I have typed the word “pistol” so many times I genuinely forget how to spell it. I go over and over again. Pil—no, that’s wrong. Pistl—no, also wrong. Pit—WRONG AGAIN. Blocks descend on me as my brain goes into overdrive and my HP gets decimated. How the hell do you spell pistol again?
The repetitiveness may be bad for my brain, my keyboard, and my sanity. But for Typing Break, that’s the name of the game. If I want a weapon, I must type it. Hell, I had to literally type the word “start” to start the game. No clicking here, mouse bozos.
It’s a roguelike, so clearing a wave of enemies usually nets me enough EXP that I can pick from one of three upgrades to make my word-powered weapon even more powerful. I can add another weapon to my repetoire—like a sniper rifle that blasts out heavy, precise shots, or a shotgun that spreads wildly for enemy blocks that are a little too close to going over my defense line and at risk of draining my precious HP.
Other affixes include turning those weapons into piercing shots, adding burn or frost modifiers to them, or even spawning a little turret of my chosen weapon and providing assistance for a short while.
On my first run, I mess up and spread myself too thin with four affixes and three weapons. Managing the cooldowns of each one is surprisingly taxing as I’m trying to type words with razor-sharp accuracy, and I keep accidentally firing nothing at all. There’s also punishingly little buffer to Typing Break—something I hope is implemented—meaning when I had queued stuff up ready to go, even if I was just a hair early with it then nothing would happen.
My second run, however, goes much better. I hone in on making my pistol ultra-powerful with a ton of ammo, and grab a turret affix to help out when things start looking a bit dicey. I absolutely fly through the demo waves thanks to my renewed focus—seriously, I was trying to grab a screenshot of gameplay but I was annihilating enemies before they were even showing up on screen.
I do get a little taste of more challenging conditions, though. While Typing Break usually doesn’t require any affix if they’re all on cooldown, this bonus post-demo challenge puts me into several waves where I’m forced to use not just one, but two affixes with every move. At this point I’d only managed to nab three—one constantly available, and the other two with varying cooldowns—that suddenly made my pistol spam a lot more difficult to manage.
I can only imagine how rough things get once I’m faced with an entire shopping list of affixes and weapons to manage, something I’m sure will be happening on the regular when the full game drops. I do wonder how many times I can suffer through typing “fury pistol” over and over again at the start of each run before it becomes a little tiresome, though.
Typing Break isn’t exactly the prettiest or most complex game out there, but ultimately I am a real sucker for anything that lets me flex how fast my fingers can dance along my keyboard. I mean, it is my job. I already kinda want to see what other messed up combinations I can make in Typing Break. Plasma guns that create a deadly vortex? Swords that bounce off the walls? My keeb is so ready.
