The Nintendo Switch is one of the worst consoles for mouse and keyboard gamers, but at the same time, its portability makes it especially appealing to those that already have a large, expensive gaming machine in their house. PC players might buy a Switch just to have something to play while traveling, only to realize thatthey hate using a gamepad.
While the Switch has no native support for mouse and little native support for keyboard inputs, players can use a USB-C to OTG cable to insert their own peripheries or buy one of the many sets explicitly made for the Switch. Either way, software support is very limited, and it doesn’t seem likely that Nintendo will focus on this issue in the immediate future (if ever). What’s arguably even worse, many games do support somealternative input methods, but rarely announce this.
6Factorio
Factorio,a simulator game, is the exact kind of game thatneeds a mouse to be played comfortably. Luckily, as the developer himself confirmed on Reddit, the game has kept some of the mouse and keyboard support when it was ported to Nintendo Switch. In the same post, he added that he wishes to add a “proper mouse and keyboard mode” in the future, though it’s unclear when that might be.
Factorioon Switch supports mouse-as-cursor, shortcuts mappings (all shortcuts have to be associated manually), and of course keyboard input in the menus and the search box. The movement currently doesn’t support keyboard and mouse input, though fans speculate that it might be part of a hypothetical, fully fledged, keyboard and mouse mode.
5Game Builder Garage
The self-defined “programming game” for the Nintendo Switch mentions mouse controls right on its website. The addition is almost obligatory for this game/game engine hybrid, although the similar, more popularMario Maker 2still doesn’t have access to this alternative control scheme.
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It’s important to note that, whileGame Builder Garage’s website lists only mouse support, the game supports keyboards too. Most Switch games that have search boxes or chat systems support keyboard inputs natively. Keyboard input might come especially handy inGame Builder Garage, since playing or sharing a custom-made level requires typing out a 10 characters-long code.
4Doom 1 & Doom 2
id Software’s classic shooter is famous for its ports, playable seemingly on every platform that carries a screen and a CPU. In 2019, the ninth console generation joined literally every other console, as well as a slew of calculators, smartwatches, and voting machines, inbeing able to playDoom. What’s really surprising is that the Nintendo Switch can playDoombetter than some older-generation consoles.
Doomon Nintendo Switch got the all-too-rare treatment of proper keyboard support, even if mouse input isn’t currently available. Oddly enough, this might bring modern players to experienceDoom 1andDoom 2like most players did back in 1993: keyboard only and no strafing, no side movement. Even if this wasn’t really how the game was meant to be played, as revealed by the too fast “par times” displayed after every level, keyboard only was still the default way to play PC games back inDoom’s days
3Quake
Quakeis one of the very few shooters on the Nintendo Switch to natively support both mouse and keyboard input. This alternative control scheme was granted official support only with the game’s first major update. The same update brought to consoles the mission packsScourge of ArmagonandDissolution of Eternity, as well as a few quality-of-life features.
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Quakemight have received mouse and keyboard support due to the influence that the game had in making the mouse the default first-person shooter periphery, back in the late 90s. Even though most console players can aim with a controller well enough, part of the joy of revisiting theselandmarks of gamingis in trying to understand how they appeared on release day. ForQuake,that includes its innovative control scheme.
2Hypnospace Outlaw
1990s internetsimulatorHypnospace Outlawis another game that thrives when played with mouse and keyboard. Luckily, the 2020 Switch port boosts complete support for this alternate control scheme. It’s good news for the Switch owners that missed on 2019’s indie hit and want to completely immerse themselves in this weird little time piece about web 1.0.
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As far as Mike Rose of game publisher No More Robots has it, Nintendo itself asked theHypnospace Outlawteam to add mouse support to the Switch port of the game. Perhaps Nintendo anticipated how unwieldy a game about navigating the internet would be without mouse controls. Worse even than playing a point and click with a joystick,Hypnospace Outlawwithout a mouse would be like loading Microsoft Excel directly on a PS5.
1Tactics Ogre: Reborn
This remake of the classic tactics RPGTactics Ogrehas received a fewquality-of-life improvementswhen compared to its two previous iterations, the SNES original and its PSP remaster. Despite being based on a game made for gamepad,Tactics Ogre: Rebornis still a tactics game and, like the rest the genre, it benefits immensely from being played with a mouse.
Unlike most other games on Switch, including the few others that do support mouse and keyboard, this alternative control scheme can replicate that of a PC almost one to one. What’s even more curious is that this feature was never announced by Square Enix and even went unnoticed for the first couple of days following release.
