Epistory: Typing Chronicles — A Game Where You Type a Lot

“QWERTY” is not an adjective

There was once a time when I enjoyed playing browser games; the kind you can find on Newgrounds. Then again, browser games for me have always been a phase that comes and goes as it pleases. Among the bajillion browser games I’ve played during my godforsaken existence, there was one that I remember fondly for its therapeutic application. Well… there were two actually, but we’re not going to discuss the other. That game was called Qwerty Warriors 2, because the first one was lackluster.

Qwerty Warriors 2 is a game with a very simple premise: Enemies moves towards you and you shoot them by typing words. Though it might sound easy, the game gets sequentially harder as you progress, constantly testing your typing abilities. I’m a relatively fast typist even today, and I play it just to mash the keyboard, a technique that can be very relaxing to some. The game can be found even today (it shouldn’t be hard to find), although I don’t know if it’ll work for anyone since nobody uses Flash anymore. But if you want to know more, then you should probably play it since the article is not about the game, but a game that’s very similar to it — and that game is called Epistory: Typing Chronicles.

Sure, Epistory doesn’t really present a new formula to anything, but the “type to kill” feature is not something that many games have executed (very few, in fact). Plus, for someone who likes to type fast, this is the ideal thing to go to… and relax… or just release your stress with the power of the QWERTY (the type of keyboard that everybody uses). It didn’t seem like much at first. Although some of the puzzles were tedious, it got better and the typing became more intricate, but I still have to see more of it… by typing, and while I type away at this article, this is what it was type… I mean like.

A story about a girl who rides a fox… I think

So, I start the game and there’s nothing too spectacular at first, as is with all games nowadays. The game then instructs me to use the keyboard to move around, and this game is supposedly controlled entirely by the keyboard, as in you’re not using the mouse. That’s fancy and all, but I don’t see anything too shiny in this game. I’m just a girl riding a fox in a world that unfolds like paper, and every now and then there’s a narrative telling you what goes on with the story. Truthfully, I wasn’t even paying attention to the story as I was trying to figure out what makes the game special.

I get to the meat of things, and also to the part where it tells me to write stuff on my keyboard. At that moment, I realized this is a typing game, and I’m like “wow I haven’t seen that before”, but since I occasionally relieve stress by typing, I quickly found this game to my liking.

I continue to play the game, never using the mouse and never paying attention to whatever story there might be. I type my way through monsters, and then I type my way through debris, and then I type to put out fires or freeze water or whatever other application there can be.

The game was quite enjoyable, mainly for its typing gimmick, which overshadowed the whole story. The puzzles, as said earlier, got tedious after a while, and no cute feature of “just typing” was able to make the puzzles any more innovative. In fact, there was this one level where I just walked around and tried to find the exit for several minutes, and all because I didn’t know where I had started from. Later on, I struggled finding my exact place on the map as I backtracked all the way to the beginning, just to see if I had to go in that direction. If anything, it goes to show that the game has level design issues, but not anything too critical.

In Conclusion…

Overall, I’d have to say that Epistory is a good game if you like to relieve stress by typing a lot, like me. If you’re not into that, I can’t promise you’ll like it. I mean, maybe or maybe not, but a game that’s only about typing doesn’t necessarily appeal to a large audience.

However, talking about this game reminded me of the times I would spend in front of Newgrounds with friends, playing all these Flash games and animations. It was a weird place, but also had a lot of cool things to discover. Alas, I don’t think I’ll ever dedicate an article to a browser game, no matter how iconic it might seem. I might… but who knows.

Anyways, next article will be more exciting… maybe.