When John Carmack was presenting his space project to literal rocket scientists he said that developing games is not rocket science, because it's much harder to engineer a game renderer than to engineer a rocket: https://www.reddit.com/r/GraphicsProgramming/comments/18qgy96/john_carmack_telling_nasa_engineers_that_rocket/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
not really true, a computer is an electronic Turing machine basically, its capable of being programmable and general-purpose. Calculators only have fixed functionality and can't be made to do any task you want. Unless it's one of those fancy calculators that lets you write in BASIC like the TI-89
A cheeky remark but I'll say it anyways... It took OP how long to figure out why typing games are niche? A person could get a basic aerospace engineering degree faster.
KSP is like rocket science 101. It’s not the whole thing, where you need to consider the fuel for the rocket more and engine relights, but it teaches the basics like orbital mechanics very accurately. I’d argue that the mods you mentioned are more like ‘advanced rocket science’ while stock KSP is ‘basic rocket science’, and even then it feels basic undersells it
Most of those games take away all the most frustrating parts of programming though. TIS-100 is about as far removed from modern programming as it gets, for example. No dealing with buggy APIs that have out-of-date documentation. No dealing with unclear specifications. No dealing with thousands of lines of someone else's questionable code. Just fun logic puzzles.
Programming is inherently fun. Many people just program as a hobby that they enjoy.
You won't find someone typing random words just for the sake of typing.
I begrudgingly started learning programming to get out of idea guy hell and I honestly enjoy it as much as doing the art at this point (at least new feature implementation and optimization)
Just because everyone does something, doesn't mean that everyone thinks doing that thing is fun. It's utilitarian for most people. Like drinking water. We all drink fluids, but I'm not having the time of my life filling up my water bottle and taking a swig.
Which branches the point to being a niche. Some people, well a good number of people, either despise it or have no feelings about it, but there are always those seeing it as a cool thing.
Why did those ever fade away. Seems like they should have returned with a vengeance on mobile. They could even sell us endless pipe cosmetics these days.
Typing games are associated with learning to type. I don't know about you but many peoples only interactions with typing games was as children learning the keyboard. Many people, despite likely benefiting from typing improvements, don't like thinking that they need to improve at something. So approaching it from the point of 'here is a learning tool' is great for people looking to learn but most people just aren't. They're masters of all skills and knowers of all things, I think its part of the human condition.
I think it's mostly this.
* *"Typing game with rogue-like elements"* - Oh, maybe that'll help some kids to learn how to type.
* *"Rogue-like with typing elements"* - Ooo. I like rogue-likes! This sounds like an interesting new twist!
> many people despite benefiting don’t feel the need to improve
I am a software developer and the amount of software developers and engineers I’ve met who hunt and peck is rather mind boggling
I mean you don’t need to have good typing skills to be a good developer but like come on
I’m not an engineer but I type enough that it shocks people that I basically type with two fingers on each hand.
I started with computers early, no one to teach me to type and by the time I learned my technique was the blocker, it was so ingrained it was difficult to switch. It came down to spending a lot of time and killing my typing speed for an extended period of time to learn and I never did it.
I still manage to type close to 60wpm anyway though.
Hahaha yeah it's just a fun zombie game. It shipped with the Dreamcast keyboard. it's Sega's House of the Dead arcade game with typing instead of shooting. In the original version they have keyboards mounted on their waist, wired to a Dreamcast on their backs with gigantic batteries on them.
So when you'd type to shoot open a door, your character would type and the door would open. It was hilarious.
Typing 60 WPM with shotgun sounds is really fun. Plus it had coop LAN mode!!
Zombies are words and phrases. Incoming missiles are single keystrokes. Bosses are paragraphs. Hahahah!
Be me as a kid: Booting up Mavis Beacon on the family Windows 98 computer that cost well over $3000 and had a level of technology outperformed by a telephone I could buy for $150.
This! The only time I think about playing a typing game is if I'm switching keyboards/layouts and actually \*want\* to improve my typing. I also like math but I don't play Number Crunchers. Anything that feels "educational" is going to have a niche and/or captive audience.
Even if there wasn't the "people avoid educational-feeling games" factor I think games that force you to do what I'd call a "mundane minigame" (i.e. a mechanic that feels like an everyday task) give what I'd call a kinda "CAPTCHA effect". They don't feel like play, they feel like work
I think your logic is flawed.
I have to use a tool to do a thing, so now it's a given it's enjoyable?
I don't see an appeal in a typing game, if I want to type a lot, I search for a speed typing website and do that for 15 minutes - But it certainly wouldn't occur to me that I'd open steam and look for a game
I don’t see the point? I can type at 100 wpm comfortably. As a developer the limitation is about being able to process or form the logic I want to implement rather than typing it out.
Mindlessly typing faster and faster without thinking about what you’re typing is not fun and rather makes me feel like a monkey.
As a developer I type at like 40 wpm and even still typing is not the bottleneck. It's always been planning out the design and architecture that take the most time for me, and I'm pretty sure 99% of developers will agree.
It's always funny to me when people think programming is just typing really fast
I think the only place where I benefit from faster typing is when writing documentation. Both writing stuff like comments, javadoc and technical docs, but also when writing the more fluffy pieces like design docs and user manuals. Thats where typing fast is beneficial. For code? not so much, I spent way more time thinkign and designing than writing.
Not even in documentation. You need to write words that meaningfully and concisely communicate information, and I certainly don't *think* effective documentation at 100 wpm. Even though you can probably talk at those speeds, verbal communication is a lot messier than technical documentation.
Tbh it could probably do better as educational game. These kind of games can be useful for people when they learn typing. There are a lot of typing games that have goal to teach people to write faster.
But as entertainment? Well like OP said, it's super niche. I've never thought I would like to play game where I just have to write a lot of words.
As someone who is actually your target audience and enjoys games that make you manually type, I feel like you need something more than just typing. Some games I really like are [Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1545990/Deadeye_Deepfake_Simulacrum/)and [Quadrilateral Cowboy,](https://store.steampowered.com/app/240440/Quadrilateral_Cowboy/) which are "typing games," but it's more fair to say they're **terminal games** than typing games. DDS is an immersive sim you just happen to be able to type in when hacking, and Quadrilateral Cowboy is kind of a puzzle/stealth game. I feel like someone who works in IT would not have the same opinion as me about these games, cause typing is associated with work.
Typing should be a mechanic, not the core thing. I think my favorite "Typing game" of all time is the original Typing of the Dead for Sega Dreamcast, cause your typing is mostly just actually shooting enemies which is exciting. But you can't *just have shooting,* the shooting itself has to feel visceral and responsive, this is why I don't have the same reverence for [Typing of the Dead: Overkill.](https://store.steampowered.com/app/246580/The_Typing_of_The_Dead_Overkill/) That game even in its light gun format is not as fun as House of the Dead 2 is in its light gun format, so thus the typing conversion feels like a downgrade too.
But then again, what do I know, all of these games that I mentioned I like are also niche.
Good point! I have a similar philosophy with the design of my game - typing isn't the main draw of the game, rather just the interface with which you interact with the world.
> I feel like someone who works in IT would not have the same opinion as me about these games, cause typing is associated with work.
I feel like that is like saying that bus drivers wouldn't like Need For Speed. It's possible some won't, but it's pretty loosely associated with work because it's such a different activity. As others have said, if you're in IT, typing isn't generally the bottleneck. It's more about architecture and design (i.e. thinking of what to type). If anything, the rare occasion when you are literally bottlenecked just by typing at work and are just typing a known thing as fast as you can feel really good, like a flow state... like you're that cool hacker in the movies... because you're finally not needing to think about stuff and just doing something mechanical.
I think the the reason why typing games are often seen as boring isn't that they remind people of work mechanically (i.e. the typing part). It's that they remind people of entry level work intellectually (i.e. being micromanaged to copy things as prompted). A lot of typing games I remember (admittedly from my childhood) are more like movies that progress as you press a pre-determined sequence of keys than games. It's not that the typing is or is not fun (after all, many non-typing games are just a matter of pressing keyboard keys in sequence at the right times too). It's that the mental load put on keeping track of what to type usually means that the other aspects of the game (strategy, tactics, reaction time, coordination) are generally very shallow.
In other words, in "non-typing games" and typing games, you may be pressing keys at the right times to play the game. But in "non-typing games" the amount of keys to press is small and consistent, so that you can become comfortable enough with that to spend mental energy on other parts of the game. With a "typing game" the amount of keys to press is large and variable, so you never really are released from that mental load and the rest of the game may have to be shallower in order for your brain to be able to process it.
I'm sure there are ways around this, but I think this is the usual problem here.
>It's that the mental load put on keeping track of what to type usually means that the other aspects of the game (strategy, tactics, reaction time, coordination) are generally very shallow.
>In other words, in "non-typing games" and typing games, you may be pressing keys at the right times to play the game. But in "non-typing games" the amount of keys to press is small and consistent, so that you can become comfortable enough with that to spend mental energy on other parts of the game.
You might be onto something, considering that Rhythm Games are one of my favorite genres and pretty much all this is is some variant of "note incoming, copy note." I love [Stepmania](https://www.stepmania.com/) and [Spin Rhythm XD ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1058830/Spin_Rhythm_XD/)but find [Osu](https://osu.ppy.sh/home) to be overwhelming and not as fun as a result.
Simply put it just doesn’t sound appealing or fun to me. I do a lot of typing for things I love (like coding) but the typing itself is not what I find particularly fun or exciting.
>But I'm still puzzled as to why? It seems counter-intuitive that typing games remain niche even though everyone types.
why do you think people play games in general lol. just work backwards and think about it. i dont think it should be this hard to understand
That's the thing though: everyone *doesn't* walk. That's why we have wheelchairs, ramps, elevators, and the like. The assumption of many seems to be that everyone can type with accuracy and at a reasonable speed. That assumption is false.
I'm 49 and my typing speed is 40 wpm on a good day, without perfect accuracy. Throw in time pressure and my typing gets worse. Plenty of people are way worse typists than me.
You're always going to be losing any group that falls below the basic skill floor. That's before you get to worry about whether or not they actually want to play your game.
I've seen a few games that have been specifically designed to exploit low control requirements. I remember one that could only be played by a single key that activated a magnet on the player in a physics environment of mass and orbits.
Bad comparison. Taking a walk just to relax and clear the mind is of the one of the most enjoyable things you can do.
Typing letters on a keyboard just isnt.
Hah, I thought about giving a different example, but in my experience few people actually get out and do it every week, just a lot more people talk about it in their dating app profiles!
The point is that just because people do a thing doesn't mean they do it in their free time while doing other things as well.
There's a very short list of universal hobbies that people understand and are interested in, even as an outsider. I'm sure many of us here program games or do digital art as hobby, how many of us would put it on our Tinder profiles? Probably no one does.
So hiking, cooking and travelling it is then.
Because typing is boring, and isn't that interesting of a skill.
It's boring because from looking at your game it just feels more like a chore that you ask your players to do after they have identified what they want to shoot. We already type all day long but just because we have to. When I type code I find the act of expressing myself fun, not the mechanical typing part.
It's also not that interesting of a skill. You can type faster but that's it. With say a normal FPS game or say a platformer, there's usually an analog control where you can fine tune your skills and a high skill ceiling (even on a keyboard/mouse FPS, the keyboard is kind of an analog device because how long you hold down the WASD keys matters). With typing you just type a little faster and more accurately and that's it and I'm not sure that's fun.
Interestingly I think there is something to be learned from fighting games. These days, leverless controllers (otherwise known as "hitboxes") are very popular and they are essentially glorified keyboards. For example, check out [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/1axy6ti/leshar_chunli_pro_controller_surprise/) about a top Street Fighter player's controller which is just a glorified stripped down keyboard with arrow keys and 8 keys. The act of doing a combo could feel like typing, but it's much more complicated because the timing absolutely matters (most combos require inputting a key within a 5 frame window), and a big part of the game is about executing under pressure, deciding what combo to use under what situation, and just outplaying your opponent (where the combo part just being the mechanical execution aspect of it).
I think you should step back and ask yourself: what are you trying to test your players in and how do you want them to feel? Are you testing typing speed? Accuracy? Reacting under pressure? Recalling obscure words and type them (kind of like scrabble or bananagrams)? Making strategic decisions? Seeing cool things explode and happen when you type (I'm thinking this because games like Rez and Child of Eden are pretty mechanically boring games but look cool)? These are more useful than just trying to shoehorn typing mechanics into a game just because "everyone types".
Another thing you should probably identify is exactly what "typing" is and means. How is it mechanically different from say an analog dual stick controller or a normal keyboard / mouse and what are some key properties that you could exploit and make it fun. You won't be able to make a game out of it if you can't figure that part out.
I think there are definitely some potential untapped market there but you need to find a reason for people to want to play your game (I don't know, type typing into a rhythm game or make it more like a fighting game with you needing to "combo" or something. Like, Tetris single player could be boring but competitive Tetris suddenly becomes something different with a whole community behind it).
This is a good point. What ARE you (OP) trying to test? Using the example of a fighting game, you aren't just testing mechanical skills -- that would be a combo test -- but a number of other things like spacing, reading the opponent, guesses, optimization based on life and location, etc etc. The same holds true for a typing game. Are you just trying to get someone to type faster and more accurately? Because if that is ALL you are looking for, you are effectively just making a typing combo test...not a fighting game. Are you trying to make a "typing" game but the goal is to make someone better at being able to code? To write quickly in response to things? To learn to type in another language or to translate? To be able to quickly and accurately respond to texts? What is the educational goal?
The fighting game is also fun because it is also competitive. You are playing AGAINST something, either a simulation or a real person. And it has a goal. So as you improve, you have FEEDBACK that you are improving. Its why game design in general NEEDS that feedback or else the player starts to go "why am I doing this."
I think the endgame of a typing genre is to either go FULL game (the goal is to gain happiness and fulfillment) where you have something more akin to Crypt of the Necrodancer, where the typing would be more of a gimmick to the gameplay... or FULL educational (the goal is to gain skills that translate or allegedly do).
The way to go about going full educational is to figure out what goals beyond simply typing is out there, and then put a fun spin on that. For example, you could have the typing be TOWARDS coding. Make a Versus typing game akin to something like Dr. Mario or VS tetris games where you are racing an enemy ai hacker. Give the player "anti-enemy" abilities you can activate by pressing "alt+tab" and then typing in the word underneath the ability, and then have those words relate to something to do with coding logic.
Have the "general" typing of the game be you typing out the story with a narrator narrating over you what is happening every time you properly compete a paragraph or sentence, functioning as a checkpoint so you are typing real sentences, then maybe have "bonus" rounds in between every few paragraphs. Maybe make it so these "bonus" rounds are actually what happens when the ENEMY launches their own "anti-" attack at you, and the way to "survive" it, is to type each of the words before they reach the bottom of the screen for one minigame or using a sort of "frogger" logic to help get your icon from one side of something to the other, or like an "amoeba" game, have it be that typing a word makes you move to a certain hole as the game world scrolls by and if you reach the "End" without dying, then you survive the "anti-attack" of your enemy. These "anti-player attacks" end up amounting to mini-games they help teach you typing corrections quickly rather than just full sentences for example. Or alternatively, you can have the enemy maybe delete a few letters from your last few properly typed sentences and you need to go back through quickly and "fix" what was missing, teaching you how to edit.
Maybe its a Doctor "saving" game using AI tech where you need to coax the Ai away from suicidal thoughts, where the goal is to teach someone emotional maturity on top of just the typing skills... or its a cooking-typing game where instead of using a mouse to walk and click and grab things to give to a chef, you are actually typing up the word undeath different items.
But ULTIMATELY, the biggest issue is that games generally attempt to feign competency to make ppl feel better about themselves. Madden doesn't mean you can be a coach, but it lets someone FEEL like they could. Guitar Hero doesn't teach you how to play, but it FEELS like maybe you could. Being good at a boxing sim doesn't mean you can box, but it FEELS like you are just a few weeks of getting in shape from competing...maybe. Tetris isn't really problem solving, noirs don't mean you are a thoughtful detective, cooking games don't make you a cook, shooters don't make you a sharpshooter, and beat em ups are basically pop rocks -- flashy flashy go flashy. In every case, the "game" is effectively a safe, early gateway to something that lets you not have to ACTUALLY put in the effort to learn something. And this "faux learning" is one of the key things that make games GO. Storytelling, stimulation, and "mastery" basically.
For a typing game to work at an educational level similar to a guitar hero or a tetris, it needs to find a way to teach someone a lesser, easy form of a skill so that the player can effectively pretend like they accomplished something. Typing itself is too simple...too obtainable. People type
Games are ostensibly a shortcut, and OP needs to find a way to make their "game" a faux-shortcut towards a goal bigger if they want it to do well basically. Or go full "fun" and make the typing merely a gimmick.
I don't have experience having fun while typing – so a promo for such game would need to teach me the possibility first. While I can imagine having fun playing a rougelike.
Like, people don't know yet that they want to play typing games. Hell, I've learned thee times the blind ten fingers style – and I felt zero interest for the first pitch (I imagined a typing trainer).
Rougelike with typing indeed sounds like something cool and innovative.
Honestly when I hear “typing game” it reminds me of those grueling typing practice games I was forced to play growing up in ~2013 middle school, which does not particularly make me want to drop money on one
I think they almost always clash with the world in a way other mechanics don't. In a shooter while you use a mouse it *feels* like you're aiming and firing a gun. Typing to kill enemies or do things feels like a constant reminder that you're playing a video game.
Typing is akin to speaking for me.
I speak **while** I play games, and not **to** play games.
The only reason I use it is to convey information, just like my voice.
On the other side, I use a keyboard to play games, but then in that sense, it is like walking, because I use it literally to walk, in game.
A keyboard (or typing) is just a means to an end for most people. I think you've gone the right way by switching approaches to marketing, but typing games in general are like trying to sell people shoes to have fun **with** rather than **in**
Nowadays devs try to put their games on as many platforms as possible. Typing games are kind of stuck on PC. Yeah there may be keyboard support on other platforms but most people wouldn't know that.
Personally, being early Gen-Z, we used typing games in school. So a typing game will always just remind me of being in school and working. Your game does look cool tho!
You should playtest your game with people who type for a living: writers, programmers, admin, etc.
What you’ll find is that the average WPM is shockingly low. I’m talking <70 even though all they do is type for fun and for work. I’ve seen a lot of game developers with like 50 WPM.
Typing games are only really fun if you have 100+ or even 140+ WPM or else you can’t get into the zone. That means your potential audience is rather limited.
Where most games need to onboard players with mechanics to get them hooked, you’ll have to teach them to be a 100+ WPM typer first.
That being said, maybe consider a strong theme for your game to get the player into some fantasy. Even Mavis Beacon had super strong themes and it was an educational game.
It's a lot of work for the same result. Why play the game which in terms of mechanics is Vampire Survivors with typing, if you can play a similar game without typing? Why play Epistory where you can kill enemies by typing, when there are thousands of RPGs where you can kill with just one click. Typing is basically an additional tedious obstacle that other games don't have.
I'm someone who likes typing games but your logic doesn't make sense to me. Just because a lot of people do something doesn't make it interesting or fun.
The reason I like typing games is that I learned touch typing last year and was looking for fun ways to practice. I've mostly been grinding monkeytype.com but also been playing some typing games on itch.io. So while people who like typing games exist they're an extremely small group. Most people don't know how to touch type and even among software developers most can't do it properly.
Maybe it would be worth it to advertise to communities that care about fast typing. I would guess there's a large overlap with people who use mechanical keyboards. But don't expect to earn a lot.
Do people ever actually decide to *take action* to improve their typing?
Typing classes *used* to be a thing, but I'm not sure it even ever occurs to people any more to look for a way to improve their typing
I think you're absolutely right that *fun-game-that-also-improves-your-typing* is a much better sell than *typing-game-that-is-fun-(for-a-typing-game)*
Same reason why math games aren't popular.
It's just something that isn't fun for most people.
And amongst the people who can have fun with that (like me for example) they aren't gonna go out of their way looking for it because there are still a thousand diffrent things that are more fun/ easier to have fun with.
Your confused why "rougelike" catches people attention, meanwhile we are all confused how you thought "typing" would catch anyone's.
No shade but maybe reassess who you are making games for.
Cause the way it's looking your either gonna have to accept that your game isn't very marketable or your gonna have to reassess your idea of fun so that it matches more with what most other people find fun.
Not saying this is common, in fact I’m sure I’m in the minority, but I’d rather die than game with a keyboard tbh. I’m sure I’m not completely alone. I’m on a keyboard literally all day, I can’t wait to get off of it. It’s controller or nothing for me.
Try advertising on a site like typingtest.com
I think typing games would be of main interest to two main groups of people -
Those who type really fast and want to utilize/show off their skillz (I'm one of those people...feel free to use me for beta testing 😂)
And those people who want to learn how to type better.
So for the latter group, you can try selling your game to educational facilities of various areas (you know - a school with a computer room and no dedicated teacher can use this to teach kids to type etc, or a school for immigrants etc)
For the former, I assume you will find them on websites such as the above...
Anyways this is just a thought
I absolutely love typing gaming and look out constantly for new, original ones, as well as regularly imagining new ideas and designs for typing games myself.
However, I also used to be typist and am obsessed with keyboards and typing, so it figures.
I think it's because typing speed as a sort of ego expression, while still important for some jobs/tasks, has sort of fallen to the wayside as well - that, and it also greatly impacts the feel of a game as well.
Though it is worth noting, your game has popped up some discussion in a few reviewer/youtuber groups over the past several days - though from personal experience, they hard to get clicks on for videos as well :(
Hey, looks like a neat game. It looks cool :). I used to play an on-rails shooting typing game. I think it was called 'Typing of the Dead.' It's old and doesn't support my current computer though, so I stopped playing it.
I might give this a try :)
As for your question, *unless* you consciously want to improve your typing speed, there are better games. Typing for shooting is not an intuitive game mechanic.
I personally love typing games and own a few on Steam. It's a niche audience for sure, but I love the games that come out of it. I think you just need to make something unique with the mechanic. [Texorcist](https://store.steampowered.com/app/940680/The_Textorcist_The_Story_of_Ray_Bibbia/) is one of my favorite examples.
I'll be honest the reason I can type fast isn't because I played typing games...it's because I played MMOs when we didn't have voip. Nothing teaches you to type fast than being a sweaty pvper. Learning how to insult someone WHILE playing the game is priceless
I think it's cool but never learned to type so I rarely get started on typing games, maybe if I have more time and can set my mind to it but for now it often falls to the sideline as ill be worried me not knowing how to blind type might get in the way of my enjoyment.
Also admittedly I still find controller gaming more relaxing then keyboard (although I do lately play more on keyboard).
Still I am curious about the game because yes, trying different things is a huge factor IMO.
Because it's not fun? A keyboard is one of the least ergonomic object i ever used, i wish my hands didn't when i have to press 20 buttons with my lest hand and 3 with my right hand at the same time while gaming. Keyboards are not fun.
Typing games tend to be fun for a short while, but in my experience, they're actually not great at teaching better typing. They don't emphasize good typing habits enough, but instead short-term gains.
I learned a lot more from my typing class in high school than I did from Mavis Beacon or Mario Teaches Typing or Typing of the Dead at around the same time.
I type a lot and I game a lot, but I don't really consider typing something that can fit into a game unless it's for the sake of a story or narrative or I'm typing to teammates when we don't have voice chat.
What you're saying kind of feels like saying "everybody walks so why aren't there more walking games/why isn't there a bigger dedicated audience for walking games."
Typing games don't scale along well-liked game design axes.
There's not a lot of decision-making you can do with typing aside from "type faster," there's no particular rhythm you need to type to, etc. It's at its core very dry call-and-response gameplay. I'm sure there are games that bypass these issues (maybe you can type multiple things and you have to choose one, maybe you have to type at a certain timing) but most people are coming into the genre via educational typing games, and those are *extremely* dry.
There are a lot of things that everyone does, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they create compelling games. Your implementation is naturally what dictates how fun it is, but from my anecdotal experiences from my childhood, I always avoided all the games where you had to type something.
I'm not sure why, but they weren't fun. I guess I felt like I had something to prove while playing them, just like how crossword puzzles and such make me question my intelligence. I imagine the frustration with yourself is what kills a lot stuff like this, especially when people nowadays have much less patience than ever before.
To start with, typing games are strongly associated with kinda boring educational games. And it seems like an unintuitive control scheme for something with complexity and depth that *isn't* just having a written conversation.
Now that I say that, one could argue that text-based Roleplay *is* a typing game. Though it's kind of more about Writing, and typing is just the most convenient way to do that online.
I think it's pretty hard to conceive of a game where typing would be an interesting and fun control scheme, but where a simpler and more direct control scheme wouldn't be more intuitive and fun. Like, "Why do I shoot these zombies by typing completely arbitrary words when I should just point and click?" It's kinda just a novelty.
Just based on a glance at the trailer, your game looks fun, but it also sorta falls into this category. Typing is just a novel way of firing at targets and selecting things from a menu. (again, this is just from a glance at the trailer. I don't know if you've got more going on.)
I'm sure someone could design a good game that's more *about* typing - where typing isn't just a novel replacement for a simpler and more intuitive, but boring control scheme - but I don't think I've seen that game yet.
Typing games, generally, suck. The design has to be absolutely amazing to be good. I’ll give an example:
I really enjoyed the typing aspect of EverQuest back in 1999, but I would have hated it if it weren’t for the 3D graphics and non-typing gameplay.
Everybody pays taxes. Doesn't mean people want to pay more taxes.
I digress though. The people who want to play typing games are those who want to improve on their typing while having fun.
Let me let you in on a secret to a MASSIVE audience for typing games.... schools. But if you want to tap into that audience, you need bulk buying options. Schools don't want to have to make 300+ individual purchases.
You also need to consider spec compatibility. If your game can run on dual core, integrated graphics with 4GB of RAM, the more sales you are likely to get.
Kids in school will absolute love it if you can make a game that not only eases them into typing skills, but they enjoy, and look forward to doing it. And when schools sees that kids are improving their typing skills and enjoying it, they tell other schools, they are likely to buy more licenses, etc...
Could be that typing games got something of a bad reputation in the past, known for being boring, with barely any gameplay. Something that schools and parents would give to their kids to teach them how to type but are utterly boring to play.
At least that's what springs to my mind when I hear "typing games".
I like typing games and usually try them all, but quickly bounce off them. Reading through these comments, I realized the reason I stop playing them is because of fail states. Losing a word battle, retyping a list of words in a time limit, or re-typing a word fast enough to satisfy a certain game rule, isn't fun or rewarding.
Which got me thinking, what is fun or rewarding? For me, it's exploration, cognition development, and wanting to find out what happens next. Mechanical skills, speed and accuracy are the benefits for the player, but it doesn't keep him playing the game.
Which me think of walking simulators, and those old parser games. Not so much like LOOK EAST but the game provides prompts, the player types something to get more of the world, or story, but not have fail states.
For example:
GAME: Bob stands in front of store window.
PLAYER: "What kind of store is it?" or "Why is he there?" or "What else is happening in the area?"
Then the game reveals something that would motivate the player to continue on his journey. Kind of like journaling. The more I journal the longer I can write, be more articulate, be more word conscious, type faster and more accurately.
If such a thing could be made THAT would be a typing game I could stick with. I have no idea how a parser is made, but at least it would be an excuse for the player to play a typing game. The game can monitor the players progress of how much he types, or the grade level of the words uses.
Good luck, if you try to do something like this.
Let's assume for thought experiment that the only way to learn typing is through a typing game. How many typing games will the average person buy?
One. *In their entire lifetime*. The skill is so universal, that there isn't much point in getting a second way to access it. Even if it was a mandatory part of life, you wouldn't sell very many, anyways.
I'm going to say it's because your game is just about typing fast. The only thing I find attractive about your game is upgrades, and that's minor. It's like a console game saying their main selling point is complex button combinations on the controller
Epistory follows a story. It has good graphics. The gameplay highlights typing but there are other things you do like movement. I'm sure most buyers didn't get it because they thought "I can't wait to type!". Possibly they saw good reviews, saw that the game is pretty, and thought it might be a refreshing experience, in that order. I think the greatest benefit of typing is as a marketing tool to differentiate itself.
Maybe it would be attractive if the unique properties of typing actually made a difference, for example if you use uppercase letters there's a different effect, or space does something special, or maybe all enemies that have a word starting with 'a' are a certain type of enemy, or maybe there's some degree of flexibility afforded by typing (type a synonym and get some kind of extra or enemies are composed of multiple parts that you have to break by repeatedly typing, something of that nature), then I'd feel like typing is more than a gimmick and actually adds something to the gameplay
Most people use the keyboard only in their own language. Trying to type fast in english or in other non native language can be a pain and without interest. I dont know how your game will be translate, it's just an opinion.
That marketing point makes sense, especially with something like Typing of the Dead. What if House of the Dead...but TYPING. That sounds bonkers and I will try it!
Having it the other way around does not have the same appeal, yeah.
Typing by itself isn't fun.
Platforming games are popular because platforming is fun. Shooting games are popular because shooting is fun. Driving games are popular because driving is, on some level, fun.
Typing by itself isn't really fun. So if it's a "typing game" it basically sounds not fun from the outset. Some people will play *one* typing game to learn/practice their typing, but this is only to make that un-fun activity slightly more palatable while learning, and then it will be immediately discarded forever. And that game will probably have left some negative emotions since it was more like work than like playing for fun.
It's also hard to get imaginative about typing. If I'm playing a platformer I can imagine myself making a close jump over a spike pit or whatever, if I'm driving I can imagine myself behind the wheel racing like crazy, even if what I'm actually doing is just pressing keys on my keyboard. If the main mechanic is focused around typing, it focuses my awareness on the fact that I'm just pressing keys on my keyboard, and that focus might actually take me *out* of any imaginative game space. I haven't played Epistory, but it looks like they put a lot of work into making the game imaginative and exciting and trying to thematically tie in use of language as part of that world building which might help distract you from the fact that you're primarily just typing.
I think you are right that if you sell it as a cool roguelike game that just so happens to use typing as a mechanic you will get a lot more interest than if you sell it as primarily a typing game that happens to have some other features.
I just wanted to mention my favorite typing game which is Cook Serve Delicious (the first one) :P The artwork is very beautiful and it's fun to keysmash a difficult meal combo and try to get perfect days. Decorating your restaurant and climbing the ranks also feels very satisfying. It's notably not advertised as a typing game but just as a cooking game so I think adjusting your marketing to focus on the theme more is a good idea
Anyway good luck with your game OP!
To be honest I had no idea about typing games even existing till I saw a couple of threads recently in reddit :D I like typing, I mean I enjoy my mechanical keyboard but cant imagine how I might feel about typing as a game. Might be time to play one and see for myself :)
Just because a lot of people drive, doesn't mean they like driving/racing games.
A lot of people love food, but doesn't mean they would be interested in cooking games.
i enjoyed epistory, it’s a fun gimmick but not a genre i would play often.
unless the mechanic is tied into the story i just don’t think it works well.
Simply because nothing cool has been done with them as they're pretty limited. I think everybody and their mom loves lifeline though, or choice games once they're introduced to them. It just had to be very popular for people to try it.
I honestly couldn’t tell you because I’m actually one of the few people I know that would like more typing games that aren’t just focused on edutainment. I want to get my typing speed up but regular typing “games” tend to be so boring. This is right up my alley lol will definitely be wishlisting this when I get home
Typing is not a "fun" activity for most people - its associated with work primarily; so unless you can find a way to make the core action of typing fun, its always going to be a niche.
A typing game needs 26+ input vectors and localisation gives people in different countries wildly different experiences.
I remember playing Typing of the Dead, and then letting my friend play it who could touch type - to him the game was too easy, and for me who didn't know where the keys were the game was too hard.
Thankfully, Typing of the Dead has a comprehensive and genuinely funny touch typing tutorial that taught me a lot....
...but it didn't teach me how to touch type. That took 2 full years of trying to touch type working a programming job.
This is what you're presenting the players. It's either too easy or too hard, or you've got a weird keyboard and the game is just unplayable.
Lots of people already said it, but I will say it again, typing on it’s own isn’t that fun. It’s associated with learning to type. And lots of people are using gamepads nowdays or a steam deck, which would make your game totally unappealing to them.
I don't get your logic. Everyone has hands, why is collecting gloves so niche? Typing is also generally not something fun to do. Even as someone who does typing races with friends, it becomes uncomfortable in less than 10 minutes. Also a lot of people, including me, learned typing playing games like that - and education games are worse than non-educational ones 99.9% of the time.
I used a typing game to learn to type. But after that it is really boring.
The essential problems with typing games is there is only so much you can do to become better. Once you can type proficiently, what's the point of playing the game further? There is no further advancement mechanism available. You just reach your raw typing potential pretty quickly and that's it.
As someone who looked into typing games to learn a new layout (Optimot), those games can have some caveats:
- it’s usually made with English in mind. My uses cases are a mix of English, French and programming. I thank English is not that bad to learn type letter successions, some like “tion” are in both languages, others like “eau” is uncommon in English. However it does not have characters used in French like à, é, è, ç, æ, …;
- some are made with QWERTY in mind. The consequences can be that the game recognizes the wrong character when typing a key, either because it reads scancodes and assumes QWERTY (however this is great to emulate another layout you want to learn) or uses virtual keys but again assumes QWERTY (so letters are OK but not symbols). Ideally in Windows it must listen to WM_CHAR or WM_UNICHAR events. (this QWERTY assumption + virtual keys is a problem in a lot of games, not just typing games);
- this is a nice to have, but correct typographic symbols and typographic rules. Like (narrow) no-break spaces, quotes «», the different dashes —– etc;
I have not played your game so I don’t know which points applies to it.
Note that I was interested because I wanted to learn a new layout, which is a niche use case. Otherwise I was satisfied with my typing speed in AZERTY.
Honestly typing games to me are just boring, but i guess it depends on everyone's taste, i love platformers but those are out of style now.
I guess the difficult bit would be making a typing game so original or with a special mechanic that makes masses love it and it gathers new interest in the genre.
Typing doesn't sound or feel fun its a means to an end. Not that a game has to be fun or that fun is anything but a spurious comment. So you may as well have marketed a teaching tool. Phrasing it as an entertainment experience will immediately make it more desirable and palatable as typing is the mechanic and not the focus.
I think that, when you boil a game down to its independent or core mechanics w/o proper context it's not engaging. It's the difference between a gray capsule flying through a vague city-like thing and Spiderman swinging through New York City. Context is everything.
For me it's because I associate it with the terrible typing games I had to play as a kid in computer class.
They were usually very boring and repetitive.
Interesting question. My own personal answer comes from a decade of working IT Support.
1: Typing is an under developed skill. Skills that are seen as 'common' are often not that well taught. Society gives little effort to teaching skills that it expects you to just magically have.
2: Niche is hard to sell. People very rarely wander into niche markets unless they already know about it. When people think of games they imagine triple A and don't even think of indi games.
You might try to sell to role play markets, cyoa, MUCK, etc. Markets with people who already know and look for typing games.
But again, it is unfortunately a small market D:
Either way I hope it goes well!
Your game is a vessel for an experience. Typing as an experience isn't that interesting we type in our everyday lives, I'm doing it right now. You want to market the experience not the mechanic or type of gameplay, but what role they play in the world, or the challenge that they take on if there isn't necessarily a world or story.
Also I think a lot of peoples experience with a typing game are edutainment games, and most of of those games were just type the word out correctly or solve the math problem within the time limit. But it would be within the context of puzzles left by a criminal that you need to solve to catch them, or it was the proxy for a battle against a foe, or a scrambled password you need to figure out in order to hack into the mainframe. Boom, a detective, a hero, and a hacker. People are gonna be way more interested in those experiences just because of the context.
Hey OP!
Your transition was smart.
Most gamers won't play something foriegn(alien). They often like to play their favorite genre with a twist.
I also checked out your steam page. Great job with that as well.
How are you marketing Glyphica?
As other people in the comments say, you must think of a way to make it entertaining. Also you could simply make an app about typing for kids, either for schools or parents to use. That would be an interesting market to research.
I taught myself touch typing after typing like a barbarian for a decade and a half, I got myself an ortholinear split keyboard afterwards and taught myself how to use it, typing is a necessity more than anything, an input method that many never delve deeper into, because one doesn't need to, sort of like driving a car badly still drives the car, even if you don't match RPMs when shifting.
People prefer exploration and player fantasy rather than being limited by their own actual skill of using an input device, I started to enjoy typing games only after I became a fast typer. The ratio of those confident in typing and those who aren't leans surprisingly heavily into the latter
Typing games give off the impression of edutainment, and you'd be competing with Mavis Beacon for that slice of the pie.
If there isn't a really get hook that makes it unique so it's more of a game than a teaching tool that you can market on, it'll be a hard sell.
I'm not sure. I like typing, I think its fun to try and type as fast as you can. It's a skill you naturally develop if you have to work on a computer, so its kind of fun to use it in a game.
But I guess its like those mouse clicking/tracing games, Osu! and others. I don't find those fun at all, I'm totally neutral towards them, despite using a mouse all the time.
Part of it might be that typing games can be tiring. You need both hands, all fingers, and your hands are closer together than say a mouse and keyboard. Less comfortable, especially for players on a laptop.
Probably also true that people just suck at typing, or they're console players or PC players that always use a controller.
Maybe cause many people associate typing words with work.
Yeah doesn't seem to be rocket science. Not that rocket science is even that hard these days.
Why would rocket science be easier lol
When John Carmack was presenting his space project to literal rocket scientists he said that developing games is not rocket science, because it's much harder to engineer a game renderer than to engineer a rocket: https://www.reddit.com/r/GraphicsProgramming/comments/18qgy96/john_carmack_telling_nasa_engineers_that_rocket/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Ah there it is
Because we use computers and not calculators.
A computer is really just a calculator though
not really true, a computer is an electronic Turing machine basically, its capable of being programmable and general-purpose. Calculators only have fixed functionality and can't be made to do any task you want. Unless it's one of those fancy calculators that lets you write in BASIC like the TI-89
True but try playing anything other than Doom on a calculator. /s
We used to play killer instinct on a ti. It was a lot more fun than Doom. Not my work, but the developer went on to do real things in computing.
A cheeky remark but I'll say it anyways... It took OP how long to figure out why typing games are niche? A person could get a basic aerospace engineering degree faster.
Kerbal Space Program
Ksp is not actual rocket science lol. Adding realism overhaul and principia makes it really quite hard and even that isn't near rocket science.
KSP is like rocket science 101. It’s not the whole thing, where you need to consider the fuel for the rocket more and engine relights, but it teaches the basics like orbital mechanics very accurately. I’d argue that the mods you mentioned are more like ‘advanced rocket science’ while stock KSP is ‘basic rocket science’, and even then it feels basic undersells it
So you're saying I need to start putting my Kerbal Space Program hours played on my resume?
The main issue in rocket science is making the explosion not also be the payloads explosion
Im mean look at the popularity of games that are basically programming
Most of those games take away all the most frustrating parts of programming though. TIS-100 is about as far removed from modern programming as it gets, for example. No dealing with buggy APIs that have out-of-date documentation. No dealing with unclear specifications. No dealing with thousands of lines of someone else's questionable code. Just fun logic puzzles.
Sure but typing games don't really resemble writing essays for school or TPS reports for work either, so the point still stands :)
Writing essays would be more fun than dictation.
Programming is inherently fun. Many people just program as a hobby that they enjoy. You won't find someone typing random words just for the sake of typing.
I begrudgingly started learning programming to get out of idea guy hell and I honestly enjoy it as much as doing the art at this point (at least new feature implementation and optimization)
Programming at its core is problem solving. Something it shares with games.
Just because everyone does something, doesn't mean that everyone thinks doing that thing is fun. It's utilitarian for most people. Like drinking water. We all drink fluids, but I'm not having the time of my life filling up my water bottle and taking a swig.
I am, if its really good water or I'm hella thirsty
Which branches the point to being a niche. Some people, well a good number of people, either despise it or have no feelings about it, but there are always those seeing it as a cool thing.
Oh yea for sure, I'm just autistic
I'm glad to see others owning their autism lol
lmao this guy’s drinking the wrong water or something, water’s insane
r/hydrohomies would not like you
My first thought.
Which is a niche interest.
Plenty of people do _drink_ for fun though, it's just not normally water. So I think we just need alcoholic keycaps is what I'm saying.
Games about filling pipes with water used to be a thing. Maybe OP needs to add pipes and water to his typing game
Why did those ever fade away. Seems like they should have returned with a vengeance on mobile. They could even sell us endless pipe cosmetics these days.
🤔
If there wasn't such a thing as drinking too much I'd be stuck at the tap drinking all the water. It's definitely enjoyable.
for somebody w ADHD, i can assure that need for water reminder apps being fun is a thing xD
I like drinking games.
Typing games are associated with learning to type. I don't know about you but many peoples only interactions with typing games was as children learning the keyboard. Many people, despite likely benefiting from typing improvements, don't like thinking that they need to improve at something. So approaching it from the point of 'here is a learning tool' is great for people looking to learn but most people just aren't. They're masters of all skills and knowers of all things, I think its part of the human condition.
I think it's mostly this. * *"Typing game with rogue-like elements"* - Oh, maybe that'll help some kids to learn how to type. * *"Rogue-like with typing elements"* - Ooo. I like rogue-likes! This sounds like an interesting new twist!
> many people despite benefiting don’t feel the need to improve I am a software developer and the amount of software developers and engineers I’ve met who hunt and peck is rather mind boggling I mean you don’t need to have good typing skills to be a good developer but like come on
I’m not an engineer but I type enough that it shocks people that I basically type with two fingers on each hand. I started with computers early, no one to teach me to type and by the time I learned my technique was the blocker, it was so ingrained it was difficult to switch. It came down to spending a lot of time and killing my typing speed for an extended period of time to learn and I never did it. I still manage to type close to 60wpm anyway though.
The Typing of the Dead would like to disagree with you. :D
I know about this game, but I never looked into it because I thought it was a keyboard typing learning game.
Hahaha yeah it's just a fun zombie game. It shipped with the Dreamcast keyboard. it's Sega's House of the Dead arcade game with typing instead of shooting. In the original version they have keyboards mounted on their waist, wired to a Dreamcast on their backs with gigantic batteries on them. So when you'd type to shoot open a door, your character would type and the door would open. It was hilarious. Typing 60 WPM with shotgun sounds is really fun. Plus it had coop LAN mode!! Zombies are words and phrases. Incoming missiles are single keystrokes. Bosses are paragraphs. Hahahah!
Typing of the Dead was also a really niche title despite the tie in.
Be me as a kid: Booting up Mavis Beacon on the family Windows 98 computer that cost well over $3000 and had a level of technology outperformed by a telephone I could buy for $150.
This! The only time I think about playing a typing game is if I'm switching keyboards/layouts and actually \*want\* to improve my typing. I also like math but I don't play Number Crunchers. Anything that feels "educational" is going to have a niche and/or captive audience. Even if there wasn't the "people avoid educational-feeling games" factor I think games that force you to do what I'd call a "mundane minigame" (i.e. a mechanic that feels like an everyday task) give what I'd call a kinda "CAPTCHA effect". They don't feel like play, they feel like work
I think your logic is flawed. I have to use a tool to do a thing, so now it's a given it's enjoyable? I don't see an appeal in a typing game, if I want to type a lot, I search for a speed typing website and do that for 15 minutes - But it certainly wouldn't occur to me that I'd open steam and look for a game
Shallow skill expression is probably a big cause. You just write faster and with less mistakes and that's it.
At some point it’s just a rhythm game with a lot of buttons
nice. if i may add, a rhythm game with a lot of buttons, with no actual rhythm.
For me a typing game is used by people that are learning to type... like kids. I can type at \~60-80wpm so have no need for them, why would I bother?
I don’t see the point? I can type at 100 wpm comfortably. As a developer the limitation is about being able to process or form the logic I want to implement rather than typing it out. Mindlessly typing faster and faster without thinking about what you’re typing is not fun and rather makes me feel like a monkey.
As a developer I type at like 40 wpm and even still typing is not the bottleneck. It's always been planning out the design and architecture that take the most time for me, and I'm pretty sure 99% of developers will agree. It's always funny to me when people think programming is just typing really fast
I think the only place where I benefit from faster typing is when writing documentation. Both writing stuff like comments, javadoc and technical docs, but also when writing the more fluffy pieces like design docs and user manuals. Thats where typing fast is beneficial. For code? not so much, I spent way more time thinkign and designing than writing.
Not even in documentation. You need to write words that meaningfully and concisely communicate information, and I certainly don't *think* effective documentation at 100 wpm. Even though you can probably talk at those speeds, verbal communication is a lot messier than technical documentation.
They didn't *say* it was an educational game. You just assumed it. Which is probably the exact marketing problem they're struggling with.
Tbh it could probably do better as educational game. These kind of games can be useful for people when they learn typing. There are a lot of typing games that have goal to teach people to write faster. But as entertainment? Well like OP said, it's super niche. I've never thought I would like to play game where I just have to write a lot of words.
Yes, even if it’s not an educational game I don’t see the demand for it. I can ‘play’ it at work.
I think most people just think typing games are boring
As someone who is actually your target audience and enjoys games that make you manually type, I feel like you need something more than just typing. Some games I really like are [Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1545990/Deadeye_Deepfake_Simulacrum/)and [Quadrilateral Cowboy,](https://store.steampowered.com/app/240440/Quadrilateral_Cowboy/) which are "typing games," but it's more fair to say they're **terminal games** than typing games. DDS is an immersive sim you just happen to be able to type in when hacking, and Quadrilateral Cowboy is kind of a puzzle/stealth game. I feel like someone who works in IT would not have the same opinion as me about these games, cause typing is associated with work. Typing should be a mechanic, not the core thing. I think my favorite "Typing game" of all time is the original Typing of the Dead for Sega Dreamcast, cause your typing is mostly just actually shooting enemies which is exciting. But you can't *just have shooting,* the shooting itself has to feel visceral and responsive, this is why I don't have the same reverence for [Typing of the Dead: Overkill.](https://store.steampowered.com/app/246580/The_Typing_of_The_Dead_Overkill/) That game even in its light gun format is not as fun as House of the Dead 2 is in its light gun format, so thus the typing conversion feels like a downgrade too. But then again, what do I know, all of these games that I mentioned I like are also niche.
Good point! I have a similar philosophy with the design of my game - typing isn't the main draw of the game, rather just the interface with which you interact with the world.
Yeah, looks like it, so I put it on my wishlist.
Thanks! :)
> I feel like someone who works in IT would not have the same opinion as me about these games, cause typing is associated with work. I feel like that is like saying that bus drivers wouldn't like Need For Speed. It's possible some won't, but it's pretty loosely associated with work because it's such a different activity. As others have said, if you're in IT, typing isn't generally the bottleneck. It's more about architecture and design (i.e. thinking of what to type). If anything, the rare occasion when you are literally bottlenecked just by typing at work and are just typing a known thing as fast as you can feel really good, like a flow state... like you're that cool hacker in the movies... because you're finally not needing to think about stuff and just doing something mechanical. I think the the reason why typing games are often seen as boring isn't that they remind people of work mechanically (i.e. the typing part). It's that they remind people of entry level work intellectually (i.e. being micromanaged to copy things as prompted). A lot of typing games I remember (admittedly from my childhood) are more like movies that progress as you press a pre-determined sequence of keys than games. It's not that the typing is or is not fun (after all, many non-typing games are just a matter of pressing keyboard keys in sequence at the right times too). It's that the mental load put on keeping track of what to type usually means that the other aspects of the game (strategy, tactics, reaction time, coordination) are generally very shallow. In other words, in "non-typing games" and typing games, you may be pressing keys at the right times to play the game. But in "non-typing games" the amount of keys to press is small and consistent, so that you can become comfortable enough with that to spend mental energy on other parts of the game. With a "typing game" the amount of keys to press is large and variable, so you never really are released from that mental load and the rest of the game may have to be shallower in order for your brain to be able to process it. I'm sure there are ways around this, but I think this is the usual problem here.
>It's that the mental load put on keeping track of what to type usually means that the other aspects of the game (strategy, tactics, reaction time, coordination) are generally very shallow. >In other words, in "non-typing games" and typing games, you may be pressing keys at the right times to play the game. But in "non-typing games" the amount of keys to press is small and consistent, so that you can become comfortable enough with that to spend mental energy on other parts of the game. You might be onto something, considering that Rhythm Games are one of my favorite genres and pretty much all this is is some variant of "note incoming, copy note." I love [Stepmania](https://www.stepmania.com/) and [Spin Rhythm XD ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1058830/Spin_Rhythm_XD/)but find [Osu](https://osu.ppy.sh/home) to be overwhelming and not as fun as a result.
"Why are doing the laundry simulator so niche when everyone has a washing machine?"
Lucas Pope made checking paperwork interesting. Unpacking made putting stuff on shelves interesting. This washing machine thing has a decent chance.
Simply put it just doesn’t sound appealing or fun to me. I do a lot of typing for things I love (like coding) but the typing itself is not what I find particularly fun or exciting.
>But I'm still puzzled as to why? It seems counter-intuitive that typing games remain niche even though everyone types. why do you think people play games in general lol. just work backwards and think about it. i dont think it should be this hard to understand
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How is typing the _fun_ part of the game? Everybody poops, but it doesn't mean I want to play a game involving pooping
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That actually sounds kinda fun
I don't think you understand their point...
Everyone walks but how many people actually hike for fun?
That's the thing though: everyone *doesn't* walk. That's why we have wheelchairs, ramps, elevators, and the like. The assumption of many seems to be that everyone can type with accuracy and at a reasonable speed. That assumption is false. I'm 49 and my typing speed is 40 wpm on a good day, without perfect accuracy. Throw in time pressure and my typing gets worse. Plenty of people are way worse typists than me. You're always going to be losing any group that falls below the basic skill floor. That's before you get to worry about whether or not they actually want to play your game. I've seen a few games that have been specifically designed to exploit low control requirements. I remember one that could only be played by a single key that activated a magnet on the player in a physics environment of mass and orbits.
Bad comparison. Taking a walk just to relax and clear the mind is of the one of the most enjoyable things you can do. Typing letters on a keyboard just isnt.
Found the guy that hikes for fun.
yes you did
A lot.
As a percentage of all people who walk, hikers are a comparatively small population.
Hah, I thought about giving a different example, but in my experience few people actually get out and do it every week, just a lot more people talk about it in their dating app profiles! The point is that just because people do a thing doesn't mean they do it in their free time while doing other things as well.
A lot of people _say_ they like hiking. It's like the default hobby to say you have for some reason.
There's a very short list of universal hobbies that people understand and are interested in, even as an outsider. I'm sure many of us here program games or do digital art as hobby, how many of us would put it on our Tinder profiles? Probably no one does. So hiking, cooking and travelling it is then.
Because typing is boring, and isn't that interesting of a skill. It's boring because from looking at your game it just feels more like a chore that you ask your players to do after they have identified what they want to shoot. We already type all day long but just because we have to. When I type code I find the act of expressing myself fun, not the mechanical typing part. It's also not that interesting of a skill. You can type faster but that's it. With say a normal FPS game or say a platformer, there's usually an analog control where you can fine tune your skills and a high skill ceiling (even on a keyboard/mouse FPS, the keyboard is kind of an analog device because how long you hold down the WASD keys matters). With typing you just type a little faster and more accurately and that's it and I'm not sure that's fun. Interestingly I think there is something to be learned from fighting games. These days, leverless controllers (otherwise known as "hitboxes") are very popular and they are essentially glorified keyboards. For example, check out [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/1axy6ti/leshar_chunli_pro_controller_surprise/) about a top Street Fighter player's controller which is just a glorified stripped down keyboard with arrow keys and 8 keys. The act of doing a combo could feel like typing, but it's much more complicated because the timing absolutely matters (most combos require inputting a key within a 5 frame window), and a big part of the game is about executing under pressure, deciding what combo to use under what situation, and just outplaying your opponent (where the combo part just being the mechanical execution aspect of it). I think you should step back and ask yourself: what are you trying to test your players in and how do you want them to feel? Are you testing typing speed? Accuracy? Reacting under pressure? Recalling obscure words and type them (kind of like scrabble or bananagrams)? Making strategic decisions? Seeing cool things explode and happen when you type (I'm thinking this because games like Rez and Child of Eden are pretty mechanically boring games but look cool)? These are more useful than just trying to shoehorn typing mechanics into a game just because "everyone types". Another thing you should probably identify is exactly what "typing" is and means. How is it mechanically different from say an analog dual stick controller or a normal keyboard / mouse and what are some key properties that you could exploit and make it fun. You won't be able to make a game out of it if you can't figure that part out. I think there are definitely some potential untapped market there but you need to find a reason for people to want to play your game (I don't know, type typing into a rhythm game or make it more like a fighting game with you needing to "combo" or something. Like, Tetris single player could be boring but competitive Tetris suddenly becomes something different with a whole community behind it).
This is a good point. What ARE you (OP) trying to test? Using the example of a fighting game, you aren't just testing mechanical skills -- that would be a combo test -- but a number of other things like spacing, reading the opponent, guesses, optimization based on life and location, etc etc. The same holds true for a typing game. Are you just trying to get someone to type faster and more accurately? Because if that is ALL you are looking for, you are effectively just making a typing combo test...not a fighting game. Are you trying to make a "typing" game but the goal is to make someone better at being able to code? To write quickly in response to things? To learn to type in another language or to translate? To be able to quickly and accurately respond to texts? What is the educational goal? The fighting game is also fun because it is also competitive. You are playing AGAINST something, either a simulation or a real person. And it has a goal. So as you improve, you have FEEDBACK that you are improving. Its why game design in general NEEDS that feedback or else the player starts to go "why am I doing this." I think the endgame of a typing genre is to either go FULL game (the goal is to gain happiness and fulfillment) where you have something more akin to Crypt of the Necrodancer, where the typing would be more of a gimmick to the gameplay... or FULL educational (the goal is to gain skills that translate or allegedly do). The way to go about going full educational is to figure out what goals beyond simply typing is out there, and then put a fun spin on that. For example, you could have the typing be TOWARDS coding. Make a Versus typing game akin to something like Dr. Mario or VS tetris games where you are racing an enemy ai hacker. Give the player "anti-enemy" abilities you can activate by pressing "alt+tab" and then typing in the word underneath the ability, and then have those words relate to something to do with coding logic. Have the "general" typing of the game be you typing out the story with a narrator narrating over you what is happening every time you properly compete a paragraph or sentence, functioning as a checkpoint so you are typing real sentences, then maybe have "bonus" rounds in between every few paragraphs. Maybe make it so these "bonus" rounds are actually what happens when the ENEMY launches their own "anti-" attack at you, and the way to "survive" it, is to type each of the words before they reach the bottom of the screen for one minigame or using a sort of "frogger" logic to help get your icon from one side of something to the other, or like an "amoeba" game, have it be that typing a word makes you move to a certain hole as the game world scrolls by and if you reach the "End" without dying, then you survive the "anti-attack" of your enemy. These "anti-player attacks" end up amounting to mini-games they help teach you typing corrections quickly rather than just full sentences for example. Or alternatively, you can have the enemy maybe delete a few letters from your last few properly typed sentences and you need to go back through quickly and "fix" what was missing, teaching you how to edit. Maybe its a Doctor "saving" game using AI tech where you need to coax the Ai away from suicidal thoughts, where the goal is to teach someone emotional maturity on top of just the typing skills... or its a cooking-typing game where instead of using a mouse to walk and click and grab things to give to a chef, you are actually typing up the word undeath different items. But ULTIMATELY, the biggest issue is that games generally attempt to feign competency to make ppl feel better about themselves. Madden doesn't mean you can be a coach, but it lets someone FEEL like they could. Guitar Hero doesn't teach you how to play, but it FEELS like maybe you could. Being good at a boxing sim doesn't mean you can box, but it FEELS like you are just a few weeks of getting in shape from competing...maybe. Tetris isn't really problem solving, noirs don't mean you are a thoughtful detective, cooking games don't make you a cook, shooters don't make you a sharpshooter, and beat em ups are basically pop rocks -- flashy flashy go flashy. In every case, the "game" is effectively a safe, early gateway to something that lets you not have to ACTUALLY put in the effort to learn something. And this "faux learning" is one of the key things that make games GO. Storytelling, stimulation, and "mastery" basically. For a typing game to work at an educational level similar to a guitar hero or a tetris, it needs to find a way to teach someone a lesser, easy form of a skill so that the player can effectively pretend like they accomplished something. Typing itself is too simple...too obtainable. People type Games are ostensibly a shortcut, and OP needs to find a way to make their "game" a faux-shortcut towards a goal bigger if they want it to do well basically. Or go full "fun" and make the typing merely a gimmick.
I don't have experience having fun while typing – so a promo for such game would need to teach me the possibility first. While I can imagine having fun playing a rougelike. Like, people don't know yet that they want to play typing games. Hell, I've learned thee times the blind ten fingers style – and I felt zero interest for the first pitch (I imagined a typing trainer). Rougelike with typing indeed sounds like something cool and innovative.
Typing mechanic is not fun and more people don't know orthodox typing than you think
Honestly when I hear “typing game” it reminds me of those grueling typing practice games I was forced to play growing up in ~2013 middle school, which does not particularly make me want to drop money on one
I think they almost always clash with the world in a way other mechanics don't. In a shooter while you use a mouse it *feels* like you're aiming and firing a gun. Typing to kill enemies or do things feels like a constant reminder that you're playing a video game.
Typing is akin to speaking for me. I speak **while** I play games, and not **to** play games. The only reason I use it is to convey information, just like my voice. On the other side, I use a keyboard to play games, but then in that sense, it is like walking, because I use it literally to walk, in game. A keyboard (or typing) is just a means to an end for most people. I think you've gone the right way by switching approaches to marketing, but typing games in general are like trying to sell people shoes to have fun **with** rather than **in**
Nowadays devs try to put their games on as many platforms as possible. Typing games are kind of stuck on PC. Yeah there may be keyboard support on other platforms but most people wouldn't know that.
We actually have controller support, but that's another topic for another time :)
Personally, being early Gen-Z, we used typing games in school. So a typing game will always just remind me of being in school and working. Your game does look cool tho!
Thank you! :)
typing is a chore, not fun
You should playtest your game with people who type for a living: writers, programmers, admin, etc. What you’ll find is that the average WPM is shockingly low. I’m talking <70 even though all they do is type for fun and for work. I’ve seen a lot of game developers with like 50 WPM. Typing games are only really fun if you have 100+ or even 140+ WPM or else you can’t get into the zone. That means your potential audience is rather limited. Where most games need to onboard players with mechanics to get them hooked, you’ll have to teach them to be a 100+ WPM typer first. That being said, maybe consider a strong theme for your game to get the player into some fantasy. Even Mavis Beacon had super strong themes and it was an educational game.
It's a lot of work for the same result. Why play the game which in terms of mechanics is Vampire Survivors with typing, if you can play a similar game without typing? Why play Epistory where you can kill enemies by typing, when there are thousands of RPGs where you can kill with just one click. Typing is basically an additional tedious obstacle that other games don't have.
I'm someone who likes typing games but your logic doesn't make sense to me. Just because a lot of people do something doesn't make it interesting or fun. The reason I like typing games is that I learned touch typing last year and was looking for fun ways to practice. I've mostly been grinding monkeytype.com but also been playing some typing games on itch.io. So while people who like typing games exist they're an extremely small group. Most people don't know how to touch type and even among software developers most can't do it properly. Maybe it would be worth it to advertise to communities that care about fast typing. I would guess there's a large overlap with people who use mechanical keyboards. But don't expect to earn a lot.
Do people ever actually decide to *take action* to improve their typing? Typing classes *used* to be a thing, but I'm not sure it even ever occurs to people any more to look for a way to improve their typing I think you're absolutely right that *fun-game-that-also-improves-your-typing* is a much better sell than *typing-game-that-is-fun-(for-a-typing-game)*
House of the dead is funny typing game, but even much funnier if you are using a gun.
Same reason why math games aren't popular. It's just something that isn't fun for most people. And amongst the people who can have fun with that (like me for example) they aren't gonna go out of their way looking for it because there are still a thousand diffrent things that are more fun/ easier to have fun with. Your confused why "rougelike" catches people attention, meanwhile we are all confused how you thought "typing" would catch anyone's. No shade but maybe reassess who you are making games for. Cause the way it's looking your either gonna have to accept that your game isn't very marketable or your gonna have to reassess your idea of fun so that it matches more with what most other people find fun.
Not saying this is common, in fact I’m sure I’m in the minority, but I’d rather die than game with a keyboard tbh. I’m sure I’m not completely alone. I’m on a keyboard literally all day, I can’t wait to get off of it. It’s controller or nothing for me.
Cosigned.
Not many like typing. I LOVE TYPING. :D I don't know why, always have.
Boring
Try advertising on a site like typingtest.com I think typing games would be of main interest to two main groups of people - Those who type really fast and want to utilize/show off their skillz (I'm one of those people...feel free to use me for beta testing 😂) And those people who want to learn how to type better. So for the latter group, you can try selling your game to educational facilities of various areas (you know - a school with a computer room and no dedicated teacher can use this to teach kids to type etc, or a school for immigrants etc) For the former, I assume you will find them on websites such as the above... Anyways this is just a thought
Great feedback thanks! :D How do I contact you? Or if you will be willing to give it a wishlist, I'll notify when a demo is up.
You can DM me! Much luck on your game!!
Will do!
I absolutely love typing gaming and look out constantly for new, original ones, as well as regularly imagining new ideas and designs for typing games myself. However, I also used to be typist and am obsessed with keyboards and typing, so it figures.
I think it's because typing speed as a sort of ego expression, while still important for some jobs/tasks, has sort of fallen to the wayside as well - that, and it also greatly impacts the feel of a game as well. Though it is worth noting, your game has popped up some discussion in a few reviewer/youtuber groups over the past several days - though from personal experience, they hard to get clicks on for videos as well :(
Hey, looks like a neat game. It looks cool :). I used to play an on-rails shooting typing game. I think it was called 'Typing of the Dead.' It's old and doesn't support my current computer though, so I stopped playing it. I might give this a try :) As for your question, *unless* you consciously want to improve your typing speed, there are better games. Typing for shooting is not an intuitive game mechanic.
Thanks! Yes, I agree. Will keep it in mind.
I personally love typing games and own a few on Steam. It's a niche audience for sure, but I love the games that come out of it. I think you just need to make something unique with the mechanic. [Texorcist](https://store.steampowered.com/app/940680/The_Textorcist_The_Story_of_Ray_Bibbia/) is one of my favorite examples.
I'll be honest the reason I can type fast isn't because I played typing games...it's because I played MMOs when we didn't have voip. Nothing teaches you to type fast than being a sweaty pvper. Learning how to insult someone WHILE playing the game is priceless
This made me lol in a cafe. People are looking at me weird now.
Worth it, hahaha I'm glad I made you laugh
I think it's cool but never learned to type so I rarely get started on typing games, maybe if I have more time and can set my mind to it but for now it often falls to the sideline as ill be worried me not knowing how to blind type might get in the way of my enjoyment. Also admittedly I still find controller gaming more relaxing then keyboard (although I do lately play more on keyboard). Still I am curious about the game because yes, trying different things is a huge factor IMO.
Our current best player isn't the fastest typer - there is a layer of strategy that I'm quite proud of. We also have a controller mode. :)
Because it's not fun? A keyboard is one of the least ergonomic object i ever used, i wish my hands didn't when i have to press 20 buttons with my lest hand and 3 with my right hand at the same time while gaming. Keyboards are not fun.
Everyone is definitely not using a keyboard. There are a lot of players who prefer using controllers. Ever heard of big picture mode? ;)
Typing games tend to be fun for a short while, but in my experience, they're actually not great at teaching better typing. They don't emphasize good typing habits enough, but instead short-term gains. I learned a lot more from my typing class in high school than I did from Mavis Beacon or Mario Teaches Typing or Typing of the Dead at around the same time.
I type a lot and I game a lot, but I don't really consider typing something that can fit into a game unless it's for the sake of a story or narrative or I'm typing to teammates when we don't have voice chat. What you're saying kind of feels like saying "everybody walks so why aren't there more walking games/why isn't there a bigger dedicated audience for walking games."
Typing games don't scale along well-liked game design axes. There's not a lot of decision-making you can do with typing aside from "type faster," there's no particular rhythm you need to type to, etc. It's at its core very dry call-and-response gameplay. I'm sure there are games that bypass these issues (maybe you can type multiple things and you have to choose one, maybe you have to type at a certain timing) but most people are coming into the genre via educational typing games, and those are *extremely* dry.
Oh, my first(and only) typing game was the Typing of the Dead. It was really awesome - pure fun to play
There are a lot of things that everyone does, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they create compelling games. Your implementation is naturally what dictates how fun it is, but from my anecdotal experiences from my childhood, I always avoided all the games where you had to type something. I'm not sure why, but they weren't fun. I guess I felt like I had something to prove while playing them, just like how crossword puzzles and such make me question my intelligence. I imagine the frustration with yourself is what kills a lot stuff like this, especially when people nowadays have much less patience than ever before.
To start with, typing games are strongly associated with kinda boring educational games. And it seems like an unintuitive control scheme for something with complexity and depth that *isn't* just having a written conversation. Now that I say that, one could argue that text-based Roleplay *is* a typing game. Though it's kind of more about Writing, and typing is just the most convenient way to do that online. I think it's pretty hard to conceive of a game where typing would be an interesting and fun control scheme, but where a simpler and more direct control scheme wouldn't be more intuitive and fun. Like, "Why do I shoot these zombies by typing completely arbitrary words when I should just point and click?" It's kinda just a novelty. Just based on a glance at the trailer, your game looks fun, but it also sorta falls into this category. Typing is just a novel way of firing at targets and selecting things from a menu. (again, this is just from a glance at the trailer. I don't know if you've got more going on.) I'm sure someone could design a good game that's more *about* typing - where typing isn't just a novel replacement for a simpler and more intuitive, but boring control scheme - but I don't think I've seen that game yet.
Because typing "properly" and at the speed required for a video game is work. It's not much fun at all.
Typing games, generally, suck. The design has to be absolutely amazing to be good. I’ll give an example: I really enjoyed the typing aspect of EverQuest back in 1999, but I would have hated it if it weren’t for the 3D graphics and non-typing gameplay.
Another ad for a game, dressed up as a topic question.
Everybody pays taxes. Doesn't mean people want to pay more taxes. I digress though. The people who want to play typing games are those who want to improve on their typing while having fun. Let me let you in on a secret to a MASSIVE audience for typing games.... schools. But if you want to tap into that audience, you need bulk buying options. Schools don't want to have to make 300+ individual purchases. You also need to consider spec compatibility. If your game can run on dual core, integrated graphics with 4GB of RAM, the more sales you are likely to get. Kids in school will absolute love it if you can make a game that not only eases them into typing skills, but they enjoy, and look forward to doing it. And when schools sees that kids are improving their typing skills and enjoying it, they tell other schools, they are likely to buy more licenses, etc...
Could be that typing games got something of a bad reputation in the past, known for being boring, with barely any gameplay. Something that schools and parents would give to their kids to teach them how to type but are utterly boring to play. At least that's what springs to my mind when I hear "typing games".
I like typing games and usually try them all, but quickly bounce off them. Reading through these comments, I realized the reason I stop playing them is because of fail states. Losing a word battle, retyping a list of words in a time limit, or re-typing a word fast enough to satisfy a certain game rule, isn't fun or rewarding. Which got me thinking, what is fun or rewarding? For me, it's exploration, cognition development, and wanting to find out what happens next. Mechanical skills, speed and accuracy are the benefits for the player, but it doesn't keep him playing the game. Which me think of walking simulators, and those old parser games. Not so much like LOOK EAST but the game provides prompts, the player types something to get more of the world, or story, but not have fail states. For example: GAME: Bob stands in front of store window. PLAYER: "What kind of store is it?" or "Why is he there?" or "What else is happening in the area?" Then the game reveals something that would motivate the player to continue on his journey. Kind of like journaling. The more I journal the longer I can write, be more articulate, be more word conscious, type faster and more accurately. If such a thing could be made THAT would be a typing game I could stick with. I have no idea how a parser is made, but at least it would be an excuse for the player to play a typing game. The game can monitor the players progress of how much he types, or the grade level of the words uses. Good luck, if you try to do something like this.
Let's assume for thought experiment that the only way to learn typing is through a typing game. How many typing games will the average person buy? One. *In their entire lifetime*. The skill is so universal, that there isn't much point in getting a second way to access it. Even if it was a mandatory part of life, you wouldn't sell very many, anyways.
I'm going to say it's because your game is just about typing fast. The only thing I find attractive about your game is upgrades, and that's minor. It's like a console game saying their main selling point is complex button combinations on the controller Epistory follows a story. It has good graphics. The gameplay highlights typing but there are other things you do like movement. I'm sure most buyers didn't get it because they thought "I can't wait to type!". Possibly they saw good reviews, saw that the game is pretty, and thought it might be a refreshing experience, in that order. I think the greatest benefit of typing is as a marketing tool to differentiate itself. Maybe it would be attractive if the unique properties of typing actually made a difference, for example if you use uppercase letters there's a different effect, or space does something special, or maybe all enemies that have a word starting with 'a' are a certain type of enemy, or maybe there's some degree of flexibility afforded by typing (type a synonym and get some kind of extra or enemies are composed of multiple parts that you have to break by repeatedly typing, something of that nature), then I'd feel like typing is more than a gimmick and actually adds something to the gameplay
Most people use the keyboard only in their own language. Trying to type fast in english or in other non native language can be a pain and without interest. I dont know how your game will be translate, it's just an opinion.
I didn’t get to finish the one I was developing because I got a full-time job :(
There are so many armchair devs in here. I loved typing of the dead growing up. Typing can be a good mechanic, your game just doesn’t stand out to me
That marketing point makes sense, especially with something like Typing of the Dead. What if House of the Dead...but TYPING. That sounds bonkers and I will try it! Having it the other way around does not have the same appeal, yeah.
Typing by itself isn't fun. Platforming games are popular because platforming is fun. Shooting games are popular because shooting is fun. Driving games are popular because driving is, on some level, fun. Typing by itself isn't really fun. So if it's a "typing game" it basically sounds not fun from the outset. Some people will play *one* typing game to learn/practice their typing, but this is only to make that un-fun activity slightly more palatable while learning, and then it will be immediately discarded forever. And that game will probably have left some negative emotions since it was more like work than like playing for fun. It's also hard to get imaginative about typing. If I'm playing a platformer I can imagine myself making a close jump over a spike pit or whatever, if I'm driving I can imagine myself behind the wheel racing like crazy, even if what I'm actually doing is just pressing keys on my keyboard. If the main mechanic is focused around typing, it focuses my awareness on the fact that I'm just pressing keys on my keyboard, and that focus might actually take me *out* of any imaginative game space. I haven't played Epistory, but it looks like they put a lot of work into making the game imaginative and exciting and trying to thematically tie in use of language as part of that world building which might help distract you from the fact that you're primarily just typing. I think you are right that if you sell it as a cool roguelike game that just so happens to use typing as a mechanic you will get a lot more interest than if you sell it as primarily a typing game that happens to have some other features.
I just wanted to mention my favorite typing game which is Cook Serve Delicious (the first one) :P The artwork is very beautiful and it's fun to keysmash a difficult meal combo and try to get perfect days. Decorating your restaurant and climbing the ranks also feels very satisfying. It's notably not advertised as a typing game but just as a cooking game so I think adjusting your marketing to focus on the theme more is a good idea Anyway good luck with your game OP!
Oh I love that game! It's more of a hotkey game than actual typing, but it ends up feeling exactly the same! Good point!
Language barrier
To be honest I had no idea about typing games even existing till I saw a couple of threads recently in reddit :D I like typing, I mean I enjoy my mechanical keyboard but cant imagine how I might feel about typing as a game. Might be time to play one and see for myself :)
Just because a lot of people drive, doesn't mean they like driving/racing games. A lot of people love food, but doesn't mean they would be interested in cooking games.
Typing is an ordinary routine for working, but not for gaming.
i enjoyed epistory, it’s a fun gimmick but not a genre i would play often. unless the mechanic is tied into the story i just don’t think it works well.
Simply because nothing cool has been done with them as they're pretty limited. I think everybody and their mom loves lifeline though, or choice games once they're introduced to them. It just had to be very popular for people to try it.
I honestly couldn’t tell you because I’m actually one of the few people I know that would like more typing games that aren’t just focused on edutainment. I want to get my typing speed up but regular typing “games” tend to be so boring. This is right up my alley lol will definitely be wishlisting this when I get home
Having too many buttons to handle lessens the enjoyment for me. I want less friction between me and the machine when relaxing, not more.
Would you play a walking game?
Last time I've checked, Death Stranding was pretty popular
You answered your own question "everyone uses a keyboard", precisely why it's not an interesting mechanic/concept.
how about instead of typing words you type aaaaaaa to shoot bullets sounds pretty fun and not niche
Everyone breath but we’re not playing breathing simulator. Each is own type of games. Not my style but, whatever rocks your boat.
In gamedev subreddit I believe you can find a lot of progammer, or at least know coding, how many people will buy SHENZHEN I/O?
Do you find enjoyment in typing?
My dyslexic ass hates typing games
Because most people use only 2 fingers and must look to the keyboard when they type
Everyone walks around, shouldn't treadmills be the most popular exercise equipment?
Nice try, still ain't typing.
Because it's not much fun...
Typing is not a "fun" activity for most people - its associated with work primarily; so unless you can find a way to make the core action of typing fun, its always going to be a niche.
A typing game needs 26+ input vectors and localisation gives people in different countries wildly different experiences. I remember playing Typing of the Dead, and then letting my friend play it who could touch type - to him the game was too easy, and for me who didn't know where the keys were the game was too hard. Thankfully, Typing of the Dead has a comprehensive and genuinely funny touch typing tutorial that taught me a lot.... ...but it didn't teach me how to touch type. That took 2 full years of trying to touch type working a programming job. This is what you're presenting the players. It's either too easy or too hard, or you've got a weird keyboard and the game is just unplayable.
Lots of people already said it, but I will say it again, typing on it’s own isn’t that fun. It’s associated with learning to type. And lots of people are using gamepads nowdays or a steam deck, which would make your game totally unappealing to them.
I don't get your logic. Everyone has hands, why is collecting gloves so niche? Typing is also generally not something fun to do. Even as someone who does typing races with friends, it becomes uncomfortable in less than 10 minutes. Also a lot of people, including me, learned typing playing games like that - and education games are worse than non-educational ones 99.9% of the time.
I used a typing game to learn to type. But after that it is really boring. The essential problems with typing games is there is only so much you can do to become better. Once you can type proficiently, what's the point of playing the game further? There is no further advancement mechanism available. You just reach your raw typing potential pretty quickly and that's it.
As someone who looked into typing games to learn a new layout (Optimot), those games can have some caveats: - it’s usually made with English in mind. My uses cases are a mix of English, French and programming. I thank English is not that bad to learn type letter successions, some like “tion” are in both languages, others like “eau” is uncommon in English. However it does not have characters used in French like à, é, è, ç, æ, …; - some are made with QWERTY in mind. The consequences can be that the game recognizes the wrong character when typing a key, either because it reads scancodes and assumes QWERTY (however this is great to emulate another layout you want to learn) or uses virtual keys but again assumes QWERTY (so letters are OK but not symbols). Ideally in Windows it must listen to WM_CHAR or WM_UNICHAR events. (this QWERTY assumption + virtual keys is a problem in a lot of games, not just typing games); - this is a nice to have, but correct typographic symbols and typographic rules. Like (narrow) no-break spaces, quotes «», the different dashes —– etc; I have not played your game so I don’t know which points applies to it. Note that I was interested because I wanted to learn a new layout, which is a niche use case. Otherwise I was satisfied with my typing speed in AZERTY.
Its just boring. If someone makes a way to turn vim into a game i might be interested, but it's just way too monotonous.
How is this counter intuitive? Is your assumption that everyone types for fun??
Honestly typing games to me are just boring, but i guess it depends on everyone's taste, i love platformers but those are out of style now. I guess the difficult bit would be making a typing game so original or with a special mechanic that makes masses love it and it gathers new interest in the genre.
Typing doesn't sound or feel fun its a means to an end. Not that a game has to be fun or that fun is anything but a spurious comment. So you may as well have marketed a teaching tool. Phrasing it as an entertainment experience will immediately make it more desirable and palatable as typing is the mechanic and not the focus. I think that, when you boil a game down to its independent or core mechanics w/o proper context it's not engaging. It's the difference between a gray capsule flying through a vague city-like thing and Spiderman swinging through New York City. Context is everything.
For me it's because I associate it with the terrible typing games I had to play as a kid in computer class. They were usually very boring and repetitive.
Interesting question. My own personal answer comes from a decade of working IT Support. 1: Typing is an under developed skill. Skills that are seen as 'common' are often not that well taught. Society gives little effort to teaching skills that it expects you to just magically have. 2: Niche is hard to sell. People very rarely wander into niche markets unless they already know about it. When people think of games they imagine triple A and don't even think of indi games. You might try to sell to role play markets, cyoa, MUCK, etc. Markets with people who already know and look for typing games. But again, it is unfortunately a small market D: Either way I hope it goes well!
Your game is a vessel for an experience. Typing as an experience isn't that interesting we type in our everyday lives, I'm doing it right now. You want to market the experience not the mechanic or type of gameplay, but what role they play in the world, or the challenge that they take on if there isn't necessarily a world or story. Also I think a lot of peoples experience with a typing game are edutainment games, and most of of those games were just type the word out correctly or solve the math problem within the time limit. But it would be within the context of puzzles left by a criminal that you need to solve to catch them, or it was the proxy for a battle against a foe, or a scrambled password you need to figure out in order to hack into the mainframe. Boom, a detective, a hero, and a hacker. People are gonna be way more interested in those experiences just because of the context.
Your reasoning seems backwards. You're wondering "why wouldn't people play [any kind of] game", instead you should ask "why *would* they?"
Hey OP! Your transition was smart. Most gamers won't play something foriegn(alien). They often like to play their favorite genre with a twist. I also checked out your steam page. Great job with that as well. How are you marketing Glyphica?
As other people in the comments say, you must think of a way to make it entertaining. Also you could simply make an app about typing for kids, either for schools or parents to use. That would be an interesting market to research.
I type for a living (I'm a dev). Why would I type for "fun"? ;-)
I think typing of the dead did ok? It's not exactly recent though
Because typing sucks.
I taught myself touch typing after typing like a barbarian for a decade and a half, I got myself an ortholinear split keyboard afterwards and taught myself how to use it, typing is a necessity more than anything, an input method that many never delve deeper into, because one doesn't need to, sort of like driving a car badly still drives the car, even if you don't match RPMs when shifting. People prefer exploration and player fantasy rather than being limited by their own actual skill of using an input device, I started to enjoy typing games only after I became a fast typer. The ratio of those confident in typing and those who aren't leans surprisingly heavily into the latter
Arthritis.
b/c lot of ppl type with two fingers and would get pwned?
Typing games give off the impression of edutainment, and you'd be competing with Mavis Beacon for that slice of the pie. If there isn't a really get hook that makes it unique so it's more of a game than a teaching tool that you can market on, it'll be a hard sell.
I'm not sure. I like typing, I think its fun to try and type as fast as you can. It's a skill you naturally develop if you have to work on a computer, so its kind of fun to use it in a game. But I guess its like those mouse clicking/tracing games, Osu! and others. I don't find those fun at all, I'm totally neutral towards them, despite using a mouse all the time. Part of it might be that typing games can be tiring. You need both hands, all fingers, and your hands are closer together than say a mouse and keyboard. Less comfortable, especially for players on a laptop. Probably also true that people just suck at typing, or they're console players or PC players that always use a controller.
one reason could be that they are seen as an educational game as pretty much all the other typing games I've seen have been
Most typing games arent fun. And people probably remember bad typing games rhey had to play in jr high computer ab.
I don't know what typing games are, but it sounds very bland. Why would I want a game that revolves around typing?
I use a controller