We recently received a code for Type Knight, a $4 indie game on Steam. Recalling fun times playng The Typing of the Dead on Dreamcast many years ago, I decided to give Type Knight a run. I’m pleased to say it’s been enjoyable.
The premise is simple, as you would expect for such a low cost game and one whose gameplay is all about typing words that appear on the screen. You play a knight, nameless, but brave, entering into a massive cemetery that is crawling with skeleton warriors, bats, and other type of ghoulish foes. The game moves in a left-to-right side-scrolling style with the player anchored left and the enemies coming from your right, though at varying speeds and capable of varying amounts of damage. The HP meter at the top center is obviously key, and it lowers every time an enemy is able to hit you. To defeat the enemies, your only recourse is to type the words that appear on the screen next to them. Juggling what to type when is important, since enemies come at you with different speeds. The earliest example of this is bats that swoop in quickly, and while they do minimal damage and only have short two or three letter words to type to extinguish them, they’re still an important nuisance to deal with.
Type Knight includes more gameplay options than you might expect. You can inject your own script to type if you want to, a feature that unlocks one of its seven achievements, but something I have yet to try. The dictionary that the game uses by default is vast, and I have rarely had a repeated word in my time with the game thus far. Three difficulty settings are supported, though I have stuck with the default ‘normal’ difficulty which has proven challenging enough. Players also have the option to disable certain keys or even rows of keys on the keyboard, and, I really liked that you can customize which key you want to use for ‘delete all.’ So if you’re needing to type ‘uncanny’ and you’ve accidentally messed up late in the word, instead of tapping backspace while taking major damage, you can press your assigned hotkey (I used left Alt) to clear your errant text and get a fresh start.
The game tracks your words per minute and has a multiplier for accuracy and consecutive enemies defeated. Scores are tallied up at regular intervals in between waves of foes. In between waves, your character takes a knee and the game rolls some text across the screen to either introduce a new gameplay mechanic or to just enhance the atmosphere by providing well-written descriptions of what is transpiring in the game. It’s a neat old school type of game design that the developer has used to convey more information and setting to the player and, as surprising as that may be to some, when done right that really builds a sense of investment and atmosphere for the player. Lovely pixel art and a great five-track soundtrack boost the experience as well.
Type Knight is elegantly simple in its design and a fun distraction. It can run on any grade of PC, wisely confines itself to a small window size, loads instantly, has surprisingly good music and sense of atmosphere, and is all around well worth the low cost of admission of $4.
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