What is it and who made it? A simple game of competitive typing made by Christian Reuter.

What platforms is it on and how much does it cost? It just launched today on Steam for less than two bucks, including Steamworks features like achievements, trading cards, cloud saves, stats, and leaderboards. A free version is also available to download, minus the Steamworks perks, from typefighters.com.

How much did we play? Sampled all match types against CPU opponents at varying tempos and difficulties. Also played multiplayer duels against Tim in each of the different modes.

Any technical concerns, hardware requirements, or other details you should know about? Though the game uses Steamworks, I couldn’t find any integration for sending private game invites directly through the Steam friend list. Fortunately, it’s simple enough to create an open match for a friend or other players to join through the in-game lobby list. It’s also worth noting that the UI can be navigated entirely through typing out the menu keywords. Sure, a mouse can be used to click through menus, but apparently that will make your keyboard cry, so don’t do that.

Why should you play it?

• Keyboard Kombat: Care for a break from gory finishers and learning complicated movesets? Then step into the Typefighters arena, a one-on-one duel to the death where a sharp brain and nimble typing fingers are your only weapons. The game includes eight different match types: Stream, in which players type as many words as possible as they scroll across the screen; Attention, in which players score points by being the first to type words that pop up one at a time at random spots on the screen; Creative, in which players simply type whatever words come to mind and earn points for quantity and word length; Tug, in which players type words on a line that starts at the center of the screen and attempt to push it off the opposing player’s screen like tug o’ war; Lines, a tic-tac-toe battle to type words on a grid and score points for chaining words to color in a full line diagonally, horizontally, or vertically; Reflect, a Pong-like game where players take turns bouncing words back and forth at each other until one scores; Projectiles, in which players type their own words that shoot toward the opponent’s side of the screen while also typing out the incoming projectile words to block them; and Guess, in which players take turns typing a word that gets mixed in with two decoy words, and then the other player has to try to guess and type the correct word before it passes them. It’s a fun, diverse mix of modes that challenge different aspects of quick thinking and reaction timing with physical prowess in typing speed and accuracy.

• My WPM’s Bigger Than Yours: Typefighters can be played solo against AI–though there are only two difficulty parameters, both of which are fairly easy for anyone with an average words per minute proficiency–but clearly the most fun to be had is in multiplayer against other live players. For a game which consists of simple text font on plain-colored backgrounds, and is really no more sophisticated than a word processor, it’s remarkable just how much frantic competitive intensity builds while keyboard dueling against another human, especially in the Stream, Lines, and Reflect modes. In my games against Tim, there were a few times where he would go on a run, and then I would go on a run, and a game would come right down to the time limit and one of us would win by a matter of a point or two. When both of us would lock in on the same word, a sudden jolt amped up the pressure to type even faster, which in some cases led to me mistyping or unknowingly overtyping to start another word and getting thrown off for a critical second or two. It shames me to admit it, but in most of our duels Tim proved his WPM was a little bigger than mine…

• F-Bombs Away: So you might be wondering if the game’s dictionary allows for cursing. In short: Yes it does! Tim and I found out the best way possible in a game of Reflect, which started out benign but for a moment turned into a back and forth of a few choice four-letter words. Because once the first F-bomb was dropped, there was only one way to respond! I haven’t tried it, but the game even allows for creating and importing customized dictionaries, which I imagine could get very interesting. In terms of languages, the game comes installed with dictionary options in British English, American English, and German. I’ll leave you to discover the German curse words.

Parting Thoughts: Played solo or against other humans, Typefighters is quite the nifty little game. It has that addictive essence of a casual time-waster, except in this case playing Typefighters is actually productive since you’re able to practice, maintain, and maybe even improve your typing ability within a surprisingly competitive environment. If you’re curious, download the free version to see what it’s all about first. But the game’s so cheap that you might as well support the developer with a couple bucks, and maybe even gift a second copy to a friend so you’re guaranteed a dueling buddy.

What is Indie Quickie? It takes a lot longer to fully review a game than it does to get a good sense of what a game is. Even with a full-time staff of writers it would be impossible to fully review the thousands of games that are released every year. Indie Quickie is our way to offer snap impressions of the countless indie titles small teams and one-man game studios are releasing literally every single day, and to help guide players to worthwhile games they may not have heard about before.

Disclosure: A Steam code for Typefighters was provided to VGBlogger.com by the developer.