Sonic Doom: Enhanced Sound Design and Accessibility in a First-Person Shooter Game

Abstract

This paper introduces Sonic Doom, an accessibility focused enhancement of the ViZDoom First-person shooter (FPS) platform, integrating an advanced sound design and two aim-assist systems: Auto Aim (automated crosshair adjustment) and Sonic Aim (audio feedback for target proximity). To tackle the issue of FPS games remaining largely inaccessible to visually impaired players (VIPs) due to the game's reliance on visual cues for navigation and combat. We evaluate our approach through a dual-method framework: (1) AI agents trained to play blindly using only an audio input, and (2) human participants in both sighted and blindfolded conditions. Results demonstrate that enhanced sound design improves navigation efficiency (e.g., faster maze completion by the AI agent) and combat accuracy (e.g., higher enemy kill rates in human trials). While Auto Aim achieved superior objective performance, subjective evaluation revealed a strong user preference for Sonic Aim, emphasizing the need to balance assistance with player autonomy. Our AI-driven evaluation framework, the first of its kind in FPS accessibility research, provides scalable, objective metrics for assessing sound designs. This work advances accessible game design by empirically validating sonification techniques in combat-intensive scenarios and establishing a methodology for future research in multi-modal game accessibility.