In the late 1980s, Nintendo released the Game Boy, the world’s first portable video game system, and along with it introduced Tetris to millions of players. Game Boy Tetris was my constant companion for years, in no small part due to its inherent colorblind-friendly interface. As a greyscale game system, I never had to deal with color confusion when playing Game Boy. Tetris remains one of my most-played games of all time.
More recently, Wolfgang Warsch designed BRIKKS, which is essentially Tetris in roll-and-write form. It borrows the polyominos and provides similar mechanics for dropping and rotating each piece. I enjoy BRIKKS and pull it out quite often, especially for a quick solo game. It is fairly simple to learn, and I continue to chase my personal high score.
Colorblind Review. Unfortunately, BRIKKS does not share the colorblind accessibility of Game Boy Tetris. It uses a custom 6-sided die with color as the only distinguishing feature. The green and red sides of the die (and associated bonus spots on the player sheet) are problematic for gamers with color vision deficiency. I required help on numerous occasions, including calling others over during my solo play-throughs to help me identify colors.
Colorblind Mod. Two modifications to the game greatly enhanced its colorblind accessibility. I added an “R” for Red and “G” for Green on the 6-sided die, and then added these same letters to the player sheet to identify the two colors.
A more elegant solution would include double-coding by using shape as another distinguisher, at least for the non-black-and-white colors. Standard polygons and other icons would be great, with the additional value of not requiring knowledge of English for my personal “R=Red” and “G=Green” codes.
One limitation of modifying roll-and-write games that include a pad of game sheets is the need to change the sheet each time. I haven’t invested in a laminator yet, but that will be the next step to making BRIKKS colorblind-friendly in the long term.
Have you played BRIKKS? Have you identified any color vision (or other) accessibility issues? Any other recommendations to modify this or similar games?
