It was only after we released the Prologue for In Sink that we started to realise that some of our community members were having issues with the colors. Many of these players were either colorblind themselves or were playing with colorblind friends, partners, or family members, and they were finding the color-coded puzzles to be very difficult as a result. We wanted to resolve this issue and make In Sink a more accessible game for colorblind players, but we also wanted to retain the fact that our game was language-less. The big question was: What else could we add to our puzzles to help players describe certain elements to each other without using language in any way?
The answer was to add numbers and symbols!
Now everything that has a relevant color also has a symbol and/or a number associated with it, so the game can be played entirely without describing a single color!
The symbols in the game are in a 4x4 or 3x3 grid with the inspiration coming from the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. They are easy to describe so as to not add an additional challenge for our colorblind players. For example, looking at the symbols and numbers featured in the images below, “two diagonal lines” or “Lever number 8” are both two simple ways to summarise what you are seeing.
In short, we wanted to give players as many options as possible for describing what they are seeing to each other, rather than limiting it to colors only. This has changed the way we approach the design of our puzzles and has brought up even more interesting discussions, such as how people describe certain symbols, why they choose to describe them in that way, and what signifiers do people naturally default to when solving puzzles (i.e. do you prefer to use the colors, the symbols, the numbers, or a mixture of all of them?). Rather than limiting our puzzle design, it has opened up new avenues for consideration and has left us with even more to talk about in future dev diaries!
Looking for your missing piece to the puzzle? We’ve got plenty more for you to sink your teeth into.
Don’t forget to wishlist In Sink, join our Discord server, and follow us on social media!
It was only after we released the Prologue for In Sink that we started to realise that some of our community members were having issues with the colors. Many of these players were either colorblind themselves or were playing with colorblind friends, partners, or family members, and they were finding the color-coded puzzles to be very difficult as a result. We wanted to resolve this issue and make In Sink a more accessible game for colorblind players, but we also wanted to retain the fact that our game was language-less. The big question was: What else could we add to our puzzles to help players describe certain elements to each other without using language in any way?
The answer was to add numbers and symbols!
Now everything that has a relevant color also has a symbol and/or a number associated with it, so the game can be played entirely without describing a single color!
The symbols in the game are in a 4x4 or 3x3 grid with the inspiration coming from the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. They are easy to describe so as to not add an additional challenge for our colorblind players. For example, looking at the symbols and numbers featured in the images below, “two diagonal lines” or “Lever number 8” are both two simple ways to summarise what you are seeing.
In short, we wanted to give players as many options as possible for describing what they are seeing to each other, rather than limiting it to colors only. This has changed the way we approach the design of our puzzles and has brought up even more interesting discussions, such as how people describe certain symbols, why they choose to describe them in that way, and what signifiers do people naturally default to when solving puzzles (i.e. do you prefer to use the colors, the symbols, the numbers, or a mixture of all of them?). Rather than limiting our puzzle design, it has opened up new avenues for consideration and has left us with even more to talk about in future dev diaries!
Looking for your missing piece to the puzzle? We’ve got plenty more for you to sink your teeth into.
Don’t forget to wishlist In Sink, join our Discord server, and follow us on social media!
Greetings arcane mages! We're currently streaming gameplay from the WARCANA Next Fest demo on Steam! Join our pre-recorded stream at 7pm BST on Saturday, as we see if our defences will survive the onslaught in WARCANA! 🛡️
⏰ 7PM BST - 15th June
Like what you see? Play the WARCANA Next Fest demo for yourself and don't forget to wishlist:
Miss the stream event? Don't worry, you haven't missed out- we'll be playing the stream on our Steam Store page throughout Next Fest! Or even better, play our Demo until 17th June!
To keep up-to-date, follow WARCANA on Twitter/X and join the community on Discord!
- Fixed and improved placing railway signal onto existing rail signal network or connecting multiple signal networks together. - Improved train pathtracing and fixed few problems with rail system looping. - Fixed several issues with city station connections and road station connection getting lost. - Fixed inconsistent cargo calculation caused by deleting passengers from overcrowded passenger stations. - Improved road vehicle braking and fixed a few mistakes with vehicle deceleration. - Fixed diagonal railway ramp loading. - Fixed road vehicle getting stuck if game autosaves while vehicle is waiting at lights or at crossing. - Fixed railway crossing. - Fixed diagonal railway double bridge track connection. - Fixed inconsistent station connecting when placing, improved connected stations radius highlight and accepted cargo UI. - Fixed per-car order not being available and fixed dock placement collision from the last update. - Added a failsafe to prevent Train on track error when no train is on track. - Improved signal reset when train is moved to depot. - Fixed town highlight not closing properly. - Changed road stop UI to make the stop direction more visible.
0.3 Update changed a lot of things, so I had to take some time to focus on fixes, which, same as everything else, took way too long. Hopefully, this should be the last fix update and I should be able to get back to more regular larger content updates soon.
Localization: - Czech localization update by Spid3rCZ. - Russian localization update by Hard. - Ukrainian localization update by vovanvoks. - Portuguese localization update by AlexShuma. - Spanish localization update by Miguel Haakon. - Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM. - German localization update by Ruby.
Missions: - Fix: Ships scuttled with the Ship Engineer skill weren't counted towards GRT progress in missions and campaign objectives. - Fix: The objective about finding a hut on the Hopen Island was sometimes not progressing when looking at the hut through binoculars / UZO / periscope. - Fix: The objective about finding the first hut on Hopen Island is no longer marked with a green dot, to avoid confusion that it's located at its location.
Torpedo fire systems: - Officers are now much more accurate at estimating AOB. - Fix: On Type IID it wasn't possible to set UZO as the active bearing transmitter on torpedo fire control boxes (the option for it was missing). - Fix: Corrected typo on "Lagenwinkel" label on TDC and "Schuß" label on the launch lever.
UI: - Added a new loading hint explaining that it's not possible to charge batteries at maximum speed. - Fix: Radio stations sometimes weren't listed on the radioman's menu, even though there was an information that they should be available. - Fix: Chronometer tool wasn't continuing to measure time after it was hidden. - Fix: It wasn't possible to open torpedo launchers UI from TDC UI, the button was always disabled.
Crew: - Fix (regression): After the last fix for sailors playing lying on bed animation after selecting them for an external mission, officers started to have a similar problem.
Type II: - Added a new depth meter in the control room. We will also update the dial in the UI soon. - Fix: New dial textures on the electric engines.
Type VIIB: - Fix: It was possible to move through a net cutter on Type VIIB U-boats.
World: - Fix: Kiel canal is now deeper and it should be possible to traverse it. - Fix: Kiel canal is now called with its historic name, Kaiser Wilhelm Canal.
General: - Fix: If an autosave was made, while Uboatopedia was open, the time was permanently slowed down after this save was loaded. - Fix: Bearing displayed in the hydrophone UI is now within range of 0 to 360 degrees instead of -180 to -180 degrees, to match the scale present on the device. - Fix: Indicator lights on various devices could be in an incorrect initial state after loading a saved game state. - Fix: Indicator lights weren't changing its state during a pause.
We have enabled an XP Boost event for all players which will be active during the next server restart. This event will run beginning today and is scheduled to end on June 17th depending on the time of the server reboot schedule.
Limited Time Boosted Daily Rewards!
We have also added a special set of daily rewards for this weekend only including some of the more rare gear along with skin crates that everyone can earn just for playing! These daily rewards will go live at the start of the next daily rewards rotation later tonight!
I have made some small improvements and fixes to the demo.
Improvements:
Added feedback when inviting players through the in-game friend list
The HUD is now displayed during the level up process
Removed exploding skeletons on wave 14
Reduced enemy damage from 70% to 50% when playing on easy
Improved Reflect passive description
Rebalanced Suppressing Aura: - Increased base starting damage from 10 to 15 - Decreased initial cooldown from 0.8s to 0.6s - Changed starting attributes, now damages based on rarity instead of size increases - Certain level ups now grant damage instead of cooldown - Increased evolution life leach from 10% to 15%
Fixes:
Fixed an issue where players would unlock the extreme difficulty
Fixed an issue where the easy difficulty paid out higher rewards
Fixed healing bubble healing amount as it was not healing as much as was displayed
Fixed an issue where dark meteors were colliding an invisible wall
I hope that you will continue to enjoy the demo alone or with your friends. Thank you so much for trying out the demo and wishlisting the game. If you have feedback or ideas to share, please do not hesitate.