eye-catching. Yet, it draws a player in. Though I was a little befuddled at first, after a few good whacks of my sword into a roving pack of wolves, I was hooked. Alex as a character is a delight, she’s strong but relatable, and she’s got a sense of humor about the world and her blindness that helps you feel at ease.

The voice acting is stellar, and a wide variety of nationalities, cultures, and heritages are represented in this game. All, of course, signaled by the changes in accents and voices. Everyone sounds unique and real. The sound also is the primary form of navigation. The overall ability to navigate through this world without a single visual marker is amazing. From the high-quality sound effects like the rush of the water leading you along to the rustle of clothing as a bandit leaps in for the strike, you’ll never feel as if you were ever well and truly lost. Everything “shows” you the way, and your companion will gently prompt you in the right direction if you ever get confused.

The combat system remains simplistic by design. Both attacks and attacking opportunities never come from behind Alex, and only from the front, left, and right sides. The attacks are also clearly telegraphed by directional sounds so you shouldn’t be caught off guard. It also means that every fight is a battle of concentration as much as it is one of skill. There’s room for improvement, of course. The fact that you consistently fight foes one-on-one while the others politely wait their turn does feel silly, even if it speeds up a bit later on. The fighting is still frantic, but it’s less about the number of foes and more about timing. The slower input reaction time from the keys is a bit clunky for more experienced players as well. It can feel like you’re pressing the keys too fast for the system to register.  

Despite the flaws, the fact that you’ll never see a pixel of this wonderfully crafted and thematic world or that you have to wear a headset for the five-plus hours of gameplay doesn’t detract from the experience at all. In fact, that a game designed for such an underrepresented community in the gaming world can be so well made and so accessible for all players is truly a huge step forward and a strong indication of a bright gaming future for all.