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 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.
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!
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.
That sounds like a good plot for an episode in a tv show. I sense potential here. Haha
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.
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!
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/
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
Balatro is turn-based and is easy enough to control. I myself play on mobile, but Steam Deck shouldn’t be very different.
Papers please should be playable with one hand only and is great at burning time
I think you should be able to play Organ Trail one-handed. It’s a zombie apocalypse version of Oregon Trail.
Organ Trail… What’s the objective?
The objective is to make sure you have enough supplies to survive for as long as you can while making it across America to a place safe from zombies.
I believe the goal is ultimately to get to Canada (I haven’t played in a while) but I might be mixing it up with Death Road to Canada, which is similar in premise but probably not something you could play one-handed.
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.
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
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!
I guess games like Monkey Island (1 to 3, and Return, the 3D ones would be harder) could work using the touch screen or touchpad working as a mouse
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.
If this is a long term thing, you might consider a left handed gaming mouse with programmable side keys.
I hate to recommend Razer cuz their build quality has taken an absolute nose dive, but the only one I know of is the Razer Naga: https://www.razer.com/gaming-mice/razer-naga-left-handed-edition/rz01-03410100-r3m1
Setting some of the side keys as WASD and the usual surrounding support keys (Q, E, R F, G, X, C) and you can play almost any game one-handed.
The learning curve to get your brain to accept mouse movement and clicks with your left hand is annoying as fuck though.
For the friend who enjoys BG3, you can play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous pretty much entirely with the mouse. The base game is 90% off on steam right now too.
Pathfinder has a massive learning curve compared to DnD 5e though, but that just means you can get an extra 50 hours of entertainment out of the game before you start the story, just by figuring out all the options when creating your character lol
Edit: whoops, seems like the steam spring sale just ended. The game is still absolutely worth it at full price though
WotR is so fucking good. But a quick PSA for anyone interested: Install the Bubble Buffs mod so you don’t have to spend 5 minutes casting your 37 buffs before every large fight.
