Keyboard and Mouse Non-Shooter Recs?

So I've got some RSI issues that make using a controller's triggers and control sticks painful astoundingly fast, as well as a complete lack of sustaining interest in shooters and competitive games. This has left me in a weird spot for how I can play games, and what games I actually enjoy. I've played so many roguelite deck builders, exploration based puzzle games, and even having forced my way past a long aversion to tactics games I'm really missing stuff like Monster Hunter and Zelda and the like.

I was wondering if folks had recommendations for games that are comfortable to play on keyboard and mouse without requiring mash prompts. I've been playing around with what I can but actual support in adventure or action games especially is limited for the control scheme in a lot of the stuff I've found.

I'd highly recommend CrossCode! From what I remember the controls aren't re-configurable but what's there works well for KBM and it's a real delight of a game. Some smart difficulty sliders too to tailor the experience to your liking.

Otherwise there's always the Dishonored and Deus Ex games which are great. I played through the Mirror's Edge games using KBM and found it pretty enjoyable. Bastion, Transistor and Pyre are all pretty good to play with KBM.

There's also a whole world of CRPGs and Visual Novels out there waiting for you of course. Might I recommend checking out Disco Elysium?

I know the game recommends a controller but the Yakuza games play fine with a mouse and keyboard, and Like A Dragon is the perfect place to jump in.

Audiosurf is evergreen.

To me, it also depends on what type of plot and setting you like.

What kind of games are you specifically looking for? There's a rather wide genre of things out there. You mention "adventure" and "action", but those can mean so many different things.

These are the first things that come to mind. You may or may not have heard of some of them.

• Sunless Skies - top down RPG where you explore weird space Britain in a space train. Lots and lots and lots and lots of written dialog, you need to be up for some reading for this one.
• Astroneer - Crafting/exploration game, just complex enough to be engaging but nowhere near so much that you need a crash course to understand anything. Most relaxing game I've ever played.
• Factorio - Also a crafting/exploration game, literal opposite of Astroneer.
• Cities: Skylines - What modern Sim City should be
• Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Turn-based Western RPG, probably the most popular game of its kind... ever?
• Legend of Grimrock 2 - First person dungeon crawler. You move on a grid with a party of four, solving puzzles to unlock more of the island you're on, discovering treasure, fighting monsters, etc. Great game.
• Pillars of Eternity - Another RPG, aimed to be the modern Baldur's Gate. It didn't reach those heights in popularity but I would say it did mechanically.

I must admit that I'm a little perplexed about something - isn't controller what people usually fall back on when they have RSI from too much KB/M gaming instead of the other way around? When I think of RSI, I think of avoiding mouse usage as much as possible.

I expect Paradise Killer wouldn't be too taxing, though you would have to hold W for long periods of time as there's no auto-run as far as I remember. It's not really action oriented though, and I wouldn't really call it an adventure, but damn if it isn't a good game.

That was the case for me - I transitioned to gamepad mainly to avoid RSI pains from using KB/M at work.

I gotta say though that not all gamepads are made equal - For example D-pad on DualShock 4 can set off pains (Xbox One gamepad D-pad is fine). Xbox 360 gamepad's triggers can also set off pains (Xbox One's triggers are fine). Etc.

My RSI isn't actually game related originally, it's more accurately tendonitis through the elbow and shoulder I got from hypermobility combined with heavy retail work for 12 years, the result of which meaning gripping and continual pressure are rather painful. I use a thumb trackball for mousing and I have foot pedals rigged up as modifier keys like shift, control, and alt, to play something like FFXIV.

I really am appreciating a lot of these recs! I've been occupied with a particular configuration problem but even the ones mentioned I'd played before on controller(ex: Transistor, Astroneer, CrossCode, Mirror's Edge), knowing that some of them are super playable on KB+M is wonderful for my renewed access. Any time you search up "is (gampad game) good to play on keyboard and mouse?" the result you get is "use a controller you dumb elitist."

Edit: For reference, I made this thread after trying to replay BotW put me in a brace for the rest of the day yesterday... and I hadn't even got off the Great Plateau.

Er, as for the question about my tastes... I range pretty wide historically. I tend not to click with RTS style games, though some CRPGs have clicked in the past even if DOS2 didn't(sorry). I've enjoyed souls style combat in the past with deliberation and exploration rather than combo strings and twitch reflexes(though I turn out to be bizarrely good at parrying).

I'm a big Hollow Knight and Outer Wilds liker! Metroidvanias tend to grab me, as well as rogue-lite stuff(especially with cards). I've loved basically everything Supergiant has done, save Pyre. I have very mixed results on jRPG style games, but I tend to love the stories and push through.... Character customization tends to grab me pretty hard, even if it's just bits of outfits.

Farming stuff like Stardew always touch my heart in a special way, and for narratives so long as it's ultimately hopeful I'm willing to go down a deep pit of despair, and so long as it's not always trying to be funny a silly game tends to grab me too. This is a bit of a ramble and almost certainly incomplete but it's what I could come up with at the moment.

I genuinely love this, not in a "giggling at you" way either. That is super cool! I wouldn't have thought of using foot pedals in that way but it makes total sense.

Edit: Another recommendation I have, theme-wise very similar to the last one I gave, is Disco Elysium. Your mention of isometric style games made that light bulb go off immediately. It's pretty grim, but easily one of the best character studies in all of gaming.

@broshmosh: If you ever reccommend foot pedals to someone else for this purpose, have them make sure they're ones with decent build quality; my first set wouldn't fire or stay pressed if i had my foot slightly off centre.

I may just have to give Disco Elysium another shot, I bounced off it a couple times due to heavy secondhand embarassment but I just know so many people super fond of it, and it's been rec'd multiple times here already.

If city builders are relevant to your interests: Cities: Skylines.

If city builders are not relevant to your interests: ...still, Cities: Skylines.

@facelessvixen: The municipal committee will set a date to action a meeting to determine the viability of the recommendations submitted herein.

I should mention I've redownloaded Disco Elysium to try again and Transistor to play again, I'm wishlisting Legend of Grimrock II for when I can next buy new games, I'm planning starting Yakuza 7 while I've still got gamepass in hopes it'll make me renew gamepass, and Paradise Killer seems pretty neat so I might check that out there too.

I'm super down to take down more recs because I'm currently only sane by consuming media voraciously(and hey if you have book recs...) but I also wanted to give appreciation for all the options y'all presented me with!

Good luck with Disco, the second-hand embarassment may well be quite strong at points still. You can play relatively straight-edge after long enough, if you decide to.

OK, well, more recommendations! These are all games I've tried and that I think are fun and interesting in some way, though I didn't necessarily finish all of them.

• Satisfactory - Factory building game, summed up as "3D Factorio", but I would append "for humans" to the end of that. It's almost as complex, but the key is in how they slowly introduce things to you. And also how everything about that game just exudes fun, from the tiniest animation to the massive hypertube networks you'll eventually build.
• Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun - Feudal Japan themed isometric stealth tactics game.
• Enderal - Basically a free "expansion" for Skyrim. It's technically a mod, but it's on Steam and shows up as a full game in my library.
• Teardown - Physics playground first, heist game second - you have to plan out some kind of route, blow up walls, lay down planks, etc., then steal something and get out before the timer reaches 60 seconds. Despite its looks, the physics and forced ray tracing can really hammer a PC, so if you're running anything less than a desktop 1070 maybe consider something else.
• Subnautica/Subnautica: Below Zero - Underwater survival/exploration game. I got some real Metroid Prime vibes from the first game, it's not necessarily in the same genre but it's the same sense of otherworldly wonder combined with the search for cool new toys all over the place.
• A Hat in Time - 3D platformer straight out of the late PS1/early PS2 era. I seem to recall it playing OK with a keyboard?
• Might and Magic X: Legacy - First person dungeon crawler, sorta like Grimrock 2 except it's turn-based and has other actual people to talk to, though that's not really a focus.
• Vaporum - Just wanted to go ahead and round out the first person dungeon crawlers of the 2010s list. No, I'm not going to suggest The Bard's Tale IV because it's boring
• Noita - 2D physics-focused roguelike. Trailers for this game claim that every single pixel is simulated in some way and not just a static bit of art. I don't know if that's true, but there sure are a lot of things that interact with each other here and a lot of things are affected by fire and explosions.
• Outward - Somewhat janky exploration-focused open-world action-adventure thing. "Hardcore" in the "there's no player marker on the map" sense, less focused on combat that feels good and more on figuring out how the world works.
• Wasteland 3: Another CRPG, set in wintery post-apocalyptic Colorado, turn-based. I remember really enjoying the story but I was playing it co op and both times we tried it my brother and I just had some disagreements about where to go and I had some CRPG fatigue so I never finished it, definitely need to get back to it, but I remember the story being pretty damn good from what I played.

Seconding this recommendation, and also yes the simulation claim is true: The voxels (they aren't pixels) run off an improved Falling Sand engine, which was a sandbox that gave voxels various properties, allowing the user to experiment with digital substances. Each voxel in Noita subsequently has its own properties and will react to other voxels in various ways, which makes Noita one of the most chaotic roguelikes out there.

Definitely gonna check out Noita and Teardown, and refreshing my interest in Satisfactory as a game that's been on my wishlist for ages but I never got around to!

I'm also really enjoying my first few hours in Yakuza 7, the binds aren't the least awkward but it's easily fixed and the turn based with timing appeals to my mario and luigi superstar saga love! It's also super real and also goofy as shit at the same time about the world and I love that.

Since they have not been mentioned yet: Return of the Obra-Dinn and Papers, Please are terrific puzzle games.

The other thing is that I'd mention is that there are a lot of games that are originally designed for controller, but have good KBM support. Rogue Legacy 2 came out and that works well with that (and some classes are better with the mouse aiming). Hades, too. Ubisoft also tends to make their games play well, if you're into Ubisoft games.

Ever tried Colony sims/Base builders ? Like Oxygen Not Included, Banished, Timberborn or even something a little more up-scaled like the Anno series ?

@retris: Knowing Rogue Legacy 2 works well is really nice! I loved the first one and I've heard so much about this one I'm really aching to try it sometime soon. I should restart Return of the Obra-Dinn now too, I fell off it at a point and forgot what I'd learned and didn't want to restart.

I've found larger scale city builders or rts-like games pretty hard on my attention span, but when it's a small like... business? or farm? When it's something I can walk through and touch bits of generally I can fall into it for hours.

You might like Dicey Dungeons if it isn't one of the "deckbuilder" games you have already played. I liked Disco Elysium, though I think the hype is a tiny bit overblown. Definitely felt plenty of second hand embarrassment during it, though I do think it gets better as you go and level up.

Hypnospace Outlaw is a game where you are in or you are in. It might be a tad too silly for you, but I genuinely enjoyed exploring that world.

Overboard! is a pretty fun "groundhog day" adventure game. You'll know pretty quick if it's for you. 80 days by the same developer is also great, but perhaps a bit more of a phone game.

Opus Magnum is pretty much the Magnum Opus of factory/system/programming games. Either you will bounce off it or you will go deep (personally, I belong to the former category).

A Short Hike is a game I enjoyed way more than I expected to, but it's pretty short. It might work better on a controller, but I had no problems with keyboard+mouse and it's not stressful at all.

Glittermitten Grove is pretty neat if you need something to play.

This is probably more fun to play with friends, but I really like Monster Prom which is kind of a roguelike dating sim.

As for books... I have a really hard time recommending stuff when I don't know what you are into. Terry Pratchett is my favourite author, and you can read pretty much whatever from him (I think Good Omens is a good start before getting into the Discworld series). I like autobiographies as well, and the Glass Castle is a really good one despite the uninspiring name and cover. If you want to get into foreign literature, I can recommend Angels of the Universe (Einar Már Guðmundsson), LoveStar (Andri Snær Magnason) and the Outlaw (Jón Gnarr) from Iceland. The first is a fictionalization of the author's mentally ill brother, the second is a prescient and humorous near sci-fi story that gets pretty bonkers while the third is an autobiography of a comedian turned mayor of when he was sent away to boarding school for naughty children in the countryside (It's the last part of a trilogy, but I haven't read the other two books and didn't feel like I needed the context). If you are interested in illustrated Journalism, Safe Area Goražđe is my favourite graphic novel (and the competition is steep).

I hope some of the recommendations in the thread manage to tide you over.

this is good idea

I would recommend the Ace Attorney series, most of which is available on Steam, and are entirely playable with the keyboard. They are also fully pausable, if you need to take a break once in a while.

They are also deceivably long, so they will last you a pretty good time.

@goodbyereptilian: This thread just resurfaced so I hope you don't mind some late recommendations. I have two recommendations both older games (one positively ancient).

Battletech (2018) - It's a strategy/tactics game but the strategy layer takes the form of a business simulation where you have to pay your crew, pay for repairs, negotiate contracts, improve your base, buy mechs, etc. It's hard to explain but the effect is that it feels much more open and exploratory than an average tactics game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/637090/BATTLETECH/

Sid Meier's Railroads! (2006) -

It's a game about building railroads and crushing your business rivals by snaking the gold from the refinery they spent all game setting up.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/7600/Sid_Meiers_Railroads/

@nuttism:Dicey Dungeons is indeed old ground for me, but I'm glad to find another fan of Pratchett! Genuinely just a great author and great dude(GNU TERRY PRATCHETT). I wasn't expecting people to actually rec novels here given I haven't been on the forum long and haven't got a sense of how much folks stray from games, but I found myself interested in a couple you mentioned anyway so it's much appreciated!

@paulwgraham: I am very much still here and still writing stuff down for when I need a new distraction, so everyone's responses are super helpful even if I don't end up clicking with the stuff they mention; just knowing what is and isn't comfortable with my only control scheme is huge! Lots of games on Steam will indicate which games are controller compatible, but it feels impossible to find out which feel comfortable with mouse and keyboard if they support controllers at all. Plus a lot of games have partial or selective rebindability, so like I find Genshin Impact pretty tough just because I can't move things around in what I'm pressing.

@hermes: I missed this one! I didn't realise they all got ported, I stopped having the right system around the third one's release, so it might be fun to have a combined nostalgia and continuation, especially if they're bundled for a good price.

RTS games though these can get pretty demanding and time consuming. Warcraft 3 or Dawn of War 2 (this has no base building in SP) are relatively easy to get into for a beginner. Or perhaps Settlers series which is more city builder focused

P&C Adventure games - Day of the Tentacle is a classic that still holds up quite well

City Builders - SimCity 3000 or perhaps Cities: Skylines

SRPGs and TBS games - Heroes of Might & Magic series, Jagged Alliance 2, X-COM

CRPGs - Fallout and Baldur's Gate series

Struggling to think of a KB&M metroidvania (Dandara maybe) but if you're ok with only using the KB there's a bunch of good ones. Guacamelee and Monster Boy are relatively easy for the most part and I hear Yoku's Island Express is too

Puzzle - World of Goo, Portal 1-2, Baba is You, Boulder Dash