Review of Deaf Game / Hoh – Roller Champions Alpha

I have the opportunity to play at the Alpha of Roller Champions. If you don’t know, Roller Champions are sports games, developed by Ubisoft. This concept is a mixture of derby roller involving three players per team on the oval path, competing to complete the round and score goals.

As usual, let’s start with settings. Unfortunately, that is very limited.

There is only one option, which is to turn on and turn off the subtitles. But when playing, I have to see that the subtitles are white and brave. It is also bigger than average. However, I have difficulty reading subtitles because of the fact that the track is quite colorful and sometimes there is not only enough contrast to understand the whole phrase. Below you can see examples of subtitles.

If there is an option for the background of the subtitles or even all kinds of contours in words, it will make it easier to read and not force so much my eyes try to read quickly what is said. The subtitle size option will help those who play far from their screen or just want a bigger text.

I only confirmed that after the match that there was a time -the subtitle did not appear, as in the count of the last seconds of the match. Most of my time will only realize that the match ends literally because it ends. I will not pay attention to the timer because my attention is mostly focused on the bottom of the screen.

Something that is definitely lost is a communication tool with my team. There is no voice chat, no text chat, nothing at all. There is no way to communicate with them except by using emotes. But even then, emotes is not an efficient way to convey messages because there are many variables, like you continue to play skating and don’t always have your teammates in your vision. It must make some moments more difficult in the game because I want to communicate, but I can’t.

If the voice chat will be the standard in the game, I hope there is a available-to-text function. This will make communication much more easily accessible and inclusive, considering this is a team -based game (and in the sports genre) so that efficient communication is needed.

What I will say now is more common opinion, not directly related to my disability.

I really feel that there are many tweaks to do. I hope it is possible to repatriate the alpha key because acceleration is done by holding the shift, which is something that makes me confused because most of the time is used to move forward. It seems that W has no function in this game. And of course, Wasd gave me the impression that it did not seem to work well in the shape of the track, most of the time it felt that Ad made me go beyond the curve.

There is also a key that does not appear on the control page, but it appears when playing and even after playing a few matches. I can’t say what it is for, because it seems that he performs the same function depending on the context, but I cannot confirm it. The letter Y is displayed, but it seems bug that shows the Gamepad Y button, not the correct e key. This is very confusing.

Another thing that makes me very frustrated is the bot in a training match. In the beginning, it was cool to watch my skater to be torn down, but it became tiring and frustrated very quickly. I continued to be torn down, sometimes it would be a sequence of bots that dropped me. And because I was torn down without the possibility of a bouquet, as in some games, it made me feel that I lost a precious second because all the animations that knocked down.

Another thing that makes frustration is passing the ball. Although the ball has a kind of round symbol on it to give a signal where it is, it does not explain whether the player is enduring the ball or not. This only indicates where the ball is, but does not give me a visual instruction if the player will pass the ball or not. And this is important information for me, because that way I can try to avoid enemies robbing the ball at that time in the air.

I don’t think there are other moments where I feel visual signals are needed, but once again, the game is in Alpha, so there may be a need for a better visual signal or more after the game reaches the final version.

I also have to be honest and say that in this Alfa state, the game feels very simple to me. I can’t see any attraction to keep playing for more than 30 minutes. I hope that I can see more games in Beta or even in the final version, so I can confirm that feeling or not.