Creaking Bones

This is a horror game. Difficult to come to any other conclusion while desperately mashing the keyboard before my poor, hapless diver was eaten by toxic piranhas. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Typer Shark is part of a venerable genre of games which aim to improve typing skills. Released by PopCap Games in 2003, the original version of the game is sadly no longer available, but has found a new life on Steam with the Deluxe bit referring to design and HUD improvements, as well as some updated enemy types.

I admit going into this that I’m a complete novice at typing games, and an over-reliance on auto correct has degraded of whatever spelling ability I once had. Therefore I should be the perfect test subject to judge how effective the game is as a typing tool as well as entertainment.

First Impressions

FATAL ERROR: There was an error reading from the registry.

Admittedly not an auspicious start on launch. While this didn’t seem to impact gameplay initially, I did later find on restarting the game that my progress had not saved. It was still otherwise playable and there may be a simple fix for this, but just something to be aware of.

Getting past the error, I then named my unlucky yellow diver and was given the option to take a typing test, measuring both words per minute (WPM) and overall accuracy on a few paragraphs of appropriately sea themed text.

My initial results: 25 wpm with 23 errors. This is pretty abysmal, well below the average of 40 wpm stated by the American Society of Administrative Professionals. Even taking into account the creakiness of my bones and that I didn’t realise at first that proper capitalisation was necessary, it’s safe to say there’s room for me to improve.

Modes

First I explored Adventure mode, which has a range of difficulty settings (I was recommended easy, obviously). The main goal of each level is to electrocute the local wildlife and disrupt the delicate ecosystem in order to raid shipwrecks of precious loot. In practice, this consists of typing out the words or letters which appear on enemies to defeat them before they reach your diver.

Sharks involve typing out full words and were rarely a threat on easy, but just as in real life the true threat came from the piranhas. These only require a single letter but move much quicker and induce a greater sense of anxiety. The music, which is usually pretty laid back, draws clear inspiration from the Sonic drowning theme as enemies approach closer, which did not help matters.

The ‘Shark Zapper’ superweapon charges over time, and will clear all current enemies from the screen, but cannot be used for the boss battles. Oh yes, boss battles. There’s a nice variety – submarine, robot squid, and a metal shark which brought rushing back all the childhood nightmares induced by James and the Giant Peach- thanks Typer Shark.

There are a limited number of paths on the map to choose from, each with some different enemy types, and the difficulty ramps up as you progress. There are also secret areas which reward the player with an irritating memory game with a very short timer, but these only exist to acquire some extra bonus points and can be easily skipped.

Overall the mode took me about 1.5 hours to complete, even taking dying into account (yes, I did die on easy). I’d suggest setting pause to the spacebar in the options menu for less wild flailing when the doorbell rings and you’ve been concentrating on typing for so long your hands refuse to work.

The second mode is Abyss- where your diver will continue to descend into the bottomless depths with increasing hard enemies. This features the same sharks, piranhas and bosses, but without a goal I found myself getting bored quite quickly. On completing Adventure mode you can opt to continue onwards with increased difficulty, so I’d probably recommend that instead if you’ve not yet had your fill of Typer Shark.

Did it improve my typing?

To be fair, it would be difficult to do much worse than my initial baseline score. As my time with the game progressed I did find positioning my hands to be more intuitive. I spent less time staring at the keyboard and more time focused on what was happening on screen, though piranhas still repeatedly sent me into a blind panic as I tried to remember where x is.

However, the proof is in the numbers. On loading up the game again I faced down the same typing test, and I managed a commanding 53 WPM! I was so ecstatic in this progress that I didn’t consider how using the same paragraphs of text as before might have biased the results. In the name of science I decided to take 10 additional tests, each on a different quote using Monkeytype. This averaged out at 44 WPM, still respectable and a big increase from my initial starting point.

Conclusion

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how much effort was put into this simple premise. The map variety, boss encounters, even inclusion of a statistics page were all nice touches that weren’t strictly necessary but did help make the game more enjoyable. Being attacked by a shark with the word ‘Nob’ written on its side also passes as its own form of entertainment.

My budgies were less amused, mostly ignoring the screen in favour of their favourite game (destroying blinds and soft furnishings). Clyde did appear at one point to tap at some of the pirranhas, so either he was trying to help or was just appreciative of the bright colours and zap sound effects completing a word.

As for price, the game is currently on Steam for £4.25 but has been on sale for 85p (SteamDB). I got it even cheaper as part of a bundle of 23 PopCap classics which averaged out at 42p each. If you’d prefer to test the game for yourself, there is also a free demo available.

I didn’t regret spending my time with Typer Shark! Deluxe but would I play it again in future? Probably not, but I might change my mind once my hands stop hurting.