It’s actually a myth that people with epilepsy can’t play videogames. In fact, most people with epilepsy can play videogames with no symptoms at all. However, for those of us who do experience symptoms like headaches, nausea, aura, or seizures from gaming, finding safe videogames for people with epilepsy can be tricky.
The most common culprit of epilepsy symptoms while gaming is photosensitivity, which can be triggered by flashing visual effects or moving patterns. Photosensitive epilepsy affects about 5% of people with an epilepsy diagnosis, but other aspects of gaming can trigger epilepsy symptoms as well, including overstimulation and fatigue.
I’ve been a gamer all of my life, and I wasn’t about to stop when I got diagnosed with epilepsy eight years ago. I just had to learn new ways to play and to change some of my gaming habits. In this article, I’ll share some of the tips and techniques I’ve learned that help me choose games that are safe to play with my temporal lobe epilepsy.
Obligatory disclaimer
Look, don’t be dumb. If your epilepsy is in a state where it is poorly controlled, don’t expose yourself to triggering stimuli. Follow your doctor’s recommendations, take your meds, and do the things you need to do to take care of yourself. The videogames will still be there when your health is able to handle them.
Use Demos To Find Safe Videogames For People With Epilepsy
Whenever possible, I try to download a demo of a game before I buy it. It’s a way for me to check whether the games’ visual effects will trigger any of my epilepsy symptoms.
That said, be aware that demos may not include the full suite of accessibility features available in the full game.
Although Steam offers a refund policy, the two-hour limit is sometimes too short to decide whether I can safely play a game. Demos let me take my time exploring a game before I decide to commit to buying.
Steam NextFest is a great event where the company promotes game demos on the platform. NextFest is held three times per year, usually in February, June, and October.
Demos are a phenomenal tool for finding safe videogames for people with epilepsy. They’re not just for PC gamers either. For those gaming on console platforms:
- Nintendo has a search filter for games with free demos.
- So does Playstation.
- And here’s Xbox’s game demos page.
A note on pre-game epilepsy warnings
Many games include an epilepsy or photosensitivity warning at the beginning of the game.
Sometimes these warnings won’t be present in a demo.
I’ve played games with photosensitivity warnings that never caused me symptoms. I’ve also played games that lack these warnings that had to go quickly onto the Brainmeat Says No pile. YMMV.
Watch Gameplay Footage and Let’s Plays
If I can’t find a demo, I’ll track down gameplay footage or a Let’s Play series on YouTube. High res full-screen recordings of gameplay are a good way to check whether a game might trigger epilepsy symptoms.
That said, gameplay footage can be misleading. When someone records a video of themselves playing a game, you’re seeing the game as it performs on their system.
Differences in display device or video card capabilities can affect how the game appears, and the gamer recording the video may not have accessibility features enabled that would make the game playable for you.
And of course, in story-centric games, gameplay footage may spoil story developments that you would rather experience in person.
Check Out Discussion Boards and Reviews
Reviews and discussions are a great place to find out if a game is safe for people with epilepsy, although you often have to read between the lines to really find that info.
Unless the reviewer has some sort of photosensitive condition, they aren’t likely to directly call out how the game effects people. I look for mentions of things like visual effects being disorienting, overly busy, or causing headaches or nausea. Reviews that mention a lack of accessibility features are sometimes a red flag, too.
If those things are mentioned, it’s a clue to me that I need to take some more time researching the game before I try to play it. Sometimes I’ll just head to the game’s discussion board on Steam and make a post asking if any other gamers with conditions similar to mine have suffered increased symptoms from playing the game.
In my own indie game reviews, I always try to include a section on accessibility.
Practical Tips For Safe Gaming With Epilepsy
Staying safe while gaming with epilepsy isn’t just about choosing the right game — it’s about creating an environment and routine that minimizes risks. Here are some things I do to keep myself safe when gaming:
1. Lighting Is Everything
The ambient lighting in my gaming environment has a big effect on my ability to safely play videogames with epilepsy.
I try to keep my office (where I do most of my gaming) well-lit, usually with the window shades open during the daytime for that good natural sunlight. In the evening, I use a couple of lamps with diffusers or shades. I try not to have any non-diffused lighting in my office. Bare bulbs and LEDs in particular seem problematic.
I really try to avoid gaming in a dark room where the only source of lighting is my monitor. This makes visual effects on screen more intense and seems to cause me to experience more symptoms.
A note on lighting temperature
There is some evidence that cooler lighting temperatures (those exceeding 4500K) can trigger epilepsy symptoms in some individuals, so warmer tones like 2500K-3500K may be safer.
In my case, a recent visit to a store that used 6000K lights nearly put me on the floor. My sweet spot seems to be around 3000K.
PC gamers seem to be obsessed with animated RGB lighting effects in their game rooms, but I find that these effects just exacerbate issues for me, so I don’t use them. (My PC fans do have RGB led fans, but I just keep them on a static color setting and my PC is oriented so I’m not looking directly at them.)
Bias lighting behind my monitor helps reduce eye fatigue when I’m playing in a darker room.
2. Use The Buddy System
I live alone, so I have to manage gaming with epilepsy by myself, but if you live with family, a roommate, or significant other, it can be helpful to have someone else nearby when you’re gaming, especially if your epilepsy isn’t well controlled.
Having another person nearby just adds a layer of security that can make you feel more relaxed while gaming, and you can hopefully communicate to that person if you start to experience symptoms.
If a particular sequence in an otherwise safe game for you is triggering symptoms, you could even ask the other person to play the game until they’re able to get past that troublesome sequence.
Personally, I enjoy playing games with someone else watching, as it gives me someone to socialize with while I’m gaming — which is part of why I enjoy streaming retro games!
3. Logging Your Experience Gaming With Epilepsy
Epilepsy rarely presents the exact same way in two different people, so the games that are safe for me might not be safe for you. Epilepsy triggers like photic stimulation, for example, seem to affect different people at different frequencies and intensities, so my “safe zone” is going to be different than yours.
Something I’ve found helpful is keeping a log of how different games affect me. I use a Google Sheet for this. Some of the columns I track:
- Name of the game
- Platform I’m playing on
- A column for notes about any accessibility features or settings I’ve used or disabled
- A column for notes about other variables that might be affecting my epilepsy – sleep quality, weather, state of general health, med changes, etc.
- And a column to describe the symptoms I experienced while playing the game
Over time, logging can help you identify specific patterns or triggers, which can help you choose safe games for your epilepsy.
4. Use Accessibility Tools For Safer Gaming With Epilepsy
Accessibility options are a huge help when it comes to making games safe for epilepsy. Some options that particularly seem to help me:
- Disabling functions like screen shake or motion blur
- Reducing the intensity of damage flash effects
- Disabling scan lines or CRT-like curvature in retro titles
- Reduce particle density or intensity
I really enjoy indie games for this reason, especially ones that are still in active development. I can usually pop into the developer’s Discord and ask for specific accessibility features that I need to be able to safely play their game with my epilepsy. In my experience, most indie devs are open to adding new accessibility features if you ask for them.
5. No Accessibility Options? Try Other Tools
If a game doesn’t offer much in the way of accessibility tools, I’ve found that I can sometimes still make it safer for me by adjusting screen settings or making use of 3rd party tools:
- Adjusting brightness and contrast can go a long way towards reducing the intensity of visual effects.
- Playing at a higher resolution can reduce pixelization and smooth animations.
- Low frame rates tend to make animations stutter in ways that can sometimes hit the frequency that causes me to experience symptoms. Enabling performance features on my video card or within the game can help prevent frame rates from dipping into that danger zone.
- For games that support it, modding options can disable or reduce the intensity of a particular visual effect that is giving me trouble.
Some game are just triggering for my epilepsy no matter what changes I make. I just avoid those games.
6. Cultivate A Safe Environment
My temporal lobe epilepsy doesn’t cause me to experience any convulsions or falls, so my primary concerns are confusion, headache, difficulty speaking, etc. I’m rarely at risk of physical harm from a seizure — but that isn’t the case for many people.
If your epilepsy causes you to convulse or fall, make sure your gaming environment is safe — consider gaming in bed or on a comfortable couch instead of at a desk, and move things out of the way that could be dangerous if you impacted against them.
What Other Gamers Have To Say
I reached out on my Bluesky to other gamers who experience epilepsy or other photosensitive conditions to see what they had to say on the topic:
A user named Lodaim mentions some of the display settings he adjusts when gaming:
I had to turn off motion smoothing or v-sync in some games to alleviate the stress it was causing me. It made things move in a more smooth way that doesn’t disorient me as much. I even turn it off in pixel games as it still messes with me.
V-Sync doesn’t seem to affect my epilepsy, but I have found settings like motion blur to be troublesome in some games.
I‘ve also found that certain genres like racing and fighting games (and some first person shooters) are more triggering for me than others. Cozy chill games tend to be less overstimulating.
I also found a couple of comments on various Reddit threads that were relevant. Reddit user /u/RenSoundsLikeBen says this:
I am photosensitive and still play Cyberpunk. I just can’t play for too long or very often. I also have the habit of looking away when needed or sometimes ask my partner to complete missions for me that are too flashy. Even Minecraft can be triggering, but I’ve learned when I can play and when not. I actually find the UI in some games more triggering than the game itself.
RenSoundsLikeBen’s comment about the UI being more triggering than the gameplay is an interesting one. I’ve experienced this a couple times in games with a cyberpunk or sci-fi motif that tend to like ‘glitchy’ or wireframe artwork.
When I was actually playing, it didn’t give me any trouble, but extended periods of time navigating a menu or inventory could give me a headache.
Also from Reddit, user /u/Apprehensive_Soft477 says:
I play more open world games, I stay away from anything 8bit or that just flashes a lot. I play powerwash simulator a ton and after a while i gotta go lay down and close my eyes and let my brain “breathe.” I also do not watch TV at all, I can’t do ads. One game I really miss playing but absolutely can not handle anymore is anything Kirby. 🙁
This is a really interesting one, because in my experience, 8-bit or retro titles are generally safer for my epilepsy than some 3D titles. It’s just confirmation that the games that work for me might not work for you, and vice versa.
The tip about taking breaks and letting the brain rest by reducing stimuli after gaming is a good one too.
A Safe Game Isn’t Always a Safe Game
The thing about epilepsy is that our thresholds for seizure symptoms are always fluctuating. Elements like sleep quality, weather, state of general health, medication, and stress can all affect the prevalence of epilepsy symptoms.
That means that if I’ve slept like crap for three days, there’s a thunderstorm rolling in, and I’ve got a chest cold, videogames that I could safely play without triggering symptoms on a good day may suddenly start triggering my epilepsy.
Something else: Game updates can sometimes turn a safe game into one that is riskier for me to play — I see this sometimes in early access indie games when they receive a big graphical update.
I hope these tips and techniques are helpful to you if you experience epilepsy and want to continue gaming, as I have.
Obligatory disclaimer, AGAIN
Look, I told you at the beginning of this article to not be dumb. I’m serious: if your epilepsy is uncontrolled and videogames trigger them, don’t screw around and hurt yourself. It’s not worth it.
I wrote this article because gaming is one of my favorite hobbies, and it’s something that helps me cope with my epilepsy, despite the fact that some games are troublesome for me.