Auti-Sim, an online autism simulator

Link here.

This turned up on my Twitter account (realautistic) via the /r/autism subReddit.  The game itself is hosted on an online game website called Kongregate. 

Out of morbid fascination, I decided to try it.  I say "morbid" because the simulator is meant to demonstrate how it feels to have sensory issues.  I already have sensory issues.  As such, the game was very likely to give me a headache.  And it did, in fact, succeed.

The game is very simple. It sets you as a kid on a playground, perhaps in a school yard or community playground.  You have basic movement controls (left, right, forward, back, and jump) and camera control (using the mouse), but can't interact with anything or anyone.  (also nothing except you moves)

You start in a safe area, a quiet corner away from the other children.  If your volume is turned on, you can hear the sounds of kids on a playground: shrieking, chanting, calling to each other, with occasional thumping or thuds.  You can hop on the playground equipment, but depending on how close to the other children you go, you start to suffer.  Your vision starts going snowy, like static on the television.  Everything gets painfully louder.  The longer you stay, the worse it gets, until you stumble away. 

Or curse audibly at the screen, get a headache, and stumble away, if you're me.  I've only seen a few sensory overload simulators before, and I hadn't realized how loud it would get.  I queried my fiancee, and he said it was definitely unpleasant.  When you flee away from the other kids back to the edge of the area, the overloading quiets down in a few seconds.  I really wish my overloading quieted down that fast, but it wouldn't be a very good game if once you'd gotten overloaded, you had to sit for an hour somewhere quiet and alone.

The other children are all faceless, wearing the same clothing, and don't look at you or respond to your approach.  This mirrors something I tend to deal with in reality: faces are immensely difficult for me to memorize, and names are even worse.  Clothing changes day by day, so even if all the clothing is different for each person, it's useless as an identifier in the long run.  Finally, the others not responding lines up with the fact that the "weird kid" on the playground usually gets ignored, or worse, mocked.

Other things I noticed about the game:

1. The colors (especially the sky) are unusually bright.  This is, as I understand it, a kid thing.  Kids often draw the sky in a bright blue, and I read somewhere that this matches their reality.  They see the color of the sky more vividly than we do.  I don't have a scientific reference, but I remember I did spend a lot of time looking at the sky when I was little.  It was bright and pretty and often had puffy clouds or jet trails in it.  
2. Included in the play equipment is a merry go round (with another kid on it).  Some kids on the autism spectrum find solace in stimming, which can be anything from flapping your hands to full-body spinning.  I'd hoped that perhaps the spinning would allieviate or at least tone down the overstimulation, but no luck.  Same idea with the swings, which I spent much time on as a child.  I think I mainly liked them because they got me up high, but some stimming might've been involved too. 

Finally, the developer of the game included a very important aspect for autistic kids that don't blend well: escape.  If you hop up on the play equipment behind you at the start of the game, you can leap the fence keeping you inside the play enclosure, and from there, run as far away as you'd like.  Autistic people, especially ones that don't speak but even ones that do, will sometimes bolt.  You'll be standing there with them, everything seems to be fine, and off they go.  This causes the parents and caretakers a lot of anxiety, as you can imagine.

I'm not actually sure if they included that option on purpose, or if this is an unfinished version of the game, but I'm glad it was there.  If I'd made the game (no idea how, so props to them for doing so and putting so much effort into it), I'd've made the sounds of the children fade into silence as you get further away, leaving you alone with the calming silence and the beautiful outdoors.

Of course, they'd need to set a timer for your kid to get dragged back to the playground, too.

Overall, this Auti-Sim simulator is good teaching tool in proper context, which I hope I've provided here.  Please do give it a try.