Did you know there’s a working piano in Half-Life: Alyx? You may be surprised to see just what talent this 1:1 recreation of a baby grand piano has attracted.
Playing the game’s virtual piano is a pretty difficult task, what with its patently thin finger-size keys and lack of solid force feedback—definitely a less ideal VR music-making platform by any stretch of the imagination. That hasn’t stopped an Internet’s worth of musicians from playing everything from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee to Still Alive from Valve’s Portal.
You’ll find plenty of shorter clips out there of people playing simple tunes—after all, you can only really play with two fingers on each hand reliably, so some of our favorites are invariably the compositions with multiple takes to fill in some of the complicated bits.
Flight of the Bumblebee – NitromathThePizzaGuy
Avast Your Ass – NitromathThePizzaGuy
Still Alive – Lambomang
We’d love to see more talent filtered its way to the Half-Life: Alyx piano. Let us know your favorite in the comments below.