Epistory – Typing Chronicles

I played this with a new ortho keyboard and decided to learn the Workman layout with it.
Now I know what old people feel like when you ask them to type something.
Gameplay-wise, it's very poorly optimized, you need much better hardware than
the mentioned minimal requirements.
Except for that, it's an indie masterpiece.

This game is very different than any game I have ever played. The game is very unique in how it is played, using typing as your weapon to combat foes. In addition to typing you have to switch back and forth in your typing powers to fight different foes or open different gates to advance the story and world. Points are also collected to unlock different portals or pieces of the world. You also have abilities that you can put points into, to train the abilities that you want to hone faster. The game itself is pretty, with a nice narration telling the story as you advance. I wouldn't say you have to be the worlds best typist, however you cannot be a one finger typist and expect to advance the story either. After playing for a bit, my wpm certainly improved lol Very enjoyable, bought it on sale and worth every penny.

As a way to improve your typing, I don't think it's particularly effective compared to other methods. As a game it's only mildly entertaining.
However there is another, probably unintended, application which I think this game actually excels wonderfully at:
Foreign language learning.
Hear me out: One of the most effective ways to actually acquire language is just huge amounts of exposure with different contextual cues. The outmoded conventional language learning approach assumes that we learn by memorizing grammar and mapping words to and from our target language to our native one. In this model, we "learn" a word by translating it. But that kind of learning will never make us fluent. It will give us a halting, practical knowledge that will help us trudge through various situational needs, but it will never give the open, intuitive, and natural understanding of native speakers. To achieve this, we need hundreds and perhaps thousands of hours of exposure to form a large collection of synaptic links in different networks across the brain, which recreate the holistic structure of the language in our brains. The practical application of this theory is known as "Comprehensible Input," and is advocated for by a lot of polyglots online, with many resources you can explore.
But surely just typing random words would do absolutely nothing to help us learn them?
Well, the great thing about this game is that the words are non-random in a rather unique way: they are thematically linked to visual elements of the game in the same vague way that we link concepts in our mind. "Fiery" elements have words like "burn" and "campfire," sure, but also "oven" and "wick." Even without knowing the words, you are forming a network of verbal relations, without the intermediate step of translation, in a way you wouldn't in most normal circumstances.
For a native speaker, the number or words is not huge, and so you see a lot of the same ones over and over, which feels a bit boring. But, in a foreign language, the relatively small dictionary is actually a plus, because you will type the same words (most of which will be new to you) over and over. It's annoying in your native language, but it's very good practice for language acquisition. Often the first hurdle to listening comprehension is simply knowing which words exist so you can separate them mentally. Knowing how they are spelled will help you identify them in speech and be able to look them up in a dictionary, and gives you another peg to hang them on in the mind. These are all various forms of "acquisition" without "learning."
And in general, writing, or typing, is a separate neurophysical process from listening, speaking, or reading. That means you are establishing a whole other network of intuition to store your foreign language model in. I don't know about you, but I often have the surreal experience of "remembering" my internet passwords only by muscle memory on a keyboard: that is, I have passwords which I could not write, speak, or imagine a visual projection of, but which come out on a keyboard automatically because they are now stored primarily in "muscle memory." You will develop this kind of memory for foreign language words by typing them, and this will help you recognize and recall their spelling and provide yet more network effects.
Another great thing about the way this game is designed, is that the menu and game language are separate settings, and additionally, the "story" is always read in English voice. This means you can play the game multiple times with varying levels of exposure depending on your language level, you will get more out of it each time you play.
So, in short, if you are a foreign language learner and your target language is one of the 11 included here I would highly recommend this, even over most other "language learning" games on Steam, which tend to lean on conventional "learn the translation" approaches and seldom provide any mechanics to encourage the kind of repetitive exposure this gives you. Obviously, you will need many, many, many more hours and types of exposure to learn a language than this game can provide, but the kind of exposure it provides is rather unique and a great addition to a curriculum.

A relatively simple but stylish dream adventure where one of the skills you develop is your ACTUAL typing speed.
I regularly return to it because the words you are supposed to type are vaguely related to the function they perform (as in things you are supposed to burn prompt fire-related words, enemies are negative words, ...) and so when you put the word bank in a different language the game turns into association flashcards.

If you're a fast typist, this game will feel like second nature. If not, I highly recommend trying the demo first to test the waters and see if it's your cup of tea. It's not exactly cozy, but I enjoyed it immensely.
The story was okay, but the visuals and the clever, engaging puzzles stood out the most for me. I even picked up a bunch of new words along the way, which was a nice bonus!
All that's left for me to do now is the arena just to kill some time.

I went in expecting to play a chill typing game, but instead I got an absolute gem. Epistory - Typing Chronicles is a perfect example of a typing game done right.

First off, the game is beautiful. I absolutely loved the "paper" like map grids and the whole design choice style. The environments are absolutely stunning, and you can tell a lot of love went into crafting each region/dungeon. Everything loads in smoothly, and the animations for when you unlock new regions is also so well done with the paper flipping in. The narration also provides a really pleasant experience as you go through the regions as well, and it gave me Bastion/Transistor vibes. The story is pretty mysterious the whole time, until you get to the very end and it makes more sense.

As for the gameplay, Epistory does it so well. You have some typical stuff like typing words to break blocks, interact with puzzles, and defeat enemies. However, Epistory adds in a refreshing take on the genre by introducing 4 elemental forms of typing damage, which each have unique effects on enemies. The elemental effects also help you progress through the world, as some previous parts were locked behind obtaining the next elemental effect. A lot of these end up being pretty simple puzzles, but it added to the gameplay. The progression feels really smooth and well thought out as you traverse the world. the Difficulty in the game isn't all too hard, but it is challenging enough that you do have to pay attention to your typing speed. Through this game I learned that I'm great at typing words with 4-5 letters or below, but once it gets longer than that, I begin struggling.

Overall, Epistory highly outperformed my expectations, and I think this is a <10hr game everyone should give a shot to.

This game was pretty fun overall, worth playing.
Controls - pure typing, git gud or git ded
Visuals - the world built of 'papercraft' and unfolding as you explore new areas looks SO COOL! The map, which has minor fast-travel, is terrible though.
Story - boring slop written for women, game has a woman protagonist & voices
Gameplay - mostly it's simply typing words, this kills enemies, gathers a variety of resources (you don't keep them as resources, they just translate to XP), and controls parts of the environment. You also control your character to run around the world
-As you progress through the game, you eventually unlock 4 typing "modes" (ice fire wind spark) and you type their name to switch to that mode
-Your xp / level just lets you upgrade those 4 typing modes and a few other aspects like walking speed & combo retention
-there are themed "dungeons" that you enter from the main map
The fighting sometimes happens during the main map exploration (bugs going towards you) and those are very easy aside from sometimes having to do it with short notice due to bugs showing up very close to you. There are also uh....platforms(?) where you're locked in place and a gauntlet of bugs swarm you. Those can get very difficult, but give a lot of XP and some are required to progress.
I got to max level/upgrades early compared to the game's design, due to getting good combos consistently, but some of those gauntlets are still tough.
Achievements: reaching 100% does not seem feasible, it includes
"Surpass the average and reach typewriting speed of 60WPM" - and these are on weird individual words not normally typed, and not in a sentence form
"Type 1000 characters without a mistake" - hard for the same reasons, and awkward controls
"Clear all insect's nests" which I assume are the gauntlets. Should be easy, but the map system is not good, and I don't want to explore the whole universe again to see where I missed something.
Edit: moved on to the spiritual successor Nanotale and finished/reviewed that too: