Accessibility Support for Misophonia

[Max Arturis]

Misophonia is (or selective sound sensitivity syndrome, sound-rage) is a neurobehavioral phenomenon associated with an intolerance of specific sounds or their associated stimuli. It is a disorder that has a wider umbrella of causes and impacts, and because of that it's not simply pinning one thing down and tackling said problem. Personally, the cause of mine is the beating of insect wings. Many types of buzzing, which have caused me some level of struggle throughout the years of gaming.

When I initially started playing Grounded there was only one source in the game, gnats. I found that the bees later on simply had stylized sounds that either overshadowed what little buzzing there was, or that there was no buzzing at all. The biggest hurdle, however, was when mosquitoes were added to the game. I find myself muting my audio completely (on speakers specifically, but using headphones makes things much harder) when fighting them, especially when I'm in an area such as the Moldorc Playset where they are the primary (or only) enemy. Their "voice" sounds are too similar to real mosquitoes, whereas compared to other creatures' voices that are completely different sounds. 

While the mosquitoes are the current primary offender, I know that wasps will soon enter the yard and while I haven’t yet downloaded the test version to test my worries, in real life they are also a primary source of this. As I have no experience in making games I figure that audio changes may be harder to implement overall compared to character models. Since I’ve been playing more recently, and progressing further in the game, it’s harder for me to simply bear with it as it comes.