Game is now fully playable using a mouse and keyboard.

Hello.

So cards on the table - I designed Control Yourself around the twin stick controller. I wanted to make a climbing game where you had a lot of control about hand placement on climb holds. 

I saw the twin sticks of the modern game controller as a great fit for moving a characters hands around and the shoulder buttons ideally suited to control the hand grips.

After months of development I eventually came up with what I considered a really fun character that not only could climb around a level in an intuitive way bit could also move themselves around like a standard game character when not climbing.

Using each stick on the controller to move a hand to grab a part of the environment and the pull themselves up. It was so natural feeling and people were getting it straight away.

I did not even consider mouse and keyboard as an input system. My thoughts were this is a game for controllers only.

However once I put my first demo out I could not ignore the fact that as a game being developed on the PC platform, a lot of players it turns out, do not want to play using a controller. Either they do not own one or they simply prefer mouse and keyboard control.

Initially I tried to put these players off - I declared "controller only" on the games web page and in the game itself it would inform the player that they needed a controller to enjoy this experience if no controller was detected.

All this was not enough to stop people getting to the demo with the intention of using mouse and keyboard. I realised that if I am to make this game successful in any way, it has to be playable without a controller too. I was initially very down hearted at this thought, the control method was the game USP and the control was designed from the ground up to be using a twin stick controller. I couldn't see how it would translate to mouse and keyboard.

Initially I simply tried to replicate twin stick movement using the mouse and keyboard. Mouse would move the left hand and the keyboard would handle the right hand. Playtesting revealed this to be very hard to use. Digital keys and analogue mouse proved to be a very odd fit and people were not having a good time.

After many iterations and rethinks I arrived at the solution I am publishing today. It is a very different beast to the twin stick controller - but I think it has to be. These input devices are so unalike that making one mimic another will always lead to short comings in some way. Instead I have embraced mouse/keyboard control as its own style - the mouse controls both hands - depending on context in the scene. The mouse position is used to determine hand position directly, unlike the controller which you direct to the position. The keyboard is used for moving the player around depending on their current holds. Mouse/keyboard is inherently trickier to use than a controller so I have also added some optimisations. Such as simply pressing a direction on the keyboard with nothing grabbed makes the player grabs their movement controller and then move. Freeing up the player to concentrate on using the mouse to grab something else at the same time.

Another change has been to the ways grabs work - when using a controller, the player must hold down the grab button to maintain a hold. When on mouse/keyboard the grab acts as a toggle. Again this frees up fingers when using mouse/keyboard.

I've also exposed these settings such as toggle grab and double click lock hold, to that players can have more freedom in how they control the game.

If you've tried the game in the past, but were put off by the control method, now is a great time to give it another go.

Thanks for reading this far. And please if you have any feedback please leave a comment and I will get back to you.

James (squigalug)