Keyboard Builders' Digest / Tips & Tricks
Touch Type Tale
A completely typing-controlled real-time strategy game: Touch Type Tale by Pumpernickel Studio.
Published March 29, 2023
I'm playing Touch Type Tale – Strategy Typing right now, and thought you'd like it too.
Grab your precious keyboard, dust off your typewriter to become the hope of Minsteria! In Pumpernickel Studio's Touch Type Tale, a real-time strategy game with a typing twist, you join an unlikely hero, Paul, as he tries to defeat all evil – by clicking and clacking on his typewriter!
Paul, an orphan, likes to hang out at the weird wizard dude's (Adalber) place and one day, while sorting the troll toenail collection, he discovers a magical typewriter – that helps him to control quite everything in this world from people to buildings.
Armed with the wisdom of the wizard Adalbert, Paul will fight against our enemies using a device of incredible magical power: behold the typewriter!
As an avid reader of kbd.news you should be already indoctrinated with the magical properties of keyboards and typewriters. Just like Fabian (artist), Jelde (art/animation) and Malte (programming/game design) from Münster, Germany, who have been working on this game and its pretty unique mechanics for a really long time. And after years spent with development and testing, Touch Typing Tale was finally published on epicgames.com yesterday.
The game is out NOW - And it only took us 6 1/2 years – Malte.
Game control
Everything is controlled by typing? The whole battlefield lies at the tips of your fingers? Sounds good to me!
Do you need gold from the mine? Just type! Need workers, soldiers, buildings? Type! Sending troops at the battle? Casting spells? As you suspect. You even sow and harvest by typing. Or make pizza and lasagna, wire up bombs, conduct orchestras[…] I could go on with this list but you hopefully see my point: you won't touch your mouse just type, which is hopefully a good experience especially for keyboard enthusiasts.
While this sounds fairly simple, doing all these tasks simultaneously in real-time is quite a challenge. But no time to rest, the whole world is in desperate need of your nimble fingers.
I'm just a few hours into it but I really like this game thus far.
Language options
The audio/narration is English only, but you can type in various languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese (multiple writing systems), Korean, Polish, Portuguese/Brazil, Russian, Spanish (Spain/Latin America), Turkish, and simplified Chinese.
Tried English and Japanese, and thanks to Romaji input, it's enjoyable even without installing other input methods.
I'm not a gamer myself, and firmly believe that most games are a waste of your precious time (sorry kind folks at Epic Games who gave me free access to this game), but with a story-rich campaign and competitive multiplayer mode (haven't tried this latter yet), this typing strategy game might be worth checking out. As a RTS game, Touch Type Tale will test your strategic thinking AND typing skills! In the end, you might save Minsteria and improve your typing skills at the same time.
Help this little boy and his typewriter to change the course of history, while your fingertips decide the outcome of rebellions, monumental battles, and… a cook-off?!
EDIT
The gameplay is very smooth and logical except maybe the penultimate challenge where you face, without much explanation, a whole new interface, map, and everything. It took me three attempts in easy mode to figure things out, but I have to admit I played (typed) in a language I don't understand – this is completely possible in TTT since the narration, cues and interface are in English. Changing back to a language I actually speak, the words I had to type eventually helped me to put all the puzzle pieces together and beat the +!%? out of every single opponent. :D
System requirements
- Minimum: Windows 7 - 64-bit, Dual Core 1.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Intel Core HD Graphics 4600 or equivalent, OpenGL Version: 3.3.
- Recommended: Windows 10 - 64-bit, Dual Core 1.4 GHz, 8 or 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 TI, OpenGL Version: 3.3.
Resources
- Touch Type Tale on Epic Games Store.
- Pumpernickel Studio
- Touch Type Tale on Twitter.
Published on Wed 29th Mar 2023. Featured in KBD #118 (source).
Related
GameBoard
Evgenii Vilkov shared his half-keyboard GameBoard, optimized for gaming.
Shiba cafe
A cute typing game for anyone who needs another excuse to use a custom keyboard. Posted by hey_its_me_ur.
Doom keycap
Brostafarian open sourced the keycap that plays Doom.