Typoman | Wii U

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Move over Suze in dictionary corner, the Typoman is here and he needs your beloved vowels and consonants to escape a land fraught with danger. A puzzle-platformer with an almost blatant love of Limbo, Braid and Scrabble, Typoman flirts with greatness in the early rounds, before slumping to the canvas in its later stages.

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​by ​Rob
​Holt

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​@acousticmagic

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Platform: Wii U
Developer: Brainseed Factory
Publisher: Headup Games
Players: 1

Created by German developer Brainseed Factory, Typoman puts you in the shoes of a stickman made of four letters; H-E-R-O! You’ll be running and jumping from left to right with a beautiful, simple control system of left stick and B button. Whilst traversing this dark and intimidating landscape, you’ll also be tasked with spelling simple words, from letters that litter the terrain, and in turn solve puzzles. You can also pick these letters up with ZR, and throw them with the A button (you’ll be doing this to feed some rather corpulent and starved beasts, amongst other things).

The world of Typoman is a gloomy one, filled with gnarled trees, gas leaks and devils created from the letters H-A-T-E. There are some brilliant visual touches in the characters, especially your guardian angel who radiates with light when she drops in to protect you. It’s undeniable that Brainseed have used Limbo and Braid as a benchmark here, with maniacal spiders in particular reminding us of the former. In spite of this, Typoman contains some intriguing characters, it’s just a shame they never get much context - who is the Typoman? Why is he here? These questions never get answered, unfortunately.

The platforming is unequivocally solid, with some immensely satisfying sections asking you to play Tarzan, swinging from rope to rope, and others warranting precision leaps of faith over gargantuan gaps. Platforming fans will find these sections challenging but fair, a perfect balance that Brainseed must be commended for. The sound Typoman makes when you misjudge a jump was a particular highlight to us sycophants at PTC, a meaty thud greeting your demise.

The word puzzles are an original concept, but Brainseed haven’t quite got it right here, which is a real shame. Early puzzles require you to spell out simple words like ON to turn on (unsurprisingly) a lift, or feed a hungry monster the letter D to change its gorge into gorged. These are all really well done, but they never get any tougher (many words get repeated over and over), and that’s a real issue here. If you ever do get stuck (and you probably won’t), the immensely flawed hint system won’t just give you a clue, it’ll tell you the whole shebang whether you want it or not, like the office gossip after the Christmas party.

The first hour of the game is wonderful, and really had us inking down an eight or nine out of ten, but unfortunately the game repeats itself, and uses cheap tricks instead of a genuine learning curve to pad out the length of the adventure. We really hope Brainseed Factory take Typoman back to dictionary corner, add some more words, replace the over-long purposely irritating puzzles with genuine linguistic challenge, and they’ll have an underground classic. Until then, wait for a price drop to pick this one up.

Pros

• Solid, challenging platforming
• Fresh concept blending word-play & platforming
• Nice visual style
• Interesting characters
• Great basis for a more rounded sequel
• The first hour is brilliant

Cons
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• Hint system actually gives you the answers
• Later puzzles are irritating rather than challenging
• More varied vocabulary needed for the word puzzles
• Word repetition
• Story context

6/10