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Electric Challenge #14 wants us to talk about a game we're excited to see happen.
For me, that's easy. I'm looking forward to the full game release of Nanotale, the second of the Typing Chronicles games. Which, of course, is the sort of thing where someone goes "A typing game? Why would you be excited about that?" And, to some degree, it's because of playing Epistory, the first game. For someone who really loved the origami sequences from Kubo and the Two Strings, to have an entire world unfolding and springing up as you go along is a fantastic aesthetic. The main character is a girl riding a fox, and the girl (or the fox) slings magic that defeats the insects that are in the world. (And that removes obstacles in the path of the girl and the fox.) And, even more helpfully, the pieces of the narrative, as they are said, appear in text on the world, and then stay there after they are narrated to be examined.
Another thing to like about the game is that setbacks are small. Since it's a story being narrated by the protagonist (or at least, the girl on the fox is the protagonist), if one of the chitinous creatures reaches her, it cuts out, the narrator goes "no, that's not what happened," and the story restarts at the last checkpoint. This is a thing a player will get used to happening at the setpieces of each chapter's story, as well as optional locations and battles scattered throughout the world, where the girl and the fox are in the center of an onslaught by the creatures and the player has to type quickly and accurately to drive them away. During these particular segments, the narrative text and audio are signals to the player of about how far they are through the battle, as each segment is usually about one quarter of the battle, although they can sometimes feel a lot longer than that because many of the creatures being battled take multiple words to defeat.
Assisting the girl and her fox is that over the course of the game, she gains control over four elemental powers: fire, ice, electricity, and wind. Fire burns anything it touches, which in this case means that a creature hit by fire that had multiple words to defeat will have the next word slowly burn up and disappear without having to be typed. Ice freezes things, so an ice strike stops the creature from advancing temporarily. Electricity bounces between creatures, so nearby creatures that have multiple words left to defeat will have one of their words struck if a creature nearby gets hit with it. Wind pushes back any creature it comes in contact with, whether it's the target or any other one in the way, which can be handy to use to target creatures just arriving and get the ones ahead of them to stay back for a bit. Switching between the powers requires typing their names, with the exception of electricity, Instead, to keep it fair, the player has to type "spark" to switch.
Because the game needs to have a narrative structure, of course, some creatures and elements of the landscape can't be defeated or interacted with until the girl and fox have obtained the proper element. Without the element, the creatures and features that require it are rendered in other scripts. There's usually at least one segment on each of the elemental places where the girl and fox are being chased by creatures they can't defeat yet and so they have to avoid them long enough to collect the element in question.
At the core yes, they're typing games meant to help people improve their touch-typing abilities, but the story and aesthetic of the first one was so good (and the game itself, even chasing all the extras, was fairly short) that I think it's worth playing. And I'm looking forward to the full game of the second offering.
For me, that's easy. I'm looking forward to the full game release of Nanotale, the second of the Typing Chronicles games. Which, of course, is the sort of thing where someone goes "A typing game? Why would you be excited about that?" And, to some degree, it's because of playing Epistory, the first game. For someone who really loved the origami sequences from Kubo and the Two Strings, to have an entire world unfolding and springing up as you go along is a fantastic aesthetic. The main character is a girl riding a fox, and the girl (or the fox) slings magic that defeats the insects that are in the world. (And that removes obstacles in the path of the girl and the fox.) And, even more helpfully, the pieces of the narrative, as they are said, appear in text on the world, and then stay there after they are narrated to be examined.
Another thing to like about the game is that setbacks are small. Since it's a story being narrated by the protagonist (or at least, the girl on the fox is the protagonist), if one of the chitinous creatures reaches her, it cuts out, the narrator goes "no, that's not what happened," and the story restarts at the last checkpoint. This is a thing a player will get used to happening at the setpieces of each chapter's story, as well as optional locations and battles scattered throughout the world, where the girl and the fox are in the center of an onslaught by the creatures and the player has to type quickly and accurately to drive them away. During these particular segments, the narrative text and audio are signals to the player of about how far they are through the battle, as each segment is usually about one quarter of the battle, although they can sometimes feel a lot longer than that because many of the creatures being battled take multiple words to defeat.
Assisting the girl and her fox is that over the course of the game, she gains control over four elemental powers: fire, ice, electricity, and wind. Fire burns anything it touches, which in this case means that a creature hit by fire that had multiple words to defeat will have the next word slowly burn up and disappear without having to be typed. Ice freezes things, so an ice strike stops the creature from advancing temporarily. Electricity bounces between creatures, so nearby creatures that have multiple words left to defeat will have one of their words struck if a creature nearby gets hit with it. Wind pushes back any creature it comes in contact with, whether it's the target or any other one in the way, which can be handy to use to target creatures just arriving and get the ones ahead of them to stay back for a bit. Switching between the powers requires typing their names, with the exception of electricity, Instead, to keep it fair, the player has to type "spark" to switch.
Because the game needs to have a narrative structure, of course, some creatures and elements of the landscape can't be defeated or interacted with until the girl and fox have obtained the proper element. Without the element, the creatures and features that require it are rendered in other scripts. There's usually at least one segment on each of the elemental places where the girl and fox are being chased by creatures they can't defeat yet and so they have to avoid them long enough to collect the element in question.
At the core yes, they're typing games meant to help people improve their touch-typing abilities, but the story and aesthetic of the first one was so good (and the game itself, even chasing all the extras, was fairly short) that I think it's worth playing. And I'm looking forward to the full game of the second offering.
