Epistory: Who Knew Typing was so Stressful
Epistory is an adventure-typing game that tells the story of a writer trying to find the muse for their latest book. In the game, players explore the world accompanied by a giant fox, typing their way to victory. The game’s mechanics are fairly easy to pick up and players can choose to select their difficulty or choose the adaptive difficulty. For my play-through, I chose the adaptive difficulty and there were only a few moments in the game where I felt legitimately overwhelmed.
Screenshot from the Epistory Presskit
Overall, I would definitely recommend this game. Mechanically, I think that it works well and the artistic style of the game is beautiful.
Epistory is a game about a writer looking for inspiration for their next book. But it also appears to be a story of loss. As you traverse the world, you learn more about the character, how they’re feeling, and also a little bit more of why they might be going through this. There are moments when the character’s thoughts break through the narration and you get a peak into their emotions. Most of the time, the player is interacting with the world by typing out the words that pop up on screen. For the story, you unlock more by just walking around the world, at times I wondered if I had missed pieces of the story by not exploring the right areas. What’s dope about this game is the way that the world does literally unfold before the player as they unlock new areas. You collect fragments by defeating enemies and clearing out the trees and patches of corruption that exist in the land. When you stand on a part of the map that’s waiting to be unlocked, the world folds together in front of you to reveal the next area.
Combat can be stressful in Epistory. I’m not the quickest of typists, I’m a little too out of practice for that and really have to get in a rhythm to be successful. For the mini-boss and boss areas, your character is locked in a single location and you have to finish typing out the words over the enemies’ heads before they reach you. In Epistory, if you get hit once, you have to start that particular challenge all over. As I mentioned at the beginning, the adaptive difficulty never made me feel super overwhelmed, but it did get stressful at times. Especially in one section where I saw the word “Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic,” which is the longest word in English that appears outside of literature.
Where Epistory fell a little short for me is in the word choice. While most of the time in the overworld, the words they chose matched with the objects that I was interacting with, there were times when it felt like they just flipped through a science dictionary to pick really long words for the player to spell out. For example, when I got the electricity magic, I was spelling words like tesla and electrolysis. But, during combat, the words just seemed to be wildly long science words. I wish that the words would have more closely matched the areas that I was exploring when it came to combat.
The last typing game that I remember playing was a basketball-themed game when I was a kid. Epistory caught my eye with its visuals and because it used typing as the main mechanic for the game.
Overall, I would definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a fun way to get better at typing. I’d recommend checking out the different difficulty levels to see what works for you. I’m not sure about all the details of the story, but I can definitely relate to the main character as they searched for inspiration for their next book. This year, it’s felt almost impossible to write anything creative. Playing Epistory made me feel seen as the main character and I struggled with something similar. While I know that a lot of writers and creatives have a hard time starting with the blank page, sometimes it helps to see a direct reminder that other folk deal with that too. Epistory was a great game, even though it has a few smaller issues. Check it out if you’re looking for a fun break from typical game controls, want some gorgeous visuals, and feel like a challenge to increase your typing skills!
