I have something special coming up, buuuuuut it’s not ready yet. So until then, let’s check out something vaguely related to that. Today we look at Type Knight, a game by chaikaDev. It’s a typing game where you play as a knight that fights skeletons and wizards through words. That’s pretty much all there is to it.

Skeletons shamble toward you with words hovering above their heads to type out. It starts out with small, simple words, but later waves throws in longer, harder words that can trip you up. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can actually type out “bomb” to clear the screen, which I think is a cool addition. Every proper kill increases your score and consecutive kills increase your multiplier and it all keeps going until you die.

Every few waves you run into a boss encounter, who types out their own words to hurt you while you have to blitz through their series of words to take them down. These encounters are my biggest problem with the game because, at least in the game’s current state, you’re pretty much guaranteed to take damage, as the list is long enough that you’re typing not to prevent damage, but to mitigate it. To balance this out, I feel that the boss’ list of words should be shorter so that a reasonably good typist can get through it without getting hurt or provide ways of blocking damage – like at the very least, bombs should interrupt the boss’ attack.

You can create custom games, though only a few options currently work. You can import text files for the game to draw its dictionary from, which can actually make the game harder (not necessarily a bad thing) because it may end up throwing in case-sensitive words and punctuation. You can also edit what keys the game is now allowed to use; so if you take out all the vowels, the game will just give you a bunch of words with “y.” Outside of the custom mode, you can also switch to using a French dictionary, which opens the way for this game to use different languages that’ll make it more accessible.

On the aesthetics of the game, I think it’s nice. I actually really dig the background, I think it looks neat while not being too distracting, nor does it mix in with the white text. There are fog and rain effects, but if those are too much, you can change their intensity. The music is okay, though I noticed that around the fifth wave, the music cuts out, so it may not be looped properly. Overall, pretty serviceable.

Type Knight, as it currently stands, is simple – perhaps too simple. You never have to type anything beyond single words and there’s just the one enemy type. However, the options in the custom game menu indicates that different modes, items and difficulty options are considered. Type Knight has some good foundations so far, but the addition of those things and more variety, I feel, will greatly improve this game.