Crack your fingers and get ready to vanquish enemies with your words. Outshine first look

I am not the best at typing in the world. Granted I am not quite the slow two fingered mangler of keyboards, punching holes into the desk with every key stroke, but I rely on autocorrect entirely too much and have to sneak a peek at my fingers on occasion to make sure they are still resting on their designated locations in order to ensure I do not get lost and end up with a jumbles mess on my screen.

The key to getting better at this is of course practice, but that is just boring. Educational gamification did not do much better either. Perhaps the most fun I have had practicing typing besides heated arguments on an online form or Twitch chat has been typing of the dead. The problem is of course the theme. Slaughtering zombies with the act of typing words is fun to me but it is not for everyone. Since that game was released, we have not seen many new endeavors in the typing arcade genre. That is until I saw outshine, a new typing arcade game from the developer Fishing Cactus from Mons, Belgium who have been releasing games such as Ary and the secret of seasons (which we loved) , Epistory and Shift Quantum. 

They the studio has turned their eye to something with the unique mechanic of typing or as they call this genre Type 'Em  up. We got to talk to Sophie from Flying Cactus and try the game on the show floor at PAX East. 

This new game will be an arcade game with about 6+ hours of various biomes and story gameplay that mostly focuses on the action and the challenges in order to provide you with content that you want to play over and over again in an effort to challenge yourself. With an included leaderboard and a massive dictionary of words for the game to select from you should be entertained for hours.

As the description suggests your weapon of choice is your keyboard armed by your fingers. The game is in 3rd person perspective and the level moves your character forward for you as enemies and obstacles come your way. Think of this like your average SHMUP but instead of a spaceship you are controlling a cyber avatar reminiscent of the lawnmower man (does anyone remember this movie?). Besides typing words you are also armed with your shift/ctrl keys to dash left and right out of the way of obstacles. This might seem like a minor thing but it actually can get very hectic switching between typing and dodging a trap.

All words are randomly picked from a dictionary from one of the 11 supported languages and all resemblance of full-on sentences or phrases would be coincidental. The only time you type full story is in between the level where the game gives you some exposition on what it is that is going on. To keep things going it will have the player type out the story in a way that is much like you see with a karaoke machine.

Every so often at certain points you run into a boss fight with a more challenging enemy that will demand more from you then the random enemies before. 

If this sounds interesting but you tell us, "Well listen geeks I am just terrible at typing" then do not worry. The game will allow you full customization in how difficult it will be to play. If you want to take it easy you can reduce the speed you need to type at as well as how many letters you need to type or have correct for each word. Over the course of play you will get better and faster until you can up the difficulty if you want and from there you can challenge yourself and take on your friends and strangers via the leaderboards. 

I had a lot of fun playing this unique typing game, but quickly learned that my typing skill needs some work. I also had some issues with the dodging mechanic as it threw me off and I kept wanting to press space between words as if I was actually typing a document. Those are just some habits I would have to learn to control with more practice. I also wonder if perhaps Outshine is a good and fun way to become a stronger and faster typer and I look forward to trying out the completed game later this year.

Outshine is available to Wishlist on steam right now and is expected to release in September of 2022

About the writer: DadGeek (Rob) is the co-founder of GeeksVsGeeks. He is a product of the eighties and never let go of his geek interest and hobbies no matter how often someone told him to stop. His love for gaming and all things geeks has been part of his parenting style and permeates throughout the whole family. A family of Geeks vs Geeks