Teens seem to have mastered the practice of texting. Not only have they created their own codes and languages, they can type them out in a matter of several hundred characters a minute over thousands of messages within a given month.
TypeThis may not translate teen-speak, but it just might succeed in making players better at the technological art of texting. The skill-builder buried within this app uses points and competition to train texting accuracy, and the rate at which it’s executed. Can learning and training actually be a boredom buster, too? Find out after the jump.
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Letter Rip
TypeThis lets players take on their family and Facebook friends or random opponents supplied through the network that has downloaded and is actively using the app. The goal is to score as many points as possible within the 60-second time frame. In order to score those points, players will have to exercise both speed and precision.
Words will pop up from the bottom of the screen and as they do, you must text in the appropriate letter in the correct order. Doing so will yield the points that players so eagerly chase. But unlike your smartphone’s autocorrect, tapping the wrong letter will result in the rest of a word dropping from the screen, which forces the player to focus on the next word in the queue and can cost them serious seconds and scores. The key here is to always have one’s eye on the screen and look for the green highlighted letter box.
On the left, regular gameplay, with green boxes showing successfully keyed letters. On the right, using the power-up to see the forthcoming word.
Each letter properly typed will earn a player points, so even if a word isn’t fully spelled out before a player makes an error, there’s still potential to come away with partial earnings for their effort.
Know in advance that players are given a certain number of points. As time goes on, the points will replenish themselves and can be won through game play, but they can also be purchased in-app. Each round of gameplay takes up 15 points.
Word Play
What exactly will players be typing as they play? A fairly random collection of phrases, sentences and stories. As mentioned before, the words will pop up from the bottom of the screen. Only the word actively being texted out will be visible unless you use a specific power-up (more on that later).
Create your own text to type (left), and peruse your scores, letters typed and words typed (right).
Finding the sentences and stories that you are typing bland? Want to jazz up the structure to trip up your opponents? Choose the option where you decide what each player texts during a round of play. There is a maximum number of characters that can be used, of course, but it’s all up to you how complex or nonsensical these messages end up being. It could be the cheat you need to earn those few bonus points above your duel partner.
Prose Power-Ups
With points being the means to score a victory TypeThis, take solace on the fact that there are a few more cheats that will help players beef up those tallies.
For five coins, players can purchase one of these leg-ups. The first, the clock icon, adds an extra few seconds to the end of a round, meaning that if a wordsmith is on a roll that they can continue on powered by momentum.
Choose from one of three power-ups (left) and purchase more points for added gameplay (right).
Another icon of a star places valuable gold letters throughout the words a player is typing. Successfully keying these at the right time banks heartier additions to a player’s scorecard.
Finally, there is a glasses icon. This nifty power-up lets the player see the word that follows the one they are typing. Utilizing this move allows a typist to map out manual moves a few strokes ahead of time.
A 2-Player Game Played Alone
So, here’s one of the biggest problems with TypeThis: If you plan on playing against random opponents, it might take some time before your bracket wraps up. In reviewing the app for this write-up, the opponents in the best-of-three rounds, which were initiated over the course of several days and at varying times, never came back to play their part of the match. This wasn’t a problem in such games as Letris & Friends or Songs Pop, where random challenges are also offered and players didn’t need prodding when it was their turn, but within TypeThis, it’s a consistent issue. One might have better luck relying on email invitations to friends or inviting them to square off on Facebook.
Check the progress of your ongoing matches.
TypeThis provides scores based on how fast the texter gets through the words and the accuracy with which they tap the keys. Players will be provided with how many letters they typed and how many words they got through. The game won’t provide any sort of measurement to show improvement, so it’s up to the individual to remember what their scores are and how they change over time.
TypeThis or Type Elsewhere?
TypeThis falls into the category of being a good distraction, but that’s likely going to be temporary for most players. Without a consistently engaged audience playing the game, there isn’t much that will draw regular users or even encourage them to keep playing. With no true measurement of one’s improvement in the game with, say, a tally of keys typed or the presentation of an error percentage, there’s nothing beyond points, and the letters-words typed tallies to prove how well you’ve done.
These missing elements, along with a no steady stream of competitors, makes the game feel empty and lacking — something that regular participation from users would likely encourage, but seems far off.