Hi people, I currently have two friends who injured their dominant arm in unrelated accidents and mostly can’t do anything but sit around and watch movies.
I’d like to gift them some games to play with just one hand. Not the hentai variant, but something to keep them occupied with.
Both own a steam deck. One is more into cozy games like Dorfromantik and the other into RPGs like BG3.
One Finger Death Punch would be a good example as you can remap controls so you only need to press left and right on the D-Pad, but both of them don’t really like that game.
Do you know any games which can be played with one hand, preferably a controller or Steam deck? Using a mouse with your non dominant hand is annoying…
Crypt of the Necrodancer is great fun if they don’t have it already.
Papers please should be playable with one hand only and is great at burning time
Most my time with Crypt of the Necrodancer was during a hand injury. It’s of course a pretty intense game though, so it’s not for everyone.
My first thought was FTL as well. Great game
FTL is love. FTL is life.
Especially with the Multiverse mod!
(though it’s much harder to install on Linux than it has any right to be)
Oh my god! I didn’t know about the mod! I have to check this out! Thank you!
You’re welcome! I’ve played it a bunch, it’s essentially FTL 1.5 and extremely well made. Hope you have fun playing it!
In case you’re running on Linux, be warned that you might have to add a SELinux exception. Hit me up if that’s the case, I’ll try to find the commands.
I’ve been playing Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel recently on PC and despite being relatively action heavy it’s 99% left hand (WASD + Q + space)
A Short Hike might be a solid pick. It’s super chill, no stress, and you can get away with playing it mostly with just the left stick and a button or two — easy to remap if needed. Spiritfarer could also work, though it might take a little tweaking depending on how much movement they can handle.
Ben Heck made a couple of one handed controllers a few years ago. One of these controllers might open up more games than remapping buttons.
I don’t understand. You have two friends, each with a good arm, that’s two good arms. Tape your friends together and have them coordinate and BAM: two-handed gaming.
And they can play Brothers A Tale Of Two Sons.
sadly they live 80km apart from each other, and both are right handed, so they couldn’t face each other while playing. We’d need a pretty weird dual-monitor setup if we’d tape them together.
All I’m hearing is excuses over excuses!
They could easily solve the double right handed problem by sewing one to the other upside down.
Tape will come off when they sweat, better sew them together. And trim off those unnecessary arms, it’s just efficiency.
🚨👮♂️🚨yes officer it’s this person right here
Thank you citizen, you’re right! He’s got management written all over him!
My SO and I died this during a stream once. I don’t know why lol.
We played Hades. I was right, she was left. It started as a joke but we actually made it decently far lol.
That sounds like a good plot for an episode in a tv show. I sense potential here. Haha
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2008920/Lorelei_and_the_Laser_Eyes/
Brilliant puzzle game
Designed to be played on a controller with one hand so you can take notes with your other hand.
Such a cool stylish game. Highly recommended.
You might be interested in the videos made by Champutee, a one-armed gamer who has done several experiments with both genres and controllers to continue enjoying gaming.
That’s an incredible username!
Balatro
Slay the Spire
Brotato
Vampire Survivor & ClonesI’m gonna say it.
I’m gonna say it.
Slice & Dice is better than Slay the Spire (not by much, to be fair, but… yeah).
You like it better, it isn’t objectively better.
I bounced off of SnD. I wanted to like it but just couldn’t for whatever reason.
No problem; I’ll play it more for you!
Thanks. Give those baddies a couple good rolls for me!
How do I get into it? I’ve tried and it’s not really sticking, to be honest.
Did you try it on Hard?
I don’t think I changed the difficulty-settings.
That’s a big deal; I wouldn’t think much of the game if I had only played it on Easy the entire time. It really shines in Hard or Unfair!
One really handy thing with the Steam Deck is the ability to remap all of the buttons (as well as the two paddles on the back for each hand), so one could probably make a decent one-handed control setup for 99% of turn-based games. Even ones that require the use of the mouse, given the Deck’s touchpads.
Vampire Survivors requires nothing except the stick/dpad outside of menus (and I’m pretty sure you can use the touchscreen for menus, too).
If your friend(s) are stuck using the dpad, it might not be suitable, but Crypt of the Necrodancer only requires four buttons or left, right, up, and down (and you can assign buttons for the button combos normally required to do things like use bombs). This assumes that they like rhythm games.
I second Vampire Survivors
I remember that the dev of Legend of Grimrock added an option for movement with the mouse because a disabled gamer wanted to play. Maybe that second friend should check that and the 2nd game out.
Using a mouse with your non dominant hand is annoying…
Yeah, for PC they’ll probably have to grit their teeth and power through the discomfort. An alternative is getting a hand in some old emulated games. Anything from the NES era can be mapped to 4 movements + 4 buttons (start, select, A, B), which on a keyboard could be WASD + Q, E, R and F. Dunno how to set something similar on a Deck.
Dungeon crawl stone soup. Can be played with keyboard only.
XCom and XCom 2 can be played entirely with the mouse. Minor typing if you want to name your soldiers, but nothing requires quick reflexes. Everything is turn based.
There’s an older breakout style game on steam called Shatter that can be played entirely with the mouse and has a banger soundtrack and neat visual style.
Emulation opens up a lot of options for old school turn based games. RPGs, turn based strategy. Any of the Pokemon games gen 1-3 can be played one handed with some clever button mapping. Any game made to use just the Wii-mote as a pointer would also work, but I don’t know those off the top of my head.
You might want to look into one handed controllers, or something like the FLIR USB dongle that you can use to map IR TV remote signals to keyboard button presses. Just need to use a remote that doesn’t already control something.
