This game was somewhat inspired by the simple ideas that I saw in MechaDestroyerJD's game Super Stick Skirmish of Superb Scrappers (but we'll call it SSSSS). The goal of SSSSS is to defeat your opponent in a battle of words. How? By typing them. Fast. In each round you are presented with an endless barrage of random words, and you must pick one of the three words visible at any given time to type out. The faster you type your words, the more damage you do to your opponent. The faster you damage your opponent, the sooner you win. Its a simple game, but the concept is pretty fun: Type words as quickly as possible.

Now, SSSSS doesn't really present anything exceptional that you wouldn't see in any other typing game, unless you're really impressed with the fighting stick figures. It also doesn't give you any opportunity to type sentences or paragraphs. But in itself, its a fun concept, so I thought I might expand on it since I'm constantly in search for alternatives to the generic and very overused "kill stuff" approach to gaming.

So I propose a game based on typing words to progress. Instead of having two players fighting each other in physical, typing induced combat, my game will be a journey. Why a journey? Because journeys allow for more variety.

If you've ever played Super Mario World, you'll understand what I'm talking about here. The idea is that you can move from point to point on the world map, where each point represents something different. (See the picture below for a visual on what I'm talking about.) Each point in Super Mario World represents a level that you have to beat in order to continue, and I propose something similar for my typing game.


In Typing Journey, you have a designated starting spot. From there, your avatar will automatically progress toward the next level by following the roads. In order to progress down the road, you'll have to type out the short sentence provided for you by the game. For example, typing out "Jimmy jumped the hoop!", with proper punctuation and all.

There may be multiple difficulty levels for roads, such as easy roads with short, simple sentences:

• "Games are fun."
• "I want a bus."
• "We love chicken."

Harder roads may include longer sentences and more complicated words:

• "The public library is the most dangerous place in town."
• "Its surprising how detailed the answers are."
• "Reading surrounds us, labels us, defines us."
• "A circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge!"

When the player finally reaches a level, then they'll be presented with a different kind of typing obstacle. Each level may specify how many words (which in reality would be the number of letters multiplied by 4, give or take a few) must be typed in order to defeat the level.

So for example, lets supposed we've started the game, typed out the first few sentences to progress down the road and now we've encountered our first level: The Castle. The castle demands that we type 100 words in order to progress, or the equivalent of 100 words with 4 letters each, 80 words with 5 letters each, 50 words with 8 letters each, or just writing that "circulating library" sentence out about 4 times.

Each level will have its own word set based on its theme. Because this is a Castle level, we'll be typing words related to castles: apse, arch, arrow, ashlar, bailey, baluster, balustrade, barbican, barrel, vault, bastion, battlement... Other level ideas might be Ocean or Lake levels, Caves, Mountains, Forests, Swamps, Dragons, Bird Sanctuary, etc... Anything you can think of.



A regular sized map might have 5-10 levels on it, and if there's more than one player, or the player plays against some computer players, then the first one to the end of the path wins the game. So type fast!

Some other options might be multi-route roads, so you can choose to take the difficult roads with the easy level on a topic you're familiar with, or the easy road to the hard level with the unfamiliar topic. It would be up to you!

It might also be a good idea to include some rest areas. Perhaps once you've completed a level, you'll receive a message telling you to take a break for a few seconds and read the description, with a little timer telling you when you break is up. Or maybe this would just be an annoying delay? Could always make it a game option I suppose.

Well this is where you come in. What do you think of the idea? Have some suggestions for improvements?