Both Hands
One line, two people. You have up and down; they have left and right.
What it is
Two people, one line. One side owns up and down, the other owns left and right, and between you the pen walks along a narrow channel to the far end. Either side can be left to the computer, so it is a one-player game and a two-player game without a mode screen.
Cleared channels build into a run, and the run ends when the meter empties.
Why it is two axes and not two jobs
This is the only game here where neither person can do the other's part at all. Not "harder without them" — impossible. One hand cannot supply the other's direction, so there is no passenger and nothing to carry.
It also settles the thing that makes competitive games awkward between a parent and a child, or two strangers: both of you are equally bad at it. Thirty years of practice buys an adult nothing here, because your move is only right or wrong depending on what the other person does in the same second.
And nobody can tell you what to do. There is no correct move to instruct, because the correct move depends on a hand that is not yours.
Moving one way at a time costs you
Travelling on a single axis drains the meter; a held diagonal costs nothing. Without that the pen simply takes turns — across, then up, then across — and a staircase fits inside a diagonal channel at any width, so the shape of the channel alone cannot make two people move together.
Taking turns is also the moment "go right, now up" becomes sayable again, which is the one thing this game is built to avoid. There is no clock and no speed component: the cost is structural.
How to play
- One sideHold up or down
- The other sideHold left or right
- AloneTake one side; the computer holds the other
On a desktop, W A S D drives one side and the arrow keys the other. Use the keyboard rather than the mouse: the game asks for two directions to be held at once, and a mouse only ever reports one pointer.
What isn't settled yet
Whether two people who have never seen it work out their halves without being told. That is the whole question this game exists to ask, and nothing that runs in a browser can answer it.
Whether people will physically share a screen this way. Two players at either side of a phone is a different proposition from a tablet flat on a table, and only the second has really been thought through.
Build Log
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Build 4
Added keyboard control, with W A S D on one side and the arrow keys on the other. The game asks for two directions to be held at the same time, and a mouse only ever reports a single pointer, so on a machine without a touchscreen the line could only be dragged one axis at a time, which is the thing that frays it.
Credits and licences
No third-party engine and no embedded typefaces — it uses whichever fonts your device already has. Cover art was rendered from the game’s own drawing code.
Both Hands is original work by Launchway Games.