Some people may be aware of the Typing of the Dead games. For those that aren't they are remakes of The House of the Dead, a series of arcade rail shooters, but repurposed as a typing tutor. Zombies appear on screen with words underneath them and you have to type the words to "shoot" them. It may sound a bit dull if you haven't seen it before but trust me, they are real good.
Trying to teach people how to type by turning it into some kind of game isn't exactly a new thing. Most typing tutors I've seen have come with some sort of "game" mode where you are timed or tested on accuracy or something but it always feels like you're using some kind of corporate "Edutainment" bullshit. Even Typing of the Dead, despite being awesome, feels more typing tutor than video game, something about the overall presentation I guess. But then comes The Textorcist which is, despite being a game about typing, isn't really a typing tutor and is actually a full on game. Not only is it focused on being a game, the developers decided to mash typing with bullet hell shooting of all fucking things and the result is awesome.
The story is kind of bare bones but it's about a priest called Ray who is an outcast from the Vatican going around doing exorcisms. In doing this he stumbles on a conspiracy involving the Vatican actually being evil and summoning demons to wipe people off the face of the Earth for sinning too much or something. It's not the deepest thing in the world but it's full of humor and serves as a nice little intro and outro to each stage. Between stages you actually have to do some light investigating which involves searching a fake google or going through your files so it's a nice bit of flavor.
But forget plots, demon exorcisms is what we're all really here for so lets talk about how that works. In each level an enemy will be at the top of the screen and you'll be at the bottom. At the bottom of the screen there will be bible verses that you have to type, the current word of which will appear above your head. While you are trying to type your Bible verses the enemy will, of course, be shooting shit at you. So while you dodge with the arrow keys you have to type with the letter keys and at the start of the game it's very easy to dodge, and then use both hands to type a verse real quick but by the end you'll be frantically dodging while trying to type with one hand and it's all very frantic. If you are hit, you drop your book and you have to run to go pick it up. If you take too long to pick it up though Ray forgets his place and you have to restart the verse. If you get hit while you are not carrying the book, you take a point of damage and after 3 hits you die. It's a forgiving system but the game still manages to be quite challenging.
There are items that you get at the end of each stage with various effects that modify your score depending on what it does. For example you can get a bookmark which increases the amount of time you have to pick the book up if you get hit but it lowers your score by 20%. You can also get a spiked collar for example, which gives you less health but increases your score by 20%. There's also a monocle that you get at the end of the game which activates a "hard mode" where enemies do a weird glitch effect and you only have 1hp. Wearing it gives you a +666% score modifier AND killing a boss in this mode gets you a piece of rock and if you get all of them something happens but I'm not sure because I haven't done it yet.
I only really have 2 complaints about the game. The first is that I kept encountering a bug during a demon change mechanic where my bible verses would overlap over the magic words I had to type. Not a huge problem since the magic words are the same every time but it's annoying to look at. The other is that the third to last boss that you fight is just WAYYYYY fucking harder than every other enemy in the game. I spent the better part of 2 hours fighting that boss only to move on and do the last 2 first try. It feels like something got mixed up somewhere.
Basically, the Textorcist is like someone took Mavis Bacon Teaches Typing, Donpachi, Hotline Miami and Christian conspiracy theories and put them in a big blender. The result is a fun, challenging and extremely replayable little game that should keep you entertained for hours or until your hand starts to cramp up
That sounds really good but even with my awesome typing skills I could never do it! Who is Mavis Bacon btw 😀
ReplyDeleteThis sounds awesome!
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