Despite your small stature you have a powerful gift: You can craft words which will have an effect on the environment. You slip into the role of a character made of letters, struggling to make your way through a dark and hostile world. Please don’t squander this idea, guys it really is a solid one.Typoman is a puzzle platformer. It’s too bad, because I really enjoyed bits and pieces and genuinely hope that the developer will make another attempt at this concept. I feel like this game would have benefited from fewer platforming sections and more word puzzles to help flesh out the world and the minimal story. “Typoman” is wonderful idea that needed better implementation. Unfortunately, that message gets drowned with the frustrating nature of the gameplay mechanics. The game has something to say, and it conveys it very beautifully. It’s definitely more playful than moody, especially with its theme of the power of love The art style is very reminiscent of “Limbo” in its dark tone and shadowy backgrounds and characters, but still stands on its own. That’s not to say that “Typoman” doesn’t have its merits. When I finished these areas, I found myself feeling relief that it was over instead of satisfaction. Typoman’s word crafting mechanic adds a unique twist to the puzzle platformer genre that is genuinely fun to play, and the presentation is top notch. What I’ve just described is my experience with both the escape sequences and boss battles in this game. Typoman as a whole has a really fun game mechanic, and despite its price tag I’d highly recommend it if you’re into the indie gaming scene. You wind up repeating the same steps over and over again until you finally memorize the steps of the maze and reach the finish. Now imagine that every time you make a wrong turn, you have to start over at the beginning of the maze and memorize the steps you took to get to where you left off. Imagine you’re making your way through a maze. In games like “Super Meat Boy” or “Ori and the Blind Forest”, that formula works since that next turn is instantaneous, but the load time in between deaths in “Typoman” makes me want to reach for my smart phone.
Not only that, but most of the time I died while playing felt like it wasn’t my fault, like I had to die in order for the game to teach me how to be prepared on my second attempt. The hero’s movement feels very muddy, which simply doesn’t work in a platformer that has more than its fair share of precise jumps. The frustration begins with the character movement. Not all of the puzzles are quite as simple, but they get progressively more clever, almost becoming an interesting, albeit rudimentary, lesson in how the English language works. So when the word “rain” gets an extra letter to form “drain”, a storm cloud dissipates and the small lake that had formed because of it seeps through the bottom of the screen revealing an open path to the next area. The playerĬan interact with these letters to spell out words that, in turn, affect the environment around it. Much of the world of the game, including the main character himself, is made up of actual typed letters. But choose your words wisely - they can either be a blessing. Despite your small stature you have a powerful gift: You can craft words to alter your environment. It’s a 2-D platformer with a slight twist. You slip into the role of a character made of letters, struggling to make your way through a dark and hostile world. The concept behind “Typoman” is such an awesome idea.
Although the art style is gorgeous and it has a genuinely original idea, the frustrating control scheme and “learn by failing” approach made this three-hour game feel much longer. Sadly, this was the beginning of a downward spiral of my experience with this game. Needless to say, my first impression was a bit soured. So when I fired up “Typoman”, a WiiU exclusive, I was surprised to see that the game didn’t allow me to play away from my big screen. I don’t even have my console connected to anything but power most of the time. I’m one of those WiiU owners who primarily uses the gamepad’s screen instead of the television to play.