Gaming While Blind: Gaming When You Can’t See Shit.

I was diagnosed with Keratoconus in December of 2024, my eyes have always been bad, never so bad that I thought it made me low vision, but here we are.

We’ll start with the diagnosis. Keratoconus is an eye disease that makes your vision all sorts of fucked up, not only that in my personal experience sometimes you’ll just start sobbing because of the pain, and most times you’ll just perpetually exist with whichever eye is hurting more closed 90% of the time.

Problem is, I’m a gamer. from an early age I’ve been a gamer, and not just ‘I play shooters or sports games’, but I’m really about this shit. then again, I find the whole git gud thing to be reductive and frankly just a dumb fucking argument. so let’s leave it at that. you’ll find out what I mean with each article.

I figured for my first article, I’d talk about my journey playing Elden Ring: Neightreign, mostly solo or duo with my partner.

any good Fromsoft fan would know that the settings are nothing more than a suggestion rather than an actual tool that can help you. it doesn’t matter how long you fiddle on with that lock on, Magma Wyrm and Black Blade Kindred are still going to unlock your camera and in the latter case, probably obliterate you while doing it.

Now, Nightreign is a game in which you and up to two others basically boss rush the bosses from their other games. timed by a fortnite circle and forced to kill a bunch of worthless trash mobs to get the best possible loadout for the Night Lord.

it isn’t an impossibly hard game, but it isn’t easy, and presents numerous visual challenges.

one, you’re locked into that shit for 35–40 minutes and you’re going to just deal with it.

taking a break to flush my eyes means I don’t hit that 12–15 level threshold and the prospective night boss is going to feel like it’s just getting air blown on it. you have to move, and move fast. I played Revenant, and Raider, mostly raider when I was tired of getting one shot as revenant. then back to Revenant as Deep of Night came out since everyone was getting one shot. (The difficulty scales up and each Depth makes enemies hit a hell of a lot harder.)

being a faith character, the bean was immediately appealing. along with the slew of adorable little memes of her holding radahn’s great swords.

from the beginning, I didn’t struggle too much. one tip, you’ll see often going forward is I take my time, squinting to wait out enemy moves. and focus on sound cues to dodge after getting used to an initial sound, or indicator.

Or, I hold sprint until it stops doing whatever it’s doing. most often, either option works for me, and I have been able to get to depth 3 without grinding much at all. but goddamn has it had me closed to quitting.

Caligo, the snowy mountain shifting earth, so much white, so much movement. I lost count of how many times I just died and accepted my fate knowing I didn’t even see what the hell happened.

the DLC has a lot of dark color on dark color, but I’d actually give Nightreign some props here. the color grading is actually really damn nice. I can see the little purple blur for grab attacks. I can just barely make out most enemies enough to have no issue against them at this point. though my true counter, humanoid enemies that just swing basic weapons? I’m just cooked there, honestly.

I can’t discern when the forearm is moving, when the elbow is extending. so I just get hit, constantly.

the banished knights can all go to hell. I’d rather fight godskin duo, unironically. and yes, they’re humanoid, but I’m only used to them because the big one is the only one with a lot of really quick movements, and I used to help people kill them in elden ring.

All In all, the game is fun, addicting even, and my partner and I both are excited as hell to see the bean got buffed. I played one game against base tricephalos in depth 3 and I was so ecstatic that the summons survived more than a single hit I nearly shed a tear.

anyway, that’s it. truthfully, I have no idea how medium works and I’m just gonna use it to spam post and ignore reality. so until next yap session.