Type Knight

If there's one thing you should know about me, it's that I love typing games. I've always been quick on the keyboard, so typing out words is the one of the few video game mechanics I'm actually good at. That's why I was excited to dive into the new game Type Knight, which has you mashing out words in order to defeat skeletons, bats, sorcerers and other fantasy creatures. It's the kind of premise that I usually love, but is this debut release from Chaikadev too simple for its own good? It won't take long for me to type of the answer.

You think Death Stranding has a lot of walking? Wait until you get a load of Type Knight. This is the story of a knight who sets out on an adventure to fight the forces of evil that are swarming the cemetery. You do this by spelling out words, not unlike Typing of the Death. A skeleton will show up with a word over its body, and your job is to spell that word before it has a chance to rip the knight to shreds.

We start out with simple three-and-four letter words before quickly graduating to much longer phrases. This will make way for speedy bats, sorcerers you have to fend off and even boss battles that stop the action in its place. It's up to you to defeat the monsters, so the goal is to type out as many words as possible in an effort to walk from left to right and save the night.

This is a short quest that plays out exactly the same way every single time. The knight starts out with little more than a sword, but before long he'll find a shield and limited special move that will clear the screen. You'll also open up treasure chests with bonus points, life potions and more special attacks. And if you're a speedy typist, you'll be able to keep the multiplier going in an effort to earn a high score.

As a budget game, there's a lot to like here. I'm a fan of the simple pixel graphics, the catchy tunes and gradual spike in difficulty. Unfortunately, what I don't like is how repetitive this game is. I already mentioned that the story plays out the same way every time, but it goes beyond that. The entire quest is set in the same location the whole way through, with only minor changes here and there. Considering how much walking the knight is doing, I was kind of hoping to see him advance through a bunch of backgrounds. I love the style, but the cemetery setting gets old quickly.

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I'm also not a big fan of what happens when you type the wrong letter. In most typing games, punching in the wrong letter isn't much of a problem. However, in Type Knight the same thing can be deadly. The wrong letter doesn't go away until you manually delete it, so there are times when you'll not even notice that hit the wrong letter before typing out the whole word. This is especially bad when the sorcerer shows up and the skeletons swarm you, since a single typo can lead to you losing all of your health in the most frustrating way possible. And since every playthrough looks and feels exactly the same, I didn't have a lot of incentive to jump back in after one of the cheap deaths.

It's also worth pointing out that I ran into a number of technical problems, starting with not being able to make the game full screen. Dialing in the resolution and font size proved to be a nightmare, and some of the options left me scratching my head. Furthermore, Type Knight has a bad habit of making the screen too bright when the lightning strikes. It would be fine if the flash of light was only a second, but sometimes it sticks, making the cemetery look washed out and ugly. The game isn't supposed to look like this, and hopefully the developer will be able to fix these issues.

On the other hand, I really like that you can import your own words to create a customized experience. This is the kind of thing all typing games should do going forward, especially since the default library is small and ends up repeating after only a few games. It's a shame they didn't add more villains, power-ups and locations, because Type Knight is the kind of game I want to be able to recommend.