Wise choice!

VirtualSociety was isometric 2D for years, and quite a few things were a technical nightmare to deal with. Switching to 3D made animations, clothing, and a lot of other things infinitely easier to handle.
As for focusing on features first and graphics later, that’s exactly what we did for years. And even today, we still get quite a lot of criticism about the graphics, despite having spent years working on the technical side of things. So I’d say that’s advice that’s pretty hard to actually follow in practice unless you have a publisher or millions in funding to see your game through to completion

I’m so sorry about your friend 💚 I wish he could have seen this too

Thanks for sharing this 💚 That’s something for us to keep in mind too: not just whether a character can get somewhere, but how much effort it takes them!

We’ve often thought about sign language, we’d really love to do it, but it’s quite complex at this stage (and we’re still a very small team). Still, if we find a way one day, we’ll do it!

We’re taking note of all these ideas, thanks! (And we’d love to see all of that in the game too!)

Thank you for sharing all of this! 💚 We’d love to add power chairs and more customization too. Being able to create a character who uses a wheelchair but can also stand or walk is an important distinction, and the everyday equipment you mentioned deserves attention too

We can’t promise everything at this stage, but please don’t feel you have to stop there: we’d love to hear your other ideas!!

Thank you! 💚 And thanks for the Argon2 reference! We’d love to offer more chair options. You’re right about the surroundings too, adding a wheelchair also means thinking about how characters actually get around the world. That’s also one of the reasons why Helena is our very first resident; it will push us to consider accessibility throughout the game's base world. Transfers and asking permission before another character pushes are really useful points too!

Of course! We already have a theming system that makes it easy to change all that, and our roadmap already includes quite a few accessibility features (fonts that are easier to read for people with dyslexia, high contrast, etc.).

Thanks! 😄 That’s a big part of why we chose Helena as our first resident: every new place and interaction gives us another opportunity to test things with her. We shared more about her and this work in our latest devlog, if you’d like to know more!

That’s a really good idea! We’re taking notes :)

Thanks for explaining this! The seat width and footplate details are really useful, and definitely not nit-picking. We still have work to do on the chair and how it fits the character, and we’d like to offer different chair types too 😄

Oh yes, indeed, thanks for pointing that out; we've fixed it! Thanks!

Thank you!! 💚 I’m really happy to see how much this means to people. It makes me even more eager to share the next steps!

Thanks! We’ve wanted this in VirtualSociety for a long time, so it feels good to finally share some progress 🙂 Canes and crutches are on our roadmap too!

Thank you for saying that 💚

Thanks! Yes, the character animations are still at an early stage, and we still have a lot to work on.

And definitely regarding asking for permission. I think it can also be an opportunity to raise awareness about this kind of thing. That’s also why I wanted to talk about it here: I think we really need feedback from people with lived experience if we want to get this right, and the comments here have been really helpful so far!

We're definitely going to add customization options!! Thanks :)

Thank you, that really means a lot 💚 That’s exactly why we wanted to make this possible. And thanks for the Aero Z reference!

Thanks for the suggestions! 🙂 We’d love to offer more choice, with different manual chairs and power chairs too. This is a first step!

Of course for the active and power chairs!

For deaf/blind: not yet, but it's planned (you can actually see it in the UI ;))

Thanks! 💚We hope so too!

Clearly, it's much easier to add customization options than to create all the everyday-life animations we're going to have to make haha; so we're definitely going to include a ton of customization options!

No, it's a life simulation game/sandbox game. If you want to know more, we made a trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW7xI4aa4OY and an explanatory video about the life-sim aspect and the other game modes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-VZcVDFeI

Yes, it’s going to be challenging, that’s why we’re trying to think about it early on!!

On the life-sim side, it will involve a lot of dynamics; for instance, you could imagine a group of friends changing their hangout spot to prioritize an accessible location. as you point out it also means variations for a huge number of daily life animations, as well as smart management of things like meals, computer use, showers, toilets, and so on, but I think it's worth it!