Build your first game
Pt1. Introduction
Published: Mon May 26 2025 23:58:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
The purpose of this tutorial is to be a blind accessible “Make your first game” tutorial. But many resources will still be incredibly helpful and accessible even if not designed with blind accessibility in mind.
If you want to know more about how godot functions as a program, I encourage reading the introduction:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/introduction/index.html
If any part of it is hard to understand due to being reliant on images and them not being properly described, feel free to ask in discord for help.
All the documentation related to code is blind accessible, so if you ever want to know how to do something, it's a great first stop. Also availble in engine by pressing F1.
State of blind accessibility in Godot editor:
I will use the term “Blind accessibility” along the designing upwards definition. Meaning I will not refer to something blind accessible unless it should be usable without vision, since to say it's blind accessible when some form of blindness prevents use is unfair.
It is in development and still early. If using Godot with a screen reader at the moment please, expect some issues and be prepared to give feedback to the developers leading this effort, or this community if it’s something more related to the addons or the documentation.
Goal of this tutorial:
To go from opening Godot for the first time and ending with the first level of a 2D platformer made.
Along the way you should be able to pick up skills to take you on your way in other projects.
While this is a step by step tutorial, screen reader integration is on going and in beta. Odds of running into new bugs is likely.
Installation:
We are using 4.5 Dev3! So we are in beta, which can be downloaded here:
Next, download configuration folder from the below link, then copy the configuration files to the directory of the Godot.exe you just downloaded. This will make accessibility settings be enabled by default.
Download template folder for this project. It contains the addons, and creative common sounds you can use by default. But don't extract yet:
This is a file that whenever imported will have the G MAP addons already enabled. This will add additional hotkeys, have accessibility settings setting, and have the G MAP module added, which allows making of maps using an accessible menu.
Note: These addons are made in GDscript, the scripting language of Godot. So you can freely view and edit these addons at any time. I haven't set up a github to have people contribute because main focus should be on the Accesskit integration which will invalidate much of the addons function once complete.
Tutorial1 template one will also include the audio files that will be used.
With the the Tutorial 1 Template folder and Godot folder both downloaded, I also suggest downloading the important hotkeys file. Godot has hundreds of hotkeys, but these are the ones I find most useful to know. As you find ones you think should be added, let me know!
Note: Whenever the tutorial says to press enter to make a choice, the space bar also works. They have the same function for most UI actions.
Setup
Run the godot.editor.exe from your combined folder for your operating system.
Press Shift-tab to navigate to the "import" menu,
press enter. This will open an explorer menu.
Navigate to and select the downloaded zip file.
Rename your "project installation path" to where you want installed projects to go to. The easiest way to add assets to your game such as audio will be copying asset folders to this location.
Press tab until "import" is focused, and press enter.
Godot is now open and should auto import the accessibility settings and mods needed.
Confirming setup
Ctrl ALT + P will take you to the file system search bar, ctrl+f7 will take you to the file system tab if it is hidden. If ctrl+f7 doesn’t work, then the addons are non-functioning. Try reloading the project and if it still doesn’t work, please let me know right away.
Press tab until you are at “directory tree view”
Right arrow key on folders to expand them, left arrow keys to hide them. Confirm that Addons and Audio are both present.
If they are, then the addons should be working and assets imported, so we are ready to start.
Highly Recommended: Setup VSCode with Godot
The process of making Godot blind accessible is ongoing, and the script editor has only basic features. VSCode is considered to have much better accessibility options, and can be connected as the script editor. The Godot Script editor is not much more advanced than notepad at the moment, so VSCode is suggested for a bigger project. The tutorial works the same regardless if you want to just use the Godot editor while testing if you'd like to use Godot more or VSCode.
Just remember that any hot key references are for inside of Godot.
If you are interested in integrating VSCode with Godot, follow the documentation here: