There aren’t enough typing games in the world. The Typing of the Dead spin-offs are excellent examples of their incredible potential, but not enough developers and publishers have taken note. I need to give my home row a thrashing, and FromSoft Word gives me the challenge I need.
I’ve already oversold it. FromSoft Word is a typing thing inspired by FromSoftware’s penchant for punishing games. Don’t expect something like Typing Souls, however. Don’t even expect it to be structured. Instead, prepare to be punished for your typos as you attempt to fill a white textbox…
Textbox is apparently not a word. I guess it’s two words.
However, that’s what you get: a big, blank text document and aggressive-sounding music. That’s exactly how I work most days, but normally, my misspellings are just attacked by squiggly red lines. At worst, my editor berates me (they don’t). In FromSoft Word, I get the echo-y death sound effect along with the words “You Made a Typo.” Harsh. I don’t even get to dispute word usage.
But while my game will end if I try to use the King’s spelling of favorite, it doesn’t care about whether or not I can place a comma. In that sense, it’s less brutal than my own self-criticism.
Speaking of criticism, while FromSoft Word allows you to export text while you still live, the moment the game over screen hits, you lose the ability to access what you’ve written. This alone means that it won’t become my new word processor of choice. A humiliating loss may be more true to the Souls series, but even Elden Ring allows me to return to my point of death to atone for my failures.
FromSoft Word comes to us from Steven Nass and Peter Henningsen at Woe Industries. You can “play” it yourself for free over on itch.io.
