Monopoly: Star Wars™ Heroes vs. Villains is coming on June 30, bringing thrilling new team-based twists to the classic board game. Experience epic cinematic moments as you compete across iconic locations, building a team of Star Wars heroes like Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and Han Solo as well as villains like Darth Vader, Darth Maul, and Emperer Palpatine. Each character has a game-changing ability that can turn the tide of gameplay in your favor with a single roll of the dice.
The teams at Ubisoft wanted to make sure this edition of Monopoly was accessible for as many people as possible. To learn more about the extensive accessibility options in Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs. Villains, we spoke to Senior UI/UX Designer Maxime Ritter about new features, incorporating Star Wars into gameplay, and making the game accessible for more people.
Monopoly launched in 2024 with a robust list of accessibility options. What approach did your team take when looking at updating accessibility features for Star Wars: Heroes vs. Villains?
Maxime Ritter: Early on, when we started working on this new Monopoly game, we wanted to improve upon the accessibility of the previous release. We share the same ambition as our friends at Hasbro and Lucasfilm Games, to make each game more enjoyable and thanks to our accessibility specialists and QC teams at Ubisoft, we identified specific areas where we could improve including font legibility and size, contrast, remapping and much more.
To achieve our ambitious goals, we needed the best candidate to develop the game, and we were fortunate to have Behavior Interactive on board. We started working with Behavior Interactive early on to discuss our Accessibility requirements and how to improve the game. Together, we created an ambitious production plan to make Star Wars: Heroes vs. Villains our most accessible Monopoly game yet.
Why is it important to revisit and revise accessibility features for a game like Monopoly?
MR: This is important for all our games, but particularly for Monopoly. We’ve been working on multiple iterations of the game and with each iteration, our ambitions increased. We strive to improve every time to ensure that no players are left behind. Monopoly is a well-known board game, so we expect a large audience to be interested in playing a digital version. Adding in a popular franchise like Star Wars, there's the potential to reach more players that differ from the typical Monopoly player.
From the beginning of the project, we analyzed what could be improved, what we learned from previously identified issues, and ultimately understood our goal was to make the game accessible by default where possible, rather than addressing each issue by optional settings.=
We take great pride in making our games highly accessible and we hope to enable even more players to enjoy playing alone or with family and friends!
What new accessibility features are coming with the Star Wars: Heroes vs. Villains update?
MR: The most important additions are fully remappable controls, adjustable contrast, and many short playable tutorials. I’m really proud of the improvements Behavior Interactive made to the legibility and contrast of the entire UI, as well as ensuring that all the font sizes in the game meet our accessibility requirements and that there are no colorblind issues by default, without needing modes or settings. This was a significant challenge, as Monopoly is a very color-coded game with property colors, team colors, and so on. They did a wonderful job accomplishing this rare feat!
This update is full of twists, like team gameplay and special abilities. Did these twists present any challenges when approaching accessibility?
MR: Yes, absolutely! We didn't want the game to be just a cosmetic version with the Star Wars brand. Instead, we wanted to incorporate core Star Wars elements into the Monopoly game design without altering this iconic board game too much.
The first big change was the team component with two factions. Adding team identifications with clear color coding and icons mixed with the classic property colors was challenging because the location ownership on the board had to be clear and legible at all times.
We’ve simplified some iconic elements, such as the “Property” cards, by reducing the amount of information on them, which allows for a larger text size.
As you mentioned, we added abilities to enhance the gameplay, but it was important to not add too much cognitive load or make it overwhelming for casual gamers. To achieve this, we made sure the abilities were simple to understand, with short descriptions, and were based on other familiar elements of the game, such as obtaining more credits, triggering a battle, or moving to a specific location. We conducted usability-focused user testing, which allowed us to iterate on abilities that were unclear or unfun. We also let players practice with short, playable tutorials that explain each important new twist, including the abilities.
There are many new twists to Star Wars: Heroes vs. Villains that I’ll let players discover when they have the game in hand, but I wanted to mention is the need to create a “new winning condition” for the game to truly make sense in the Star Wars galaxy. Each team will try to claim locations and conquer planets to earn "Influence" points. The team with the most “Influence” points at the end of a defined number of turns wins! This allows for shorter games, as well as ensuring that every player can play until the end instead of going bankrupt!
We also received a lot of help to overcome these challenges. That's why I would like to thank our dedicated accessibility QC team, and also our User Research team for their invaluable help with extensive user testing. This testing allowed us to improve our game and ensure that the new twists were clear and understandable to players.
Are there any new features you’re particularly proud of?
MR: As previously mentioned, all the improvements to the vision aspect, contrast, and font size were exceptional, but I am most proud of the overall level of accessibility that Behavior Interactive achieved with this game. It was a pleasure working with them, and we wouldn't have been able to reach such a high level of accessibility and polish without their talent, passion, and hard work over the years.
We’re excited for players to get their hands on the game and hope it has very few barriers, allowing more people than ever before to comfortably play and tailor their experience according to their needs!
ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES LIST
VISUALS
- Colorblind accessible by design, without needing modes.
- Easily readable text, all of the text in the menus and in-game is 28px or above by default and in a clear sans-serif font.
- Strong contrast by default between text and UI elements and their backgrounds.
- Contrast slider to increase difference between lights and darks.
- Comfortable camera, no shakes or sways, or fast camera movements
- Interactive elements are clearly indicated, e.g. obvious glow effect to differentiate ally/enemy properties from properties that aren’t influenced.
CONTROLS
- Controller remapping for both gameplay and menu navigation, on keyboard mouse or controller. Includes stick swapping (through remapping or a dedicated option), and remapping analog sticks and triggers to digital buttons.
- Sensitivity for sticks and mouse can be adjusted separately for vertical/horizontal. Apples to all in-game areas.
- Controller support on PC, with the ability to use combinations of controller and mouse/keyboard controls.
- Vibration can be turned off.
- No holds required, not many actions need holds and those which do have to change them to a tap instead.
- No button mashing or QTEs by design.
- Only one hand needed to play the game.
AUDIO
- Subtitles/captions for speech and some non-speech sounds, in a clear sans serif font, with optional speaker names, configurable background and size (up to 48px), and can be turned on before any important sounds.
- No audio reliance, essential information is not communicated by sound alone.
- Multiple volume sliders, for master, sound, music, ambience and speech.
- Mono/stereo/surround modes.
GAMEPLAY
- Three difficulty settings for playing against AI.
- Game saves automatically after each turn, and manually when quitting.
- Failure-free practice mode available by starting a game without any other players.
- Untimed-text prompts, messages always require a button press to be closed so you can take as long as you need to read them.
GUIDANCE
- Control reminders for controls used during gameplay and menu navigation are shown onscreen.
- Tutorials section to teach both basic Monopoly rules and the games unique features through gameplay simulation.
- Database section displaying all character abilities, destiny cards, go events and the new rules.
- Tooltips to give extra context during gameplay.
Pre-order Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs. Villains today to get two unique in-game dice skins inspired by the Tatooine scavenger Jawa and Galactic Empire Stormtrooper. You can play Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs. Villains on June 30 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2, and PC via the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and the Epic Games Store.
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