One key gaming

Reading the latest issue of PCGamer, I was reminded of an experiment initiated with the intention of giving more people with physical handicaps and disabilities the option to play games. The end result of this experiment is a set of games which are playable with only a single key. As surprising as this might sound to some gamers, these are some good games, and they can be surprisingly challenging and engaging. If you want to try some of these out, start with these listed in the April 2006 issue of PCGamer.

  1. Oneswitch Ballz – Simply enough, you just have to control a ball travelling a path. The spacebar makes the ball jump. The challenge comes in when you start hitting floor tiles that change your direction, speed, and even the height of your jump.
  2. Mini-Golf One Button Style – As the name implies, this is mini-golf played with a single key. As with any other mini-golf game, you just need to try to sink the putt. In this game, though, you only have one key to press to set the direction of travel and the force of the hit. This is actually the first game in the one-button set of games that I ever heard about.
  3. 1Key Case Ship – You control a space ship travelling in this side-scrolling cave traversal game. Pressing your key makes the ship go up. Releasing it stops the upward force until gravity pulls the ship back down. It sounds easy, but it can be very tough to avoid crashing.
  4. Strange Attractors – You turn your “gravity drive” on and off with a key-press. When it is on, you are pulled towards celestial objects. When it is off, you free-float along the trajectory gained from gravity. Your goal is the exit gate on the other side of the screen.
  5. Shades of Doom – Described in PCGamer as a non-graphical first-person shooter, in Shades of Doom you are blind. Try this out and see how well you do when you have to rely on sounds.

EDIT: I forgot to mention in the original post, but if you enjoy these and want to see more one-key games, hit the OneSwitch site.
[tags]One-key gaming, games[/tags]