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…
Papers please should be playable with one hand only and is great at burning time
I’m interested and for $3 I thinnill give it a shot. How does this compare to rimworld, as they look similar?
I hadn’t played so I just checked out a beginner’s guide and I don’t think they’re very similar at all.
In FTL you’re pretty much going from point to point on a map which mostly have encounters with single ships. You try to collect resources for upgrades or new weapons. At shops you can repair or buy things, and you’ll find new crew members there or organically through events. There are a few different ways to do combat (different kinds of guns/missiles, drones, or boarding enemy ships), and everything builds to a boss battle in the final sector.
I’m sure there are some vids that can lay out the basics in a few mins, but if it sounds anything like a genre you’re interested in I’d say 3 bucks is a steal for it. As a roguelike it’s got a lot of replayability.
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.
My first thought was FTL as well. Great game
Simple two button games like Divekick can be played with one thumb if you want. It’s Steam Deck verified.
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.
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
Crypt of the Necrodancer is great fun if they don’t have it already.
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.
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.
thronefall is a fun little TD/RTS style game with a nice visual style and good rouglite-esque progression.
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)
Caves of Qud is keyboard only option (no mouse), mostly just need wasd. Definitely an atypical RPG but very fun all the same.
I went through the same thing a while back
I played a lot of turn based RPGs
Dungeon crawl stone soup. Can be played with keyboard only.
Not really helpful in terms of gifts as they are free to play mmo’s and they use keyboard and mice but both have some script capabilities which allow for one to be able to play alternating between keyboard and mouse or not use mouse at all. Its the cryptic games champions online and star trek online. One thing you could do is play them yourself and learn the scripting and then gifting them useful scripts. with champions online turning the block to a toggle is the big script thing and with star trek online its making an emergency power to spacebar one (this is reference to a script where tapping space works through all the abilites put into a shorcut area that can be swapped out). really basic ones will dump everything into spacebar but more nuanced ones will have a key for low cooldown abilities and one for long cooldown offense and long cooldown defense. there really is no limit to the messing around.
