Typing Of The Dead, released in arcades 25 years ago, remains a masterpiece – entertaining, absurd, suspenseful and novel. I welcome any game that wants to follow suit, and there are a few of them. The latest of these is Blood Typers, a horror game where you tap your finger on the keyboard to fight monsters in a spooky mansion, but it’s not a rail shooter, so you’ll also be typing to explore and navigate.
There is currently a February 2025 demo available for you to play now.
If Typing Of The Dead was a riff on House Of The Dead – almost a modification of it, in fact – then Blood Typers clearly riffs on the original Resident Evil. You move through a spooky space, collecting orbs and other resources, managing your inventory, and finding keys to unlock recent areas.
Three-letter words appear on the ground, and typing them takes the character to that location. If there is an interactive element – an object to pick up, a ladder to climb, a jump to perform – you can perform the action by typing a command with a preceding slash, like in elderly text adventures. “/climb” to climb a ladder, for example. You’ll also need to apply the left and right Shift keys to rotate your character and throw your flashlight into all the murky corners of each room.
Would I prefer it if it was a rail shooter where movement wasn’t your thing? Perhaps, but knowing that enemies can come from all sides is undeniably stressful. The more extensive environment also has advantages: in addition to different characters with their own skill sets, Blood Typers can team up with up to four players, which means you can all tidy up rooms together or explore different parts of the procedural environments.
You can try the demo version for yourself on Steam.
