Back in 2024, a streamer named Perrikaryal did something that still echoes through the gaming world in 2026: she picked up Black Myth: Wukong, one of the most punishing action games ever made, and beat bosses without ever touching a controller. I remember watching those early streams – jaw on the floor – thinking, this is the future of gaming, and frankly, it still feels just as surreal two years later.

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Perrikaryal uses an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset that reads brain signals, translating specific thoughts or emotional states into button presses. She had already conquered Elden Ring and its Shadow of the Erdtree DLC using only her mind, so when she set her sights on Black Myth: Wukong, the challenge seemed almost poetic. In her first dedicated stream, she demolished three bosses – Lingxuzi, Guangzhi, and another early-game terror – without lifting a finger. She tweeted afterward: "I wasn't convinced that Black Myth: Wukong would've been possible with mind control… but after A LOT of trial and error, we DESTROYED 3 bosses in one stream! Mind control's getting unstoppable." And honestly, I couldn’t agree more.

What makes her Black Myth playthrough even more fascinating – and still highly relevant for aspiring accessibility gamers in 2026 – is the layered control system she developed. Back in Elden Ring, she managed four thought-commands mapped to a brain-computer interface. But for Wukong, four inputs just weren’t enough. The Destined One needs to dodge, attack, use spells, transform, heal, and sometimes just survive. So she stacked additional technologies: eye-tracking for camera and movement control, and voice commands for menus and special abilities. The result was a symphony of biological input that left her hands completely free. Imagine barking “Immobilize!” at your monitor and watching the boss freeze mid-swing – all while tilting your head to strafe and focusing on a specific mental pattern to trigger a heavy attack. It’s a kind of multitasking that would make most of us cry, but Perrikaryal makes it look almost casual.

There’s this little detail that I absolutely adore, and it’s still a highlight in her 2026 retrospective clips: the gyroscope in her headset maps head tilt to character movement. So when she fights, her head bobs and weaves naturally, almost like she is the monkey warrior. I’ve caught myself doing the same thing when I’m deep in a boss fight, leaning into every dodge. But for Perrikaryal, that head movement isn’t just immersion – it’s an actual control scheme. Every time you’d flick a thumbstick, she’s rotating her entire neck, all while holding a focused emotional state (which is insanely hard to maintain under pressure) and scanning the screen for visual cues that trigger eye-tracking corrections. Oh, and don’t forget the voice commands on top. It’s like juggling three conversations while riding a unicycle.

One aspect that really shone through then and keeps me coming back to her archives in 2026 is the raw transparency of her setup process. Perrikaryal streams the ENTIRE thing live – troubleshooting, calibration fails, software hiccups, the works. There’s no polished demo here; you’ll see her brain signal drifting because she got distracted by chat, or a voice command not registering because she’s too winded from a boss phase. That authenticity is a masterclass in making technology feel human, and honestly, it’s part of why her approach is still influencing research in neural interfaces today. She’s not just playing games; she’s showing a generation of developers and players that the barrier between thought and action can be laughably thin.

Looking ahead to 2026, the ripples of her Black Myth: Wukong run are everywhere. Accessibility mods now routinely incorporate eye-tracking and voice layers, and EEG peripherals have dropped in price enough that indie streamers are attempting their own “mind-only” speedruns. And Perrikaryal herself? She’s still at it, recently teasing a full mind-control playthrough of the upcoming sci-fi epic Phantom Star, which is rumored to require even more complex input combinations. But for me, the image of her calmly stating “pillar stance” out loud, tilting forward, and smashing a loong with a thought-activated charged heavy will always be the moment I realized gaming’s limits are mostly in our heads – literally.

If you haven’t experienced it, I urge you to dig up those old VODs. Even in 2026’s landscape of virtual reality gloves and brain-computer chips, there’s something wildly inspiring about watching a streamer wreck ancient mythological beasts with nothing but a focused glare and a determined nod. It’s not just about beating the game; it’s about redefining what a gamer is – and Perrikaryal did it years before the rest of us caught up.