One of the biggest challenges in game development are controls. How players engage with a video game is crucial to their overall experience. Developers are painstakingly tweaking movement and animation to make sure control of the character or traversing their virtual world feels just right. Many gamers feel a gamepad/controller provides them an increased easy-of-access level when it comes to gaming. On the contrary, others prefer to use a keyboard and mouse for increased precision. Virtual Reality is even taking game engagement to a next dimension, going as far to support gloves with individual finger tracking.
Point is, controls can either make or break your game. Therefore, when Humble Bundle approached Triband to develop a game, it got them thinking. How can we develop a video game with the least sexy, most used controller to date? The keyboard. Their solution is simple yet genius. To make sure you use every key on that board. Every. Single. One.
Sounds complex but it in reality it works really well. Think directional controls. If you need to move your character on-screen to the left, you just press keys on the left of the keyboard at random. For right, you press keys on the right. You get the idea. The game plays and jokes with this concept all the time. For example, at one point you get instructions to move to “the cozy SPACE” meaning you have to press the space bar. At other times, you need to shoot a gun in various directions or have to change lanes on a highway all using whatever key points in that direction. It really is that simple. I say simple but the challenges actually ramp up in difficulty rather quickly. “Easy to access, hard to master” is certainly applicable here. I have spent around 15 minutes playing and it is engaging. Better yet, the game does not take itself too seriously making sure its humor is on point. No longer should you be ashamed button mashing!
Triband was kind enough to give me a free key during Gamescom. Unfortunately, it was an actual keyboard key. Nice one Triband. Luckily, they also promised game access soon. Keyboard Sports is set to release early 2018. You can watch a trailer below to get a better overview of the game.
