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…
I think a fair amount of survivor games like Vampire Survivors and 20 minutes til dawn are intended for just one hand. Then there’s every turn based strat game like Civilization and stellaris, along with every turn based RPG out thete
Here’s a curator for one handed gaming as well. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41112101-One-Handed-Gamer/
Rafa Nadal is right handed and plays left handed. If someone has issues with a non-dominant hand then it’s time to start making the other one dominant.
for most games you need two hands though ;)
Try to read the post again, “having issues with an arm” doesn’t sound as simple as you might think…
Pinball with arrow keys mapped to left and right flippers?
Puyo Puyo Champions has a one-handed controller preset. D-pad or ABXY to move, shoulder buttons to rotate.
Only caveat is that if you want to play online, only the Switch version is actively populated, so I can’t recommend the game on any other platform.
Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee both support single hand mode.
That’s an incredible username!
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.
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.
I went through the same thing a while back
I played a lot of turn based RPGs
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.
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.
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.
That sounds like a good plot for an episode in a tv show. I sense potential here. Haha
And they can play Brothers A Tale Of Two Sons.
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!
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
Just FYI, there are a number of controllers out there for people who only have the use of one hand that are relatively cheap. I don’t always have the use of both hands, and I can definitely say that it’s possible to learn to use regular controllers effectively one handed as well. Both the Logitech F710 and the 8Bitdo Pro 2 work really well in my opinion. People have laughed at me, but the 8bitdo Zero 2 surprisingly works really well too, but is much more limited for inputs and thus, more suited to retro games.
So left hand only games… driving games should work(enjoying NFS heat, atm), turn based games and isometric RPGs (plenty of those, depends on preferences… Balatro, slay the spire, XCOM, disco Elysium, etc… I could make a list if needed).
Telltale games like the wolf among us and stuff
Vampire survivors and all the similar games (halls of torment, brotato, soulstone survivors, etc)
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.
If they have a keyboard and are into turn-based role playing games then I can recommend Caves of Qud. It has a bit of a learning curve but once you get the hang of it starts to open up and it’s just incredible!
