It’s 2026, and I am once again slumped over my keyboard, having just been pulverized by a monkey with a stick for the fifteenth time. My mouse is sweating. My spacebar is looking at me like I just insulted its mother. I’m playing Black Myth: Wukong—yes, the one that came out two years ago, don’t judge me—and I’m stuck on the same boss that some absolute madwoman beat without lifting a finger. Literally. She used her brain. And I don’t mean she memorized attack patterns or “got gud”—I mean she literally plugged her noggin into the game and said, “Move, you glorified primate!” with nothing but a thought.
This is the universe I live in, and I’m not okay.
The person making me question every single one of my life choices is Perri Karyal, better known online as Perrikaryal. Back in the ancient times of 2024, she was already a legend for finishing Elden Ring and its notoriously brutal Shadow of the Erdtree DLC with a completely hands‑free, mind‑control setup. While the rest of us were still arguing over whether Erdtree was too hard, she had already silently beaten it with her eyebrows and some electrodes. Then, in August of that year, she looked at Game Science’s monkey king and went, “You’re next.”
And she meant it. In a single five‑hour launch‑day stream, Karyal downed Guangzhi, Lingxuzi, Guangmou, and a handful of other early brick walls, dying only a few times to each. Let that sink in. She died fewer times with brain‑reading hardware than I did with a perfectly functional Xbox controller and the desperate prayer reflexes of a caffeinated squirrel. Every time I see the name Guangzhi now, I don’t think “fire wolf with a double‑bladed glaive.” I think, “A woman on Twitch humbled him by thinking sternly.”
How Does ‘Mind Control’ Even Work? (Asking for My Shaky Hands)
Karyal’s setup sounds like something a cartoon villain would steal from a lab, but it’s very real. The star of the show is an Emotiv headset—a sleek, electrode‑studded band that reads electrical brain activity. That data gets fed into software trained to recognize specific patterns. Think of it like teaching a very literal‑minded psychic parrot inside your computer to understand that a particular brain pattern means “light attack” and another means “dodge roll.”
Those patterns are then mapped to a virtual Xbox controller. So, in practice, she imagines pushing a block forward, and her character bonks the enemy. She imagines a different shape or motion, and Wukong rolls out of danger. It’s mind mapping dressed up in sci‑fi couture.
But brain power alone isn’t enough. She pairs the headset with:
-
Eye‑tracking hardware for basic character movement—so where she looks is where the monkey goes.
-
Voice commands for secondary actions like staff spin or navigating menus. (Side note: I screamed “heavy attack!” at my monitor once, and my character didn’t even flinch. So clearly my tech is the problem.)
Ironically, Karyal has said that one of the hardest challenges isn’t the bosses—it’s the menus. Navigating a game’s inventory or skill tree with thoughts and eye flicks is apparently a special form of torture. Imagine trying to equip a new spirit with your brain signals while a gigantic tiger demon is actively trying to turn you into lunch. That’s next‑level multitasking. My own menu struggles involve accidentally selling my best weapon to a merchant while scrolling too fast. We are not the same.
The Boss Graveyard of a Brain Gamer
To give you an idea of just how ridiculous this feat was, here’s a quick reminder of the
Black Myth bosses she clean‑breezed through on day one while half the internet was still downloading the game:
| Boss | Why It Stings for Me |
|---|---|
| Guangzhi | Fire, speed, and relentless aggression. I cried. She blinked. |
| Lingxuzi | A giant wolf with arena‑filling attacks. My panic rolls still haunt me. She thought “left” and won. |
| Guangmou | Poison clouds and snake‑like thrusts. I used all my antidotes and died anyway. She didn’t even sweat. |
These aren’t pushover bosses. They’re the reason new players uninstall the game and go outside for a walk. And Karyal systematically dismantled them with invisible strings pulled directly from her cerebral cortex. By the time 2026 rolled around, she’d probably cleared every secret boss and was mentally playing Black Myth Wukong 2 inside a lucid dream.
I, on the other hand, am still chewing through the main story, thanking every deity that I remembered to upgrade my best Wukong skills and equip a decent weapon before each fight. The gap between a brain‑gamer and a sweat‑gamer is now so wide I can hear an echo.
What This Means for the Rest of Us Mortals
Look, I’m not saying you need to go out and buy an EEG headset just to beat the Black Wind King. But every time you feel proud for learning a boss’s parry timing, remember that someone, somewhere, has already beaten that same boss by gently rearranging their thoughts while possibly planning dinner. It’s humbling and hilarious at the same time.
Karyal didn’t just prove that adaptive technology can let players overcome physical limitations—she threw down a gauntlet for the entire soulslike community. Our controllers and keyboards suddenly feel… a little too easy, don’t they? Or maybe they just feel heavy. Mine definitely feels heavy now, and it’s sweating again.
So the next time you’re stuck on a boss, go ahead and curse. Blame the hitboxes. Complain about the stamina bar. But in the back of your mind, let there be a tiny, glowing reminder: a streamer beat this thing with her mind. And if that doesn’t inspire you to at least keep trying, well, you can always try thinking really, really hard at the screen. It probably won’t work, but you’ll look very focused while the death screen loads.
Just don’t forget to level up your skills and grab those shiny weapons first—they can’t read your brainwaves, but they do hurt the other monkey more. Sometimes, good old‑fashioned button pressing is still good enough. Even if my spacebar is still giving me the side‑eye.