Tower Lab Controls

Tower Lab’s cockpit is a HUD with a handful of confirmed shortcuts, a mouse that is allowed to put a tower anywhere open, and a right-click menu that replaced a lot of guesswork during the demo. Steam Early Access is scheduled for September 7, 2026. This page lists what the HUD actually labels. It does not fill empty rows with WASD, Q, E, or Space just to look like a shooter wiki.

If you need the rules those buttons serve, read how to play and getting started. If you need to know whether the sim will run, read system requirements. Hardware and binds are different questions.

Confirmed HUD shortcuts

These actions appear on the in-game HUD. Keys are listed only when the HUD (or a published patch) names them.

Action	Binding	What it is for
Rotate Cam	On-screen HUD	Orbit the pad so you can see edges, portals, and leaks
Reset Cam	N	Snap the camera back when a rotation leaves you blind
Toggle Cooldown	Tab	Show or hide tower cooldown states so you know which machine is ready
Move Tower	On-screen HUD	Reposition a placed tower; placement is not a locked grid
Focus Cam	F	Jump the camera to what you care about mid-fight
Simulate	On-screen HUD	Test the physics without committing the same way Start Attack does
Start Attack	On-screen HUD	Release the wave after you have spent energy and placed cards
1X / 2X / 3X	On-screen HUD	Speed the sim once you trust the machine
Tower context	Right-click	Sell, read tower info, open the tech tree

If a future patch prints extra keys on the HUD, this table will gain rows. Until then, missing WASD is intentional.

Mouse placement and free movement

The store pitch is the control scheme: place towers in any open space, move them freely, sandbox first. There is no “must snap to path tile” rule. That is why Move Tower is a first-class HUD action instead of a shameful refund.

Practical mouse loop:

1. Spend energy to play a card from the hand.
2. Click an open volume on the lab — corners and edges matter more than center tiles.
3. Start Attack when the wave preview looks solvable.
4. If the pack leaks, pause your ego, Move Tower, Reset Cam with N if you rotated into a useless angle, and try Simulate before you burn another shop.
5. Right-click anything that underperformed. Sell it or open its tree. Do not leave a Fan aimed at the spawn because you are afraid to touch it.

Steam lists a Mouse Only Option. You can play the upcoming build without treating keyboard movement as mandatory. Playable without Timed Input and Save Anytime are also listed, which matches a strategy game that lets you think between waves. None of those flags are an excuse to skip wave preview in the Vend-O-Lab.

Right-click context and tech trees

A demo patch added the right-click tower context menu after placement: sell, tower info, tech tree. Tech points (T) live there. Matter (M) still lives in the shop. Do not confuse the two. You farm Matter by knocking robots off the map, then you may buy a tree node in the Vend-O-Lab or inspect the tree on the pad.

Right-click is also how you discover you placed the wrong tool. A Constructor off the Scrap Line is a sell. A Gravity well in the center of a wide pad is a Move Tower, not a new purchase. The upgrades guide explains what nodes do; this page only tells you how to open them.

On Steam Deck (Playable, not Verified), right-click is a trackpad or trigger mapping problem. Use Steam Input. This wiki will not pretend there is an official gamepad legend until the HUD shows one.

Speed, simulate, and start attack

Simulate and Start Attack are not the same button with different art. Simulate is how you ask the physics engine a question. Start Attack is how you accept the wave. New players mash Start Attack, watch a Grow pack walk out the exit, and blame the deck. Old players Simulate, Move Tower, then Start Attack at 1X, then raise speed only when the edge is eating bodies.

1X / 2X / 3X are HUD speed controls. They tax the GPU listed on system requirements. If 3X stutters on a GTX 960-class card, that is a hardware floor, not a broken Fan. Drop to 1X before you reroll the deck.

Toggle Cooldown on Tab is the other combat HUD skill. Physics towers have recovery. If you cannot see cooldown, you will place a second Tesla when the first was one second from firing. Tab is cheaper than M400.

Accessibility features on Steam

Listed for the upcoming Steam build, without inventing extras:

• Mouse Only Option
• Playable without Timed Input
• Save Anytime
• Camera Comfort
• Custom Volume Controls
• Achievements
• Steam Cloud
• Leaderboards
• Steam Workshop / level editor
• Photo Mode
• Family Sharing

Camera Comfort is why Rotate Cam and Reset Cam (N) matter: if motion bothers you, reset often and avoid ornamental spins. Custom Volume is separate from gameplay. Save Anytime matches a single-player lab; you are not locked into an online raid timer. Photo Mode is for bragging a contraption, not for pausing a ranked Endless run you already leaked.

Family Sharing and Cloud do not change binds. They change who can open the upcoming EA build on which machine. Leaderboards and Workshop assume you can finish a pad cleanly enough to share it.

What this page will not invent

No WASD camera unless the HUD says so. No unconfirmed pause key. No controller face-button chart. No “hold shift to rotate.” If a YouTube overlay disagrees with the HUD, trust the HUD.

The tools hub is the parent of this table. Getting started still owns your first energy spend. How to play owns the knockoff rule. After Early Access unlocks, if Play Tug Studio prints a full key list, this article will grow. Until then, the skill is mouse placement, N when you get lost, Tab when you get greedy, F when the camera is looking at the wrong void, and right-click when a tower is lying to you.