About

The Dvorak Gamer Index tracks how well video games handle the Dvorak keyboard layout.

The goal is to serve as a video game buyer's guide for my fellow Dvorak keyboard users.

Potentially, it may also help raise awareness of keyboard layout-related issues in gaming.

What is Dvorak?

This is a bit of a lengthy topic, so it's covered in a separate page.

How does Dvorak affect gaming?

This is also a bit lengthy, and so it also gets its own page.

What about other keyboard layouts?

In general, unless a game makes special changes specifically to support Dvorak (very rare), many of the issues raised on this site will apply to any non-Qwerty keyboard layout, including minor regional layout variants. However, I only use Dvorak, so that's the focus of the index.

You gave my favourite game a bad rating! /
Should I buy a game because it got a good rating?

Sorry, but the index isn't about how good or bad a game is. It's only about how well it supports playing with the Dvorak keyboard layout.

It's highly likely that the index will eventually give some bad scores to good games, or good scores to bad games. Some of my favourite games had the worst keyboard support.

If you're thinking about buying a game, you should go read regular reviews about it.

Can I request you review a game?

I generally only review games as I play them. This ensures that I give the game the most accurate review possible, because I'm playing it to completion and have a pretty good chance of noticing any troublesome quirks it might have.

If a game is in my Steam collection (see "Who are you?" below), then feel free to reach out to me, and I can give you a very basic report on what rating I would expect it to get. But I probably won't put it into the index until I've actually played it to completion.

If you're a game developer and you want my input on how well your game supports Dvorak, contact me and we can work something out.

Can I contribute to the index?

Sure, if you want. The source code of the site is available on GitHub, and there are instructions there on how to contribute.

You don't need to be a Dvorak user to contribute, but it definitely helps. You'll also need to be comfortable with having multiple keyboard layouts installed, and switching between them as needed. This is required in order to test how a game responds to different layouts, and changing layouts mid-game.

Who are you?

I'm just a gamer who switched to Dvorak at some point. If you really want to reach out to me for some reason, your best option is probably via Twitter.

You can also see my game collection on Steam, but that's not a great way to reach me, because I generally don't accept unsolicited friend requests.

Why a Mac keyboard? Real gamers use Windows!

Real gamers use whatever system they want.

But really, it's just because Apple makes nice-looking keyboards.