The internet tells me it’s a niche game, but I remember many of my teenage years spent either seeing people play The Typing of the Dead, or trying it myself. If you’re too young to remember, it’s a spin-off of the on-rails arcade shooter The House of the Dead 2, except all the shooting has been replaced with typing. Following the Warhammer Skulls event, it’s been revealed that the boomer shooter Boltgun got one of its own, called Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun – Words of Vengeance. Best of all, it’s free on Steam.
The idea is the same as the spin-off from over two dozen years ago – the game becomes even more on rails, to the point that the player character moves through levels on his own. All you do is do the attacking, which is by typing out the words that appear alongside enemies. Of course, being a Warhammer 40,000 game, the words you need to type will be related to the lore of the universe.
According to the Steam page, there are “four difficulties for every level”, and “the faster you type, the quicker you kill”. Which seems pretty intuitive, as the faster you get rid of enemies, the less health you lose to them. The description also does say that “one typo could spell your own demise”. Which is a nice pun but a screenshot points at you possibly taking damage for it rather than it just a matter of lowering your WPM.
As mentioned, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun – Words of Vengeance is free on Steam, so it’s definitely more accessible than The Typing of the Dead or any of its sequels. With that being said, it remains to be seen if more commonly used words will also be part of the drill, or if the game only help you polish your typing of faux Latin. Worth mentioning that it’s being made by Auroch Digital, the same devs as the base game.
(Source: Steam)
