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Heat shimmer and you
So Roadcraft is a great little game, very chill and good for the OCD. The game does mention that some people might have seizures due to epilepsy and photo-sensitivity in general. Most of my playtime only the scanning feature might be a nuisance. And then I got to the two desert maps. They’ve done a…
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Static Image Visual Triggers
So today I have a special treat for my wonderful audience. This article features a collaboration with internet celebrity Howard Tayler, known for his outstanding webcomic Schlock Mercenary. Howard has been working on a fancy print design for a character of his and while showing his progress, he has also provided me with an excellent…
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Valheim Triggers
So lets talk about Valheim. Valheim is a game that I have spent just over 200 hours playing, which might sound foolish considering the fairly long list of trigger issues I’ve have with the game. The reason why I’ve managed to put that many hours into something with so many triggers is that each trigger…
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Pit People Visual Triggers
I’d like to preface this entry with stating that I’ve started on medicine to combat the severity of my epileptic seizures. I don’t really get the seizures now, but I certainly get all the warning shots from what used to be triggers. So really what the medicine does is help me survive the smallest triggers…
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Valheim A
So lets talk about Valheim. Valheim is a game that I have spent just over 200hours playing, which might sound foolish considering the fairly long list of trigger issues I’ve had with the game. The reason why I’ve managed to put that many hours into something with so many triggers is that each trigger is…
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Valheim B
10 days later, the devs had pushed a patch to their public test version that added an epilepsy safety button.Clicking that button affected the reported issues for me in the following ways: 1) No noticeable change on the Portal Effect. 2) Eikthyr is massively improved for me. I can actually stand looking in the direction…
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Geometric High Contrast Trigger
This image is very much like the one from the Rosetta stone article. Its not crossing the line into triggering territory, but looking at it gives me an instant tingling sensation in my hands and arms. I’ve learned to associate that with a final warning from my body’s epilepsy response. If I block off the…
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Twitter Gifs
Recently two neurologists each posted an animation (animated gifs) in Twitter posts. The first one was a CGI of brain activity in a patient having an epileptic seizure (or at least, that was the context in which the gif was posted). That one was uncomfortable but doable. I did write her a message asking her…
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Visual Triggers In Games and Trailers
So I have two visual examples for the topic of games that are exclusive by design and games that are exclusive by accident. This video of a game project still in development perfectly demonstrates a genre of games that are just not for photo-sensitive people. Whereas the game Wasteland 3 has a steam store trailer…
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ZX Spectrum Vintage Video Game Visual Trigger
This one is a real killer: So someone sent me a video to check out of the very old ZX Spectrum cassette-loading border flicker. I had fortunately never experienced those things as a kid and I am honestly not sure I would have made it through such an experience unscathed. This thing kills epileptics DEAD:…
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Optical Illusion Visual Trigger
Next up: the wonders of optical illusions. Someone sent me an image depicting a pattern that continues into infinity. Harmful links are intentionally made unclickable, copy/paste them into to an address bar to see them. WARNING: If you have epilepsy or similar sensitivities DO NOT USE LINK BELOW. To view the content, please copy and…
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Swirling Animated Gif Visual Trigger
Sometimes, gifs just shouldn’t have been made. This was just linked in the cute thread of a web forum of all places. Its not super bad yet, but man is it also not entirely safe. Head feels somewhat….floaty…right now. Okay, yeah no. Dizzy town, here we come. Swirling background, not a good time. Do not…
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Rustler Medieval Game Visual Triggers
So Rustler is a great game, basically the medieval version of the original Grand Theft Auto. Does not take itself seriously in any way. Absolutely loved it. And then I got to the prison break mission. A long running fight with an escort quest while the screen wobbles and swerves as it changes from magenta…
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Per Aspera Visual Triggers
Per Aspera is neat little game about terraforming Mars. It is very relaxed and the biggest challenge you face is your own ability to plan out a road network.Epileptics get a little bonus challenge though. Whenever you try to place a water treatment plant, you get this graphical overlay that shows you the area that…
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Non Triggering Lightning Effects aka Lightning Done Right
The following three images of lightning effects are examples of how to do it right, please copy and paste the following links to your browser address bar and remove the spacing after http://: The lightning bolt travels slowly down, branches out fairly slowly and then does a bit of a brightness/intensity flash that I can…
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Red Solstice 2: Survivor Triggers
Welp add Red Solstice 2: Survivor to the list of games that don’t play nice. There are a couple of maps (including main plot missions) that apparently needed some good old fashioned lightning going on in the background (as opposed to their regular “actually has an effect on the gameplay” lightning strikes). This background lightning…
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Pattern Based Visual Triggers
Someone asked me about patterns also being potential triggers and I gave them sort of an “it depends” reply. Well I’ve found a good example of something that messes with your brain courtesy of a developer post in the Awful Jams Discord. This one had a quick and painful response as well as leaving a…
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Twitter Trigger EA Games Accessibility Blunder
Ah the minefields of accessibility. So EA is doing a big push on accessibility specifically aimed towards colorblind players. So far so great. Unfortunately their 20 seconds long video announcing it triggered my epilepsy. This link SHOULD take you to the reply I made to their video post. Specifically between 0:13 and 0:15 was very…
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Contrasting Colors Visual Effects
First up, I’ve got a very nice example of a very nasty effect. Some very unlucky subset of photosensitive sufferers can get blind spots, akin to looking up at the sun, from looking at just the right combination of contrast colors. For some, it leaves an imprint that lasts for a few minutes. For others,…
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Deep Rock Galactic Triggers
Found another wonderful version of [headmessing]. My friend bought me Deep Rock Galactic and I just went through the tutorial. The cutscenes and the in-mission map both have a visual effect going that mimics the old CRT screens. Specifically the lines of static travelling across the screen. I managed to complete the tutorial, but had…
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X4 Scanner Trigger
So having finally gotten myself a new pc, I’ve finally been able to play some X4.Couple of issues with that unfortunately. 1) Using the long range scanner will send out a blue pulse wave which looks great, and makes me turn into a drooling idiot for several hours. 2) There is a mission regarding the…
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Fog Implementation Trigger
Moving right along, I’m not hunting for examples anymore, but I’m not passing up the ones I come across either. With that in mind here is an example of two view modes of the same image.A dev friend of mine is working on err…something related to the fog implementation I think? Anyways, said dev posted…
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Valve Photo Sensitve Issues
This post regards an advertisment posted in March of 2022. Turns out that Valve also don’t know how to act around photo-sensitives. Their store page currently has a “fancy” banner going for their “Simfest”. Don’t know what it is about, but I do know that making me think they are trying to kill me is…
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Waves of Steel Video Effect Trigger
I had made an epilepsy triggers channel on the Waves of Steel Discord server so I had a place to archive all these kinds of images and videos and so I could direct people to one concentrated location of information when they asked me about various potential triggers. Naturally people were welcome to post spoilered…
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On Epilepsy Warnings
Sometimes there really isn’t any way around the “Do not have epilepsy or be photosensitive when using this program” warnings. A game developer I know is working on a game that pulses a shape into fractal patterns while it changes color. All set to the beat of whatever song you tell the program to play.…
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Gameplay Loop Visual Trigger
WARNING: If you have epilepsy or similar sensitivities DO NOT USE LINK BELOW. To view the content, please copy and paste the following link into your address bar. Note the spacing after https:// will need to be removed for the link to work. I was asked to test a game for a developer and encountered…
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Lightning Effects and Might & Magic
Lightning Effects I got a good example of the starting point of the lightning sliding scale of harmfulness courtesy of TooMuchAbstraction. This one took about 15 minutes before the punch hit me and it only made me a little lightheaded as well as making it hard to read longer texts on discord. Font size was…
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Lost Ark Chaos Dungeons
Got another one for you via a friend of mine. This one I will not be testing since it sounds absolutely horrible just from her description. Good Friend:So, regarding flashing stuff. In Lost ark when one go in Chaos Dungeons and such the likes. [Oh man] the flashes and blinking. I [do not have epilepsy]…
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Ian Hamilton on Cyberpunk 2077
I ended up having a very nice chat with Ian Hamilton where we talked about this thread and how to present the information stored here in a more professional manner. During our conversation he also went through some of earliest posts in this thread and set me straight on the story of Cyberpunk 2077 as…
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Rosetta Stone for Graphical Effects on Epilepsy
I just had a fellow game tester post the absolutely best image ever.Seriously its like finding the Rosetta Stone for graphical effects on epilepsy. WARNING: If you have epilepsy or similar sensitivities DO NOT USE LINK BELOW. To view the content, please copy and paste the following link into your address bar. Note the spacing…
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Magic Eye
I can now tell you that the Magic Eye stereograms that actually move? Those make me nauseous realy quickly. Such nausea, cannot recommend! WARNING: If you have epilepsy or similar sensitivities DO NOT USE LINK BELOW. To view the content, please copy and paste the following link into your address bar. Note the spacing after…
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High Contrast Color Combination Issues
Then we get into the less obvious stuff. At one point during the development of TooMuchAbstraction’s game Waves of Steel (check it out on steam, its something really special), one of the other testers made alternate flags of real world nations. This resulted in a bunch of really great flags for a lot of different…
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Art Installation Issues
Hey guys, long time no seizure. I came across this thing which is really messing with my head. Not giving me a seizure, but messing with my head because I would expect it to give me a seizure. Apparently its just….fine-ish? Rules are meant to be broken and all that. Infinitely repeating pattern going on…
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Video Example
Not long after the previous video had been linked, I was sent another one with the warning that this one was quite likely going to be a problem. It certainly was, but curiously it was on something of a delayed timer regarding the actual backlash I suffered. I would not recommend looking at this thing…
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Design Example Game Effects
Here is an example of an in game effect on a ship that causes issues for those with Epilepsy. WARNING: If you have epilepsy or similar sensitivities DO NOT USE LINK BELOW. To view the content, please copy and paste the following link into your address bar. Note the spacing after https:// will need to…
Electronic Epileptic
A guide to involuntary unconscious breakdancing incidents
Electronic Epileptic 