Probably the best typing game I've played, even though it has its issues, and I played it at a pretty good time just having learned a new keyboard layout (Colemak) so it was actually challenging. Lot of nice small touches all around, and the art style is quite good. The story and narration really didn't do anything for me, I doubt it's why anyone is playing this but it would've been fine without probably? The game is a little unclear on where to go sometimes, and the unlockable area system felt overly convoluted when it's a pretty linear game overall. While the movement system keeps your hands closer to homerow and is interesting, I still think it might've been better to have movement on the typical WASD and switch your hand position for typing. Also some of the battles later on were more tedious than fun, but the game ended right around the point I was starting to get tired of it so that's probably pretty good pacing. Fun game overall, if you enjoy typing give it a shot.

Having games focused around typing has always been a neat weird little concept, but Epistory just lacks a long-staying hook after the first hour or so. Movement and exploration feels half-baked with awkward free movement controls despite having areas built out of tiles and a confusing map that feels needlessly interconnected and large. There's very little variety with combat despite unlocking some form of complexity in the form of different spells you swap between because the only way the game ups the challenge is increasing the enemy count and how fast you have to react to them, which increasingly begins to feel unfair because of words that very regularly repeat themselves across multiple enemies. It's far too easy to end up in bad situations because you think you'll be typing a word for one enemy, only to see something else in the corner of the screen get hit instead or maybe sometimes getting stuck because you hit some other letter and got stuck typing that word with no way to backspace out. I wish I could care for the story but it's so overwritten trying desperately to sound poetic about what depression feels like, and even harder to care for in the moment when you're fighting off enemies or wandering around figuring out where the next thing to type is.

Honestly the biggest problem of them all is Epistory's core focus on typing just doesn't feel as satisfying as other well known titles with its gimmick. Typing of the Dead may be sort of a meme game, but it's still the best in its class because of how it fundamentally makes typing tense and satisfying to nail and get faster at. The loud tactile sound and instant visual feedback makes those games so much stronger as typing games, whereas Epistory has one sound for every time you finish a word and the same enemy fade out for finishing all of them, and one of its core mechanics weirdly even discourages typing fast with the combo meter being timed. Playing too quickly weirdly punishes you more, which should have been a red flag from the get-go.

It's a neat seeing a new attempt at this kind of game and I didn't lose very much considering this was free on the Epic Games Store at one point, but playing it just made me want to go play Typing of the Dead again or even just loading up Monkeytype to see how fast I could slap something out.

After logging just under 3 hours and looking up a longplay to see that I've still got 2 left, I think I'm probably gonna stop playing this for now, especially since my opinion on this likely isn't going to change with any more time spent on it. That isn't to say this is bad, not by any means--it's just a little too long for a typing game where the narrative is too light to really serve as a hook.

I honestly think my biggest issue is the parts between the typing. Navigating environments and switching back and forth from the diagonal movement controls which take some getting used to, back to traditional typing and trying to find your spot on the keyboard, started out a minor issue but it seemed to grow as the game went on. It just feels awkward when you're swapping between typing words and moving around every 5 or 10 seconds. The game is at its best during the sequences when you're thrown a bunch of words one after another and you don't have to concern yourself with movement--when you're in the flow state and making lots of snap judgements about how quickly enemies are moving towards you and how many letters it takes to damage them, it's pretty damn great. It's just a shame that what makes this unique from other typing games (its hybridization with an action-adventure-y game) is also where the most of its friction comes from.

(just posting my long-winded steam review because I ironically don't wanna type more about a typing game)

I believe I got this game in a bundle years ago, and when I saw "typing chronicles" I automatically stored it deep within the recesses of my mind. I'd never played any kind of game with typing as a mechanic, and my dumb judgy brain thought that 'typing game' = 'educational boring time.'

A few days ago, I decided to start systematically going through my vast untouched steam library, and while there have been plenty of middling experiences throughout my journey, this game shone like the gem it is. The art style immediately grabbed me, the story was poignant yet beautiful, and the music kicked some real ASS. It didn't take more than 2 minutes for me to understand how the typing mechanic would be super fun, and it kept iterating and building on the base concept at a great pace. Some of the harder combat encounters got my heart beating faster than any exercise I've done in the last year, so that's pretty special. It felt like such a strong combination of love and skill to make this game happen, and I can't wait to dive into Nanotale next!

I'm not a reviewer and I don't want to keep rambling on about why I loved this game, but if you're put off by the typing mechanic in theory, just try the dang thing first before judging it! It'll probably surprise you.

I've always had a soft spot for typing games but I also found myself thinking how awesome it'd be if there was a game that combined the typing mechanic but used it in a creative way and made a modern title out of it, complete with a story, fun mechanics, maybe interesting graphics...there's so much untapped potential there!

Epistory is that game.
It uses the typing mechanic as a way to attack hordes of enemies coming at you, and throughout the game, you get granted different elemental powers you have to use to combat different enemy types and it gets increasingly more and more crazy as it goes on. It's very fun!
The difficulty was just right but you can change it if you're struggling, so it's very much accessible.

Besides the combat, the game has a gorgeous origami-esque art style, and plays out on a map that you progressively unlock areas of and you are free to explore this map at your leisure. There's puzzles you solve and you can find treasures and the like hidden in places.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game and can highly recommend it to everyone.

"i'm good at typing, i don't need prove anything." so i decided to get this on switch. but if you're good at typing it's all the more reason to play this on a keyboard because the waves of enemies can get very chaotic very fast and suddenly you're mashing ABXY and wishing you just had listened to the warnings, dug out your usb converter from the closet, and connected it to the damn keyboard. also the switch screen is damn SMALL and you'll be squinting and crying and you can't see the words through your tears. good game otherwise

You type a shit-ton in Epistory and honestly it may be the best typing game I've ever played, though I think there's only like three other contenders. Too bad that doesn't make it some great game everyone has to check out, either.

If you don't like typing, you're going to hate this game. You don't have to capitilize or anything, but the words can get long and you will be typing basically 80% of the time you're playing. The combat works with you running around and whenever you press space, you're in typing mode. Typing mode is how you fight creatures that "attack", or basically just walk into you and cause you immediate death. So when you see a creature on the edge of your screen making its way towards you, you press spacebar, and now it has a word over its head. You will type this word, and chances are fair another word or seven will appear afterwards, too. Once all the words are typed, this threat is gone and it's on to the next.

There are powerups unlocked throughout the story, like fire which smolders away the second word if you type the first, ice which temporarily freezes enemies after you type the word, sparks which when you type a word (part of a list, can't be the final word) above an enemy it'll shock nearby enemies, lowering their word count, and wind, which upon word completion sends a wide gust out to knock that target and any target near it backwards. Spark was definitely the most useful as it helps clear the screen the fastest. Wind, the final one, was practically worthless and you'll likely only switch to it when the words are colorcoded and need wind to kill the target.

The story is pretty classic indie game stuff, unfortunately. Very vague for the longest time, needlessly and poorly poetic often (alliterations abound), clearly something to do with depression, etc. You will likely ignore it all. Towards the end, I eventually turned my speakers down and just listened to my own music while I played, and trust me, I never missed anything. The voiceover stuff is written on the foreground anyways so if you really care, it's there.

There are spots where you're stationary and a mob of enemies approach from all angles. These are the best part of the game by far and the most challenging. Towards the end of the game, there'll be quite a few enemies walking towards you at once and you'll have to type like a maniac in order to get out of it. The last one is actually surprisingly hard and took me a few tries, even with all the upgrades. There are no difficulty adjustments, so I think that final fight might actually stop a lot of people dead in their tracks. I consider myself pretty good at typing and again, they don't just hand you the ending. As previously mentioned, these are likely only possible thanks to the sparks upgrade, which helps clear the screen a lot faster of new foes.

If you like typing games, I don't see why you wouldn't like this one. It's not on rails, and maybe this is slightly detrimental to the experience, but the game lets you walk around the map and find not-so-hidden chests. These are very easy to find except for 1, which is on an island and you know you have to teleport to but you have no fucking idea where the teleporter is for it. It certainly didn't seem to be around the landmass near the island. So you, too, better also struggle and fail to find that fucker.

It was free on Epic, I'd recommend it for that price. Not worth buying for more than 5 bucks, though, and that'd be only if you love typing games.

I really liked what I was able to play of Epistory - it's practically my platonic ideal for what a typing game should be. But I have one problem with it that ends up being a pretty big, game-breaking, issue. This game has an egregious amount of screenshake. Everytime you type a letter, everytime you finish a word, just about everything you do causes screenshake and there's no way to disable it. I don't usually get motion sickness from games but this is one of the few examples that made me dizzy to the point of not being able to play it.

Epistory: Typing Chronicles is an adventure typing game officially released in 2016, by Fishing Cactus.

You play as a girl who is riding a fox with three tails. The gameplay is straightforward, you type the words that are located above the enemy or obstacle. But throughout the story, you will learn how to use four elements: fire, ice, spark and wind. Those elements will not be only used to surpass or defeat certain enemies (enemies whose letters are coloured with the same colour of the element needed to defeat them), but also to use each element's ability (for example, fire, burns the word after the written one; ice, freezes the opponent for some time;...).
The story is sometimes hard to understand, and at times it feels disconnected because it follows the writer's writing process, which is represented by how the world unfolds.
As you type your way through this adventure, you will get typing points, which are used to get access to certain parts of the map and to get upgrades. I recommend first upgrading your elemental abilities since I've found those abilities helpful, especially when fighting at nest sites (a site found on the map from where, when you stand at the designated spot, enemies will start coming to you from all sides).
Something which I highly recommend using is the adaptive difficulty, which is already enabled as default. This difficulty option learns how fast/slow you type and according to that it makes the game harder/easier.
The only thing I found sometimes irritating is that in the last two chapters the nest fights took too long to finish and sometimes in them, there were too long intervals between enemy waves, which further prolonged the fight.

All in all, a relaxing game, with a beautiful paper-like art style, with both great and relaxing soundtracks. It's not long, not boring. I recommend it even to those who can't type fast on their keyboard since this game offers the adaptive difficulty option. To sum up, it's a sweet and relaxing adventure.

I absolutely love typing games. Why? Because it’s a skill everyone needs to learn and it’s a unique way to play a game that you can only do on PC. I remember Mario Typing Tutor back in the ’90s and various programs on the Apple II and original iMac back in the early ’90s in school. Then there was Typing of the Dead and Typing of the Dead: Overkill. These games were so much fun and there just doesn’t seem to be enough of them. Epistory is a Zelda like an adventure in which you type for every action. It’s a game I unlike any other and no other typing game does something like this. Rather than an on-rails shooter or just a series of exercises you go on an adventure trying to cleanse the land of evil and darkness. The story doesn’t really make much sense, and there’s not really much of one, but it’s the adventure that counts here.


There’s also not really any characters to get attached to as you are the only one. You are a girl riding a three-tailed fox and whenever you see something flashing like a log, stone, chest, or anything like that you press space and you enter combat mode in which you type the words shown above the item. It’s a lot of fun running around gathering chests, increasing your score count, and in the dungeons solving extra puzzles to collect fragment pieces. While these just unlock art pieces that are mostly meaningless, the game’s adventuring is highly addictive and the challenge slowly increases as the game goes on. When you see bugs on-screen that slowly crawl towards you that’s when you can press space and type the words above them to attack them. In the beginning, it’s rather easy and slow going. Some smaller bugs just have a letter, while larger enemies have larger words. The largest word of them all is actually an optional “arena” with a boss that has something along the lines of a 30 letter word and it was the hardest arena in the game.

That’s not all though. You go around collecting four different elements in these dungeons to progress further in the open world. Fire, ice, wind, and electricity. You can switch between each ability by typing the name such as fire, ice, spark, and wind. These also need to be used in conjunction with strategy and the game’s arenas throw more and more waves at you. Some enemies can only be hurt with a certain element and your upgrades can make combat much easier and is essential to even finishing the game. Even if you can type 100 words per minute, you won’t finish the later arenas without upgrading such as spark which will burn a word on the adjacent enemy, or fire which will burn the next word for that same enemy. This is a great strategy for enemies with long words strung together. It lets you type as little as possible so you can deal with smaller enemies. If there are a lot of small enemies coming at you spark will jump around knocking them out as they only have one or two words each. Wind allows you to blow enemies back and ice will freeze them in place for a second.


You also need these elements to solve puzzles in dungeons, but not every puzzle requires typing. Some require sliding on ice in a certain pattern to press buttons, some require deciphering a code in a certain order. The puzzles are mixed up nicely and the dungeons are all different. One dungeon is full of darkness and you must type a word above a crystal to light up the area for a few seconds to proceed. Each dungeon was a blast and the open world was also really fun to explore with lots of hidden chests and optional arenas. I highly suggest trying to complete the game 100% as you will have a lot of fun, but the game does have some issues.

For one, the map is terrible as you can scroll around the map or hover over something to see description. You can only zoom in on yourself and zoom out all the way. The enemy variety is also atrociously small as the same bugs repeat throughout the entire game and it gets old. Like I mentioned earlier, there’s pretty much no story outside of a woman narrating your adventure is broken up sentences that don’t really add up to much other than feelings of what the girl on the fox might be thinking at that moment. However, I found the visuals to be strikingly gorgeous. Papercraft art similar to Tearaway scatters across the screen with bright vivid colors and a lot of detail. It’s not something I expected but the game never got old to look at.


Overall, Epistory has a great typing adventure mechanic that’s highly addictive with great dungeons, fun puzzles, and challenging arenas. The game looks fantastic with gorgeous papercraft art, but the game is lacking a story and any characters to care about. The overworld map is also mostly useless and hard to navigate and there’s no real reward for finding everything outside of Steam achievements. My biggest gripe is the severe lack of variety in enemies that just repeat for 5-6 hours straight over and over. At least the game provides a fun challenge and uses typing in a game that we haven’t seen before.

Epistory - Typing Chronicles is a game in which you play as a girl who rides upon a giant fox.

I loved the game's beautiful art style. The environments in the game are all quite unique, with their own coloration and atmospheres, and the attention to detail of the scenery and the architecture is quite beautiful.

I also enjoyed the soundtrack to the game, though I have heard some minor looping issues for some of the tracks. Nevertheless, its soundtrack is still quite lovely, and each track fits the mood of its level quite well.

I enjoyed the gameplay a lot, and I think it was a fun game to play. I've never played a typing game that is as fun as this one. I think it does an excellent job of combining typing with adventure, and the four different magic elements are a nice touch. I also enjoy games that let you gather collectibles, and I think it was a cool addition to this game. ^.^

The few issues I have with the game are these:

- The story was kind of vague, and I wish that certain things would've been explained.

- Some of the music tracks, as I mentioned, don't loop seamlessly.

Despite those flaws, I still very much enjoyed the game. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys adventure games, games with unique art styles, and games that let you explore quite a bit. ^.^