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Ghost Writer's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #10 | 3.898 | 3.898 |
| Gameplay | #16 | 3.469 | 3.469 |
| Overall | #17 | 3.474 | 3.474 |
| Aesthetics | #21 | 3.673 | 3.673 |
| Sound | #35 | 2.857 | 2.857 |
Ranked from 49 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Awesome ! much better than my game I enjoyed playing your game a lot !
Thank you for your kind words, but don't sell yourself short. We all made something awesome this weekend.
This game is a bit harder for me since english is not my native language so it takes me extra time to type the words. Despite that the idea fits the theme and it's truly innovative, nice game!
Thank you for your feedback! In the panic of trying to get the game done, I forgot to account for people that don't speak English as their primary language or are just learning English. Luckily, it works with other keyboards with Germanic letters because of how I was able to code it, but that's as far as I thought ahead for optimizing it for people that speak other languages. I will definitely add a difficulty adjustment after the competition is over so you can enjoy it at the pace you're comfortable with.
took me a second to understand. I thought I just had to type left/right since those were the starting words. very cool though! reminds me of playing Mavis Beacon. I did find that sometimes I guess i'd type too fast, or not fully press keys and it wouldn't register. I'd be left with half a word after typing it in its entirety.
Yeah, I probably should have kept the starting words in the same context, but I thought maybe it would help to understand why you're typing. And I never even heard of mavis beacon, but I definitely played some similar flash typing games in the 3rd grade. Most of the inspiration comes from Epistory. And there's a problem with how I handle inputs right now where it only takes the input if one input was pressed on a single frame, so it could be something related to frame rate. Thank you for your feedback, I'll try to recreate it and improve it after the contest time is over!
this is the game that taught me to type lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Beacon_Teaches_Typing
I've never played Epistory, but it looks fun!
Good game! Creativity is awesome...Guitar Hero meets Typing Tutor!
People saying it's hard...I was able to knock out a couple of high scores in no time. Enjoyable and had some good addiction. I like the added touch with the shop and hats!
Recommendations...definitely need some increasing difficulty; start out easier and increase the mines coming at you. Difficulty increase could also be done by the length of the words. Start of game has 3 letter words...level 5 has "Wayfarer" and "Bookkeeping". Also needs more variety of words...I kept getting "Vagabond" over and over. And most importantly...need a QUIT option.
Hi there! Press escape to quit. (I knew I forgot something in the game instructions...) I'll probably add that you can write quit to quit the application too. And yes, the lanes are like a weird fusion of guitar hero meets subway surfers. Pretty much nailed what I was going for. I'm glad to hear that it wasn't too difficult for you. I'll definitely add difficulty selections when I go back to this. Also thank god you like the hats cause that was 6 hours of stress coding/modeling/drawing that I'll never get back.
Also currently the words increase in difficulty if you are further away from the lane it's on, as well as every other time you get hit, the words increase in difficulty. It used to be that there were only linear increases in word length but I got feedback from friends that it was too hard for them. So how the difficulty works is that there's a pool of words ranging from x to y, inclusive, letters long and then the next difficulty pool will be y to z, inclusive, letters long, and so forth. So when "danger" appears there should be 7 and 6 letter words to go from one end to another, even if you only see a four letter word right next to you. So I pretty much have what you said, except its related to lives remaining rather than time.
The spikes however currently accelerate linearly during the duration of the whole level. That acceleration may be too slow currently, and I'll probably lower the starting speed so people don't struggle as hard at the start and those that are good can have a challenge later. The spikes are currently just prefabs that spawn in at set intervals, and they are hard coded into an array that gets chosen at random. I wanted to add a better difficulty curve but I ran out of time.
Words are small selection because I wanted them all to be movement related terms and also game jam be like. For instance you have hop and skip for lanes right next to you and then you have excursion for the furthest lane at the highest difficulty. I will definitely change the terms when I update the game later.
Thank you for enjoying and play testing my game!
This can be used for some many things. Like a language learning game for example. I agree that this game is super hard. Not so much for the same reasons. I've been coding for a while and have a decent wpm so those words weren't too hard...the problem was it kept locking me out from typing at random intervals. I have a feeling this was my browsers fault but I thought I'd let you know. The shop was a great idea and makes it sort of like a rouge lite. You could add a difficulty curve that scales with how accurate you are or even just spacing out the mines more vertically to give the player more time to type would make a ton of difference. Overall it's a very fun game and I enjoyed it. That UI was cool looking as well.
Thank you for your feedback! Difficulty balancing (As you can see from pretty much every comment) was a real struggle for me. I got too used to the game I was making and balanced it around me and not a stranger. I have a lot of ideas to expand on this game and I wrote the code to be pretty adaptable. So when the competition is over, I'll definitely revisit it. Current planned features are difficulty selection, in speed, spacing and words, and a larger vocabulary of words. Also I plan on implementing the coins in the game rather than just giving them at milestones. Additionally probably some palette swaps and other cosmetics.
As a language learning tool is interesting, because I feel like its hard to find addictive educational games, especially in the typing category. Epistory and Typing of the Dead are really the only games that I know of. Another comment is somebody that speaks English as a secondary language so I also have to account for people of different backgrounds that I didn't plan for when making the game.
Once again thank you for your feedback!
The Game Is Way To Hard! I kept on losing you should make the words 3 letters to make the game more player friendly.
Yeah, I kind of let the difficulty of the game escape me while making it. I don't want to make any major balance changes to it now, but when I revisit it I will rework the word spawns to include a preview and predictable length of the words.
ok
Really cool! It's different, but I found it a bit hard. Maybe the length of the words could be smaller in general? (maybe up to four letters). Otherwise, great game, good job!
The word difficulty is based off the distance the player is from the word they're typing. When I first implemented this it was 1 lane away was 3-4 letters, 2 lanes 5-6, etc. That was impossible. So I toned it down to be 1 lane is 3-4 two lanes is 4-5 and so on, and every other time you get hit those words would increase by one letter. Through the hours I spent testing the game I guess I got really used to the words because I thought I found the perfect balance point. In reality I probably should've let my friends playtest it first and give me feedback. When I revisit this game I plan to add a preview system to see the next word. And by doing that I will make sure that the words are 3 letters followed by 4 then 5 for each time you get hit.
Thank you for your feedback!
It's a really cool game, but I find it really difficult. Like amazingly difficult. I'm not too bad at typing, but I do have to look at my keyboard now and then, and certainly have to while typing random words. The high score default being 5k is disheartening haha. This game was really cool overall though. I like the interpretation of the theme a lot.
You know before making this game I thought I was average at typing, I guess not, lol. Its easy to often think you're worse than you are at your own game, because you spend 72 hours with it. In hindsight, I probably should've gotten my friends to play it and base the high score off of theirs, but I decided to do one run and choose a value a little lower than my own. That way there's a milestone to reach but it wouldn't be too hard. I guess I probably should've made it 2500 instead... Thank you for your kind words!
Interesting take on the theme, and I like the look of it. it's very hard. I think it would be a bit better if the words you haven't moved to didn't randomly change when you move so you could plan multiple moves ahead. as it is now watching for what the new words will be is distracting from anticipating the obstacles
Thank you for your feedback. I thought of this idea when making it, but didn't have the time to implement it. I feel like I took a lot of inspiration from Epistory when making this game, and they usually show up to three words ahead. It was hard enough implementing the typing system as it was in only 72 hours, but if I revisit the project, I'll definitely implement a preview system.
the main thing I would change is NOT resetting every word every time you type one. I get confused by it.
Yeah, I definitely toyed around with the idea, but I wanted words to be harder to type the further away they are. With how it's currently programed that's impossible. The only way I thought of implementing this is by keeping all the words at the same difficulty level. I'll definitely go back and try to implement a preview if I return to this project.
This game has made me acutely aware of how terrible at typing I am, but is nevertheless exceedingly well done for having been made in such a short time.
Hats off to the dev, and best of luck in the jam! :D
Thank you for your kind words! It has also made me very aware at how much I suck at typing as well, but at least I can write Circumnavigation in like less than 2 seconds. (Don't worry, I took that one out of the game.)
This game have nice graphics. The ghost is cute, but his movement could be more smooth when moving to another lane. Woud be interesting have a in-game tutorial. The gameplay could be adaptive, because is very hard to type fast at start our brain needs to memorize the keys position, and I have a worst memory LOL. I liked the songs too! I want to see the future improments.
Thanks so much for the feedback! I really wanted to add animations/tweening the movement but I haven't really messed around with it before in unity and unfortunately ran out of time before I could tackle it. I definitely will revisit it in the future and make it a little easier at the start with more flushed out explanations of the controls. Thank you for playing!
AHHHHH!!!! why make a typing game. >o< I feel so stupid. but honestly it looks good. I'm just a slow typer.
I couldn't get the idea out of my head the day before the jam, and I loved playing through Epistory, and at the start being like "I suck at this" and then at the end, "I still suck at this but I'm way faster." I feel like a typing game truly has a really high skill ceiling so I think its perfect for this jam. Also yeah, I am bad at it too. My highscore is like 5768.
controls are weird, they don't work
Mind telling me what device you were using and what keyboard layout you have?
I7, windows 10, and a normal keybord
Make sure caps lock, is off, and you're not holding shift down. Currently the game has no way to check for capital letters. I tried to fix it but I guess still missed it.