# typeshooter: a silly typing fps game idea

there is this old rail shooter called "the house of the dead". it is about shooting zombies, the game takes care of moving. there is a mod to it called "the typing of the dead" where the player has a keyboard instead of a gun and has to eliminate the zombies via writing the words or sentences above the zombies' head. it sounds quite silly but it is a super fun game. just look up a gameplay video about it to get the idea.

unfortunately there are not many typing games like that. i wonder what would i create if i had infinite time, willpower, patience, and resources. first i would totally create a real life version of the game. the player would need to stand on a roomba-like moving platform. whenever the player clears an area, the roomba would start moving to the next area. this way the game stays a rail shooter. the zombies would also have their own roombas that would be moving towards the player's roomba and the player has to eliminate the zombies standing on them before they reach the player's roomba. instead of a gun, the player would have a keyboard on themselves just like in the games and each zombie would contain a magical killphrase that kills them when the player types it. the player's roomba would be big enough to hold two people so even the coop part could be recreated. this should totally exist! for extra difficulty and realism myopic people could take off their glasses and see if they can beat the game that way!

i also wonder if one could create a competitive videogame out of this. take an ordinary fps like quake3, would it be possible to create a typing game out of it? in typing of the dead there is no need for movement, it is only about typing. a game like quake3 would not be a quake game without movement and guns. i would retain those elements. in my game idea you can freely move around. on top of the "keyboard" you even have two guns that you can attack with. you cannot kill with the guns. to kill you need to equip the keyboard and type the enemy's killphrase where the enemy is just another player. both guns have limited ammo but they slowly recharge over time so there is no need to pick up ammo and such. the first gun is a shotgun and you can use this to push enemies away so that they do not get close and or to unequip the keyboard of the enemy. on a shotgun pellet hit the game would force a switch away from the keyboard so that the enemy needs to start typing from the beginning again. use this gun to create distance or to keep the enemy from typing. the other gun is a projectile weapon. when you hit the enemy with the projectile, the game reveals their killphrase to you. now your goal is to equip the keyboard and type it. there are several strategies: you try to escape and gain large enough gap from them so that they cannot attack you while you type their killphrase. strategy b is to give up your passphrase them (allow them to shoot you) and let them start typing your killphrase. once they start, you start typing too and you just beat them at typing. strategy c is to get very close to them and shotgun blast them. i would make the shotgun super effective at very close range. this would push them very far away, allowing you to gain enough time to type their killphrase but also very risky since they could easily hit you with the projectile from such a short range. maybe other strategies would emerge through gameplay. note that every enemy sees a different killphrase for you so they cannot just shout it out in real life and have someone else kill you. also if you kill your enemy, they will get a different killphrase for you upon respawn.

is this fun? i am not sure but i would definitely try a round. and it is probably would not even hard to implement it as a quake3 mod. keep the shotgun and rocket launchers and reuse them as describe above. as for the "keyboard gun" i could use the built in chat mechanism. the engine would watch the messages and if a valid killphrase appears, it kills the associated player if the killer had the keyboard gun equipped. the fact that quake3 does not let you change weapon while chatting is a feature in this case. upon a shotgun hit i can make the mod switch back your weapon to the primary gun so you will need to quit typing, change to the keyboard and start typing again. once you learn a killphrase, i would always show it on your screen so you can mentally prepare to type them on any given moment.

even this could be reimplemented in real life: put a big barcode on every player's head, arms, legs, back, torso. give each player a barcode reader. i propose barcodes since they can scan pretty fast, work well with noise, and all you need to do is to scan a line from the other people's body. if you manage to get close to the enemy and scan their barcode, then you grab your keyboard and type the killphrase while hoping that you are faster than the other person. having different barcodes for different body parts could be used to grant different scores even. if you kill someone then that person cannot attack until they go back to a spawnzone, scan the barcode there and enter the killphrase to respawn. or if it is a round based game then they just leave the arena completely until the next round. to make it apparent what is the killphrase and who is alive and who is dead, players would mount a smartphone onto their arms which would display killphrases and the avatars of the enemy players and mark dead players with a cross. this way you can easily ignore dead players, they cannot pretend to be alive and ruin the game. i assume that modern barcode readers are wireless and can tell the smartphone the scan results so the phone can immediately display the passphrase upon scanning.

it is not only deathmatch that could be played with this. capture the flag would work too. get to the enemy base, scan the barcode at their base and then head back and scan the local base's barcode to get a score. obviously this needs to be done without a death and only one player can carry the flag at any given moment.

keep in mind that these ideas are quite raw and need a lot of polishing. but i think they do have a potential. it just needs a lot of playtesting to find the fun. well, at least i cannot say i have nothing to do when i ever get to my retirement.

published on 2019-01-27

to the frontpage