Blood Typers Review: Fast-Paced Typing Horror

Many survival horror games are played with a controller or a keyboard-mouse combination. Blood Typers bucks the trend to make you rely on a keyboard. Your movements, investigation, and combat all require your typing skills. As you navigate a haunted mansion and survive, the typing gets more complicated. Will your skills catch up to help you survive or will the horrors prove too difficult to overcome?

Blood Typers succeeds in creating a unique survival horror experience thanks to the typing mechanic. You must stay on your toes and pay attention to your surroundings more than ever. Character variety helps you choose a specific playstyle. Having your resources get reset every mission and a lack of a tutorial does hinder some of the game’s potential. If you are looking for a new way to experience survival horror, Blood Typers is definitely worth a look.

Blood Typers is available on PC for USD 9.99.

Everything in Blood Typers requires typing. Even moving around.

Story – Horror Director Wants You

You play as one of eight members in a horror film club at a local university/educational institution. The team is looking for a big break and it arrives in the form of an invitation from a famous horror director. No one’s seen him for years and it is suspicious, but it’s too tempting to pass up. The meeting place is a haunted mansion and it quickly becomes apparent that the director has some nefarious plans.

The plot is similar to Massacre at the Mirage as an ordinary day is turned into a nightmare. Eight adults exploring a mansion where supernatural creatures threaten their existence is not unusual for a horror game. You find notes around the mansion detailing what nefarious plot is at hand along with some exposition. There’s nothing unique about the story itself and it’s easy to forget when you are doing your best to survive.

Notes scattered around the rooms provide more information.

If you want a setting that sticks to horror tropes, Blood Typers does that successfully. The setting isn’t revolutionary but sets up the story nicely. You don’t get much exposition about the enemies you face but you do learn that the mansion trip is a bad idea. What truly sets Blood Typers apart is the gameplay and how it turns up the horror element. The story and exposition assist the gameplay rather than be a central component.

Gameplay – Type Quickly to Survive

Unlike other survival horror titles like Terminus: Zombie Survivors, everything you do in Blood Typers is through the keyboard. Combat, investigation, even movement is controlled by the words you type. You have a map that covers each room you visit along with any items you see. Every mission has a goal to put five red video tapes into the player before moving on to the next area. You can play by yourself or with friends as everyone works towards a shared objective.

The faster you type, the faster the enemies go down.

Accuracy and timing are everything as commands are invalid if you make a single mistake. Enemies exploit any mistake to get closer and attack. Choosing the correct difficulty is crucial to your success as overestimating your typing skills can make the experience worse. There’s also no way to pause as time keeps ticking.

If you take too long, an in-game timer spawns more enemies to pursue you. While intense, the lack of a tutorial explaining many of these concepts would be useful. Many things aren’t explained and you must figure them out on your own. Things like checkpoints requiring reels or finding essential items shouldn’t be something left to self-discovery.

Fighting isn’t hard but you can choose to run away.

Controlling everything through typing is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it has the potential to make the game run quickly if you know what you are doing. Aiming accuracy and imprecise movements are impossible if you type well. But the immersion of the game is muddied by the constant reminder that you must type. You never truly adapt to the atmosphere of the game as a result.

Immersion – The Keyboard is There

The atmosphere and sparse resources force you to focus on survival. Enemies could be around any corner. Doors are broken down once your presence is known. Exploration is tough and combat makes you react quickly. After time passes, more enemies spawn and lock on to your location. It’s a good mix that keeps the tension and forces you to hurry. You are likely going to make a mistake or two by rushing through the mansion.

You never get away from the fact that everything requires typing.

At the same time, it’s difficult to truly immerse yourself in the game because everything is dependent on typing. It’s hard to feel threatened by enemies when melee attacks are perfectly capable of defeating everyone. Ammunition and firearms are useful but feel like extras instead of valuable tools. You can’t carry your inventory across missions which is good for multiplayer but makes your gathering efforts feel pointless.

While gameplay is certainly unique, the act of typing can’t help but clash with its own horror theme. You never truly feel immersed in the game because you know everything depends on what you type. Peering past a corner or barricading a door is just a command. That doesn’t dampen the fun but it does prevent you from fully diving into the setting. It’s hard to be scared when typing is your best and only solution.

Typing to get a crossbow doesn’t feel immersive.

Audio & Visual – 3D Horror Environment

Walking around the mansion of Blood Typers is creepy and dark as you would expect in a horror game. Even if the tension is somewhat tempered by the typing, you never know what’s around the corner. Your environment constantly changes every run with shifting item locations, giving you a new challenge every time. There’s nothing groundbreaking about the visuals but it properly conveys the desired atmosphere.

The audio you hear in each mission doesn’t intrude on your gameplay though your typing may drown it out. There may be unfamiliar sounds like a door being attacked but it’s nothing you can’t adapt to. Like the visuals, it’s unremarkable but it does its job to let you know what is going on.

Blood Typers was reviewed on Steam with a code provided by the publisher from Outer Brain Studios.