Choose your words wisely......
The genre of the 2D puzzle platform game is very popular at the moment, with a whole host of games hitting the Xbox store in the last year or so. To get your game to stand out its not enough for it to look good and play well, you need that spark of originality, and Typoman: Revised certainly has that. The central theme focuses on the power of words to affect the environment and aid your progress through the bleak and foreboding landscape.
You play the part of the hero, and there’s no doubt as to his role as the character is made up of the words HERO. You have to guide him through the hellish looking levels avoiding the vicious enemies made of words like HATE and EVIL. The puzzles that need to be solved involve moving and re-arranging letters so the newly formed word interacts with the environment. Some of the words form part of the landscape, just as a gate being the letter T of GATE, or a lever where you need to pull the letter L. The words you use are pretty basic at the start, like changing NO to ON to turn on a lift or re=arranging letters to make DOWN to lower a platform. Things become more difficult after that where you have to pick up letters to put with others, and by clicking Y you're send to a screen where you can assemble your word by using however many of your original letters as you need. Not having to use all the letters of course gives you many more options, and that’s often not a good thing as you could be racking your brains for quite a while until the solution dawns on you.
The originality of the puzzles means it doesn’t get boring, with some clever mechanics, such as having to cross a large pool of water, with a rain cloud above that spells RAIN, but with a letter D dangling from a rope nearby you swing it across to form the word DRAIN, and hey presto, the water drains from the pool and you can then walk across. Sometimes there is more than one option, like taking your chances with the word RUSH to get past a rock crusher quickly, or forming the word SLOW to make it easy to get past a little more safely.
The graphical style is very reminiscent of Limbo, a template that has become increasingly popular. It may not be an original look but its realised excellently and the graphics look stunning, with the dark depressing look conveying the sense of danger superbly. Scattered through every level are quotation marks which you need to touch to bring up a sentence or two of prose, which gradually add up to deep philosophical passage of text that sheds a little light on the overall story of the game.
Towards the end of the game I did find the game becoming a bit frustrating as the puzzles became more complicated, and had to take breaks as I became bogged down and stuck trying to find the right words to enter for a solution. A lot of players will probably end up looking for the odd answer online just so they can carry on, as none of the obvious answers seem to work and a bit of lateral thinking is required.
Overall Typoman brings something original to the genre and while fun to play it will tax the grey cells of even the best Scrabble players as they try to complete the game.
Developer: Brainseed Factory
Publisher: Brainseed Factory
Genre: 2D Puzzle Platformer
Price: £10.39