I like the minimalism but I think I would want to see more about the app before having to go through the process of downloading it.

thanks for the comment! yeah our website is still our pre-launch placeholder for testers so we'll start to work on something more product focussed

just change you keyboard mapping to qwerty on your computer. you can do this natively on mavericks with the cmd + space shortcut

It's still annoying to need to change the entire input method, and then remember that it's different for that window (or globally, depending on particulars of your system).

In any case, QWERTY is not the default worldwide. The letters 'a', 'w', 'e', 'd', 'z', and 'x' have no special semantic significance for this game, they're chosen for their relative positions in a particular keyboard layout.

The actual game actions of 'shift upper left', 'shift upper right', and so on, should be able to be associated with any particular input - including other keys, or relevant swipe gestures on mobile.

I agree with OP - there should be a standardized way of doing this, so that game authors don't have to re-invent keybindings for every new game. (or, as they're wont to do, fail to re-invent keybindings)

> It's still annoying to need to change the entire input method

But you are effectively changing the input method from "typing" to "gaming", so it makes sense to have to toggle some switch somewhere.

Butbutbut... this is what SCANCODES are for... Why aren't people using that for games nowadays? Is it out of fashion already?

I agree entirely. I attribute the lack of scancode usage in keybindings to the laziness and depravity of the young generation ;)

Actually, Javascript is a little weird with regard to scancodes. Try playing with http://javascript.info/tutorial/keyboard-events in different keyboard layouts - you'll notice that there's no code that's consistent across different layouts.

cmd + space defaults to Spotlight.

It changes if you have multiple keyboard layouts installed, confusingly enough.

I think you have to explicitly enable that. Or it isn't enabled for me, perhaps because I installed Mavericks as an update rather than a full installation? I didn't even notice it was an option until I was adding a 3rd layout the other day.

The combo is customizable though, I've got it set to Cmd+Opt+Space for example.