Developer: MorbidWare
Publisher: Headup Publishing
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Verified
Rrp: £11.99 (Gog.com, Humblebundle, Steam and Epic)
Released: 14th February 2019
Available on: Gog.com, Humblebundle, Steam and Epic
Played Using: A keyboard
Approximate game length: 8 hours
It’s not often I play a typing game, in fact I think the last one was The Typing of The Dead from House of the Dead Overkill. There is a reason for that though, and its not just because there aren’t that many out there compared to the many other genres, it’s because I’m dyslexic and trying to type while under pressure only makes me mess up even more. And yet I find myself drawn to them, every time I see a game that features typing I always want to give it a go.
This game has you take on the role or Ray Bibba an exorcist who has separated from the Holy Church to become independent. Ray isn’t some kindly old priest, if anything he’s more akin to a hard grizzled detective from a film noire.
The game gives you an idea of how much typing you’ll be doing from the very start, and by very start I mean the starting menu, you have to type the word start correctly before you can even play. The same goes for entering the settings too, while I love the dedication to the theme, I do have to point out that forcing the player to type settings does pose an potential impediment when it comes to accessibility.
You may have noticed that this game is played using only a keyboard (I’m assuming that you’ve read the details I put at the top of these reviews) which makes sense when you consider it’s a game about typing. However, this isn’t a game that you can use to improve your typing skills simply because you have to control your character as well, meaning that one hand will almost always be on the arrow keys. Yeah, that’s the thing I didn’t mention, this game is a boss rush, bullet-hell. Sure, there are brief moments between the bosses where you have to do a small amount research and interact with the story but the meat of the game is the combat with the bosses.
We finally arrive at the combat. As I mentioned earlier this game is a bullet-hell, as such you have to control Ray and try to avoid the various projectiles that will be slung your way. If you do get hit you’ll drop your bible (this is will be explained in a moment) and if you get hit again before you pick the bible up you’ll lose a point of health. You attack by typing out the verses from you bible, or rather you created a hollet (a holy bullet) with each successfully typed word, once you complete the full verse all your hollets will fire at your enemy and all the projectiles in the area will vanish. As I mentioned earlier, if you get hit you drop your bible, without it you can’t type out the words so you absolutely need it. Dropping your bible pose one, rather major, issue… when you drop your bible there’s a timer, if you can get to it before the timer runs out you can pick up from where you left off, if you don’t though you have to start the entire verse from the very beginning.
When typing you have to be careful not to make a mistake, any mistyped letter in a word places you back a letter within that word. For example; if in the word ‘Amen’ you pressed the wrong letter instead of [N] you’d be set back to [E] and have to retype that.
Some of the enemies attacks are designed not to cause injury to Ray but instead make it more difficult for you to type. One of the early enemies in the game vomits in an attempt to cover the words in your bible forcing you to either have to wait for the vomit to clear or guess/remember what you have to type.
Speaking of difficulty, did I mention that some of the verses are in Latin? And not to sound like Columbo but there is one more thing, you have to be within a certain radius of the enemy to be able to perform the exorcism. So not only are you typing with one hand while trying to dodge attacks with the other, you sometimes have to type in Latin which may or may not be obscured or even upside down, you also have to be within a certain (not very large) radius of the enemy in order to be able to type at all.
I enjoyed this game, even if it did drive me a bit batty at times. Let’s just say its not dyslexia friendly.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Typing of the Dead Overkill
Epistory – Typing Chronicles
Crypt of the Necrodancer
