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Legibility is important for accessibility. After all, what's the fun of playing a game when you can't tell if you've got a Poisson Mushroom or a Psion Mushroom?

But some fonts are too functional, perhaps hyper stylized, or Comic Sans.

I'll provide some examples: The Pixel Font: This is the font that for some reason, was handcrafted like someone got bored in a paint program. It isn't offensively bad, but legibility can be lost at points.

Hurdy Gurdy Old Timey: These Gothic fonts tend to be obnoxious for legibility. I get the impression that they were originally created to piss on peasants with their unreadability.

[url=https://res.cloudinary.com/lmn/image/upload/c_limit,h_360,w_640/e_sharpen:100/f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/v1/gameskinnyc/a/r/m/armor-weapons-upgrade-menu-1a134.jpg]A font for ants.[/url] Get your magnifying glasses and +4.0 readers on. How exactly developers haven't figured out a custom scaling SVG font is beyond me.

So, what fonts, typefaces, and lettering systems tick you off in games?
low rated
pixelfonts are garbage
sadly still some devs think they are acceptable as the only option for their games
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Darvond: The Pixel Font
That hurts my eyes. I wouldn't be able to play that game.
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Darvond: So, what fonts, typefaces, and lettering systems tick you off in games?
I couldn't stand whatever Skyrim used. Thankfully there are mods to replace it. I'm happy to say I can't recall many examples of font choices so bad that they left an impression.
pixel fonts are better when it comes retro or some other old rpg games...
But right now it isn't as expected..
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Ice_Mage: That hurts my eyes. I wouldn't be able to play that game. I couldn't stand whatever Skyrim used. Thankfully there are mods to replace it. I'm happy to say I can't recall many examples of font choices so bad that they left an impression.
A lot of people don't prefer condensed fonts, and I don't blame them. Plus, like that AM/PM indicator in the lower right corner, it does nothing to immerse the player into the systems within the universe.
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Lords3: pixel fonts are better when it comes retro or some other old rpg games...
But right now it isn't as expected..
A well designed pixel font is one thing. But just the barest idea of a font where you take the minimal effort to fill in letterspace, that's not so great.
Post edited July 30, 2021 by Darvond
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Lords3: pixel fonts are better when it comes retro or some other old rpg games...
But right now it isn't as expected..
dont think so Ive tried out Blasphemous it has it sadly :( hard to read, at least the game is fun.
Pixel fonts are alright if they're readable. Unfortunately that's really rare. I can hardly tell the difference between "o" and "c" in some games.

Personal favorite? Roboto. (SUPERHOT)
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Darvond: Legibility is important for accessibility. After all, what's the fun of playing a game when you can't tell if you've got a Poisson Mushroom or a Psion Mushroom?
The Psion mushroom might look too human to distinguish from other humans, but oughta be distinguishable from the fish mushroom, at least by smell.
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Darvond: A font for ants. Get your magnifying glasses and +4.0 readers on. How exactly developers haven't figured out a custom scaling SVG font is beyond me.
Fixed your link. Need to use %3a for any colon in the address (beyond the "http://" of course).

Sometimes using double-quote marks for the URL address after the equal = sign helps. But at other times a punctuation mark still needs to be replaced. The colon has seemed a rather common culprit, but for other punctuation that might interfere check any ASCII chart for the hexadecimal (like l8l.info/ascii.html), and prepend the %.
Post edited July 30, 2021 by thomq
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slurredprey: Pixel fonts are alright if they're readable. Unfortunately that's really rare. I can hardly tell the difference between "o" and "c" in some games.

Personal favorite? Roboto. (SUPERHOT)
pretty good
I like Caecilia/Bookerly or Futura
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thomq: The Psion mushroom might look too human to distinguish from other humans, but oughta be distinguishable from the fish mushroom, at least by smell. Fixed your link. Need to use %3a for any colon in the address (beyond the "http://" of course).

Sometimes using double-quote marks for the URL address after the equal = sign helps. But at other times a punctuation mark still needs to be replaced. The colon has seemed a rather common culprit, but for other punctuation that might interfere check any ASCII chart for the hexadecimal (like l8l.info/ascii.html), and prepend the %.
Actually, that's just down to GOG's website formatting being made of XML; and ergo having cause and reason to ruin anything resembling a special character or escape sequence.
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slurredprey: Pixel fonts are alright if they're readable. Unfortunately that's really rare. I can hardly tell the difference between "o" and "c" in some games.

Personal favorite? Roboto. (SUPERHOT)
Yeah, there are plenty of good pixel fonts; most of them were double width for good reason.
Post edited July 30, 2021 by Darvond
The most egregious examples which come to mind right now are 'Rome: Total War'(1) and 'Imperator Rome'(2). Their interfaces have to display a ton of information and require to be very legible but there's no distinct hierarchy on the use of typography and, worst of all, all of them have to be serif because you know, Rome.
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Wirvington: The most egregious examples which come to mind right now are 'Rome: Total War'(1) and 'Imperator Rome'(2). Their interfaces have to display a ton of information and require to be very legible but there's no distinct hierarchy on the use of typography and, worst of all, all of them have to be serif because you know, Rome.
Yeah, even if that was presented at full size, there's a fair bit of squinting going on there.
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Darvond: Hurdy Gurdy Old Timey: These Gothic fonts tend to be obnoxious for legibility. I get the impression that they were originally created to piss on peasants with their unreadability.
I love these fonts, even though it is pure nostalgia. I learned a lot of English reading these!
I can deal with wacky fonts.

What I dislike are tiny fonts that are hard to read for their size. While the GOG forum font is a perfect example of what I'm referring to, I'm specifically talking about when tiny fonts show up in games with no settings option to make it larger. Also I'm playing on a laptop and while the display screen is on the larger side for a laptop, it's nowhere near as big as those large monitors that are only going to make tiny fonts look even more tiny.
Pixel art games should still use normal fonts. It's an improvement. Going to pixel fonts does not help.

Here's a board gaming example of terrible font selection:

The item names in Near and Far
https://boardgamegeek.com/image/4511390/near-and-far

Or (look at the red discs on the right) the objective markers in Gloomhaven (which are doublesided with different letters on each side)
https://boardgamegeek.com/image/5754618/gloomhaven-broken-token-organizer-forgotten-circle