#Gamers No VR? No worries. Half-Life: Alyx is now playable with a mouse and keyboard Read More At:

What you need to know

• Half-Life: Alyx was released for PC by Valve on March 23, 2020, and designed exclusively for VR headsets.
• Half-Life Alyx NoVR is a mod created by Björn Feber that allows the game to be played with a traditional mouse and keyboard.
• The NoVR script is available now from GitHub(opens in new tab) or ModDB(opens in new tab).

Valve's latest entry in its iconic Half-Life franchise was released in 2020, and Half-Life: Alyx excited fans with brand-new canonical prequel content despite its exclusivity for virtual reality(opens in new tab) headsets. Supporting a wide range of VR variants, with even more unlocking compatibility in time thanks to efforts from the gaming community, it has been reasonably accessible to anyone with even a cheap headset but not for those sticking to a mouse and keyboard.

Our biggest update yet is out now!

The campaign can now be completed from start to finish! Gravity Gloves are working, combine fabricators can be used to upgrade your weapons & much more!

Check the reply for the link that has all the details in an article and a download link! pic.twitter.com/rcxSMgO9Ew

— Half-Life Alyx NoVR (@HL_Alyx_NoVR) April 9, 2023

All that changes with the Half-Life: Alyx NoVR mod from Björn Feber, also known as bfeber or @GB_2_, and collective help from the modding community. Designed to allow a full playthrough of the story, some gameplay sacrifices were unavoidable, dividing gamers as to whether or not the mod should exist at all. Nevertheless, the NoVR script is available from ModDB(opens in new tab) for anyone to try if you own the game on Steam, offering a more interactive alternative for those without access to VR headsets than watching a pre-recorded playthrough.

Currently, save files created while playing Half-Life: Alyx in VR are incompatible with the NoVR mod, and vice versa. If there is a particular section you've struggled with in the virtual world, this isn't a quick solution offering a switch to the mouse and keyboard and then back again. The entire game is explicitly designed around interactivity, and many features have been cut or adjusted to facilitate the completion of the single-player campaign.

• Left Click: Select in Main Menu/Throw Held Object/Primary Attack
• W, A, S, D: Move
• Space: Jump
• Ctrl: Crouch
• Shift: Sprint
• E: Interact/Pick Up Object
• F: Flashlight (if you have it)
• H: Cover your mouth
• F5: Quick Save
• F9: Quick Load
• M: Main Menu
• P: Pause
• V: Noclip (if you get stuck)