Blood Typers

When I tell you that Blood Typers is a horror game that involves you killing a bunch of brain-eating zombies by using your typing skills, I don’t blame you if the first thing you picture is Typing of the Dead. But that’s not the right comparison, because this brand-new release from Outer Brain Studios is more akin to the classic survival horror games of the 1990s, especially Resident Evil. It’s the kind of adventure game where the ammo is limited and players control everything by typing out words on the keyboard. Try not to get bitten (or worse, a hand cramp) when I review Blood Typers, out now on PC.

This is the story of a group of independent filmmakers who are offered an opportunity to work with the legendary horror director, Vincent Fessler. What makes this job unusual is that Fessler hasn’t been seen or heard from in five years. Not even a single photograph from the paparazzi. Has he become reclusive in his old age, or is something far more sinister going on? Trust me, no matter what the answer is, this film crew has no idea what they are about to come face-to-face with.

All this is an excuse to get you into what appears to be an old abandoned studio. Or maybe it’s a mansion. It’s hard to tell, because it’s dark, in complete disrepair and, oh yeah, FULL OF ZOMBIES. If this was like Typing of the Dead and other fast-paced action games where you have unlimited firepower, that wouldn’t be a problem. But this is a survival horror game, so there are limited bullets and barely enough health items lying around. We can’t just barge in guns-a-blazing, we’re going to need to play this a bit more strategically.

The first thing you need to know about Blood Typers is that you control everything through typing on the keyboard. Want to walk to the other side of the room? Then you’re going to need to type the corresponding letters. Need to pick up an item? Then you’ll need to type out a phrase like “grab bread.” This also goes for turning off safe mode on a computer, saving at a checkpoint, eating the tasty food items you’ve collected and even reloading the guns.

And that brings us to the combat. Like everything else, we fight the zombies by typing, but there’s usually more to it than that. It all comes down to the type of weapon we’re using at the time. If you go in for the melee kill, then you’ll need to type out several words. Thankfully, the zombie will be stunned for a brief moment every time you correctly type one of the words, giving you enough time to finish him off. If you’re packing an SMG, then you may only need to type the first letter or two of each word. The shotgun will still require you to type out the full word, but it does a massive amount of damage to the surrounding horde. Other weapons include a sword, magnum gun, incendiary rounds and even a crossbow.

Instead of being one long adventure, Blood Typers is split up into four different chapters, with a fifth coming at some point in the future. While these different chapters may differ in size and complexity, they all largely playout the same way. The goal for each level is to investigate your surroundings in order to locate five red video cassettes and give them to a haunted television. Once you’ve done that, you’ll get an item to repair the elevator, allowing you to escape that part of the story. Of course, in order to do that, you’re going to need to track down blue and gold keys, which will unlock blue and gold doors.

What complicates this is that there’s always a timer zombie timer ticking down. This means that even if you manage to kill all of the undead beasts as they stumble around the studio, a bunch more will rush in when the timer runs out. And did I mention that they are a lot more aggressive when this happens? You’ll often be cornered in a room, forced to watch as they break down the door and flood in. This is the kind of thing you’re going to need to plan for, so make sure you have some bullets and health items ready.

One thing that I really like about this game is how varied the eight characters are. And I don’t mean just their appearances, but also their stats and perks. I ended up being a big fan of Ophelia, who may have less health than some of the tougher characters, but she’s agile, is better at knocking back the zombies and, most importantly, can hold three extra items in her inventory. Other characters will have a chance of automatically dodging a zombie or will speed up things like eating food and reloading. Some of these stats and perks will have a real affect on how you tackle each situation, and the people that get into the online multiplayer mode will enjoy the challenge of using the different heroes.

Unfortunately, Blood Typers breaks down in a lot of extremely predictable ways. The main one is that, without direct movement control, the player is basically screwed when they are surrounded by zombies. Because you have to type so many words in order to kill even one of the brain-eating monsters, it’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed by several at once. And that’s before the game introduces the far tougher zombies that have more armor, require more keystrokes and are just all-around tougher to beat. And even if you do manage to escape one of these ambushes, you’re going to take a lot of cheap hits before making it to safety. That’s annoying because it wouldn’t happen if the player had direct control over the character on screen.

This plays into another big problem I had, which was the difficulty spike found in the last two chapters. Blood Typers lulls the single-player into its trap with two relatively easy stages right at the top, making it seem doable without any help. But all that changes in the third chapter, when there are ten times the amount of enemies after you. Even with liberal checkpointing, the game basically devolves into a shoot ‘em up where the zombie horde won’t let up, no matter how many you take out. Unless you’re extremely lucky, most people are going to need a second person to even come close to finishing this game. That’s not how it should be when you’re playing on the default difficulty.

Speaking of which, there are a number of questionable design decisions built around the fact that this is a multiplayer game. One problem is that you can’t pause the game, even when you’re playing through it solo. The other issue that you can’t save the game mid-chapter and expect to pick it up at a later date. In this game, you either beat the chapter in one sitting or you start over again, with a new, randomly-constructed level to explore. In that sense, Blood Typers feels more like the multiplayer-focused action of Left 4 Dead, yet the rest of the game has the pace and atmosphere of an offline Resident Evil outing.

Despite those issues, Blood Typers has a lot going for it. As an online multiplayer game, I can see how it would be fun to run these chapters over and over. The layouts are big enough to support multiple survivors and the randomly-generated stages go a long way to keep the chapters fresh. I also like the look of the game, which is a nice balance of scary and cartoony. There’s just enough variety to the locations to keep the levels from feeling too repetitive and I like the look of the different characters.

More than anything, I really like how this game manages to evolve the typing genre beyond simple on-rails shooting. While a little finnicky at times, I really like the freedom we’re given when it comes to exploring the studio, picking up items and battling zombies. The developer is onto something here, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they find ways of improving and streamlining the process in future updates and sequels. Blood Typers has a few problems, but both survival horror and typing fans will eat this game up ... unless the zombies get to it first.