Existing at the incredibly bizarre cross-section between real time strategy and typing games, Touch Type Tale is a beautifully drawn, often frantic experience that’s both novel and fun.
I last wrote about Touch Type Tale in 2019 after playing it at Develop Brighton, it stuck with me, and has continued to do so since then, carrying me through the five year wait for its eventual full release. As those who read my original thoughts will know — and as those who didn’t can probably gather — I thought it was one of the most novel things I’d seen for years.
Beyond its novelty though, at the time I struggled to put into words the intensity of it. Playing it recently, I do have to say that it felt much easier in its earlier form, but it still had that feeling of direct command that only the earliest entries into the real time strategy genre had. I’m talking about games like Command & Conquer, from the golden era of the genre, where you felt very much like a character in the world. That feeling might have come from the fact that the genre (in that form, at least, I see you Megalomania, Populus) was largely nascent, and so we were perhaps not quite as numb to the viewpoint. I’m not entirely convinced though, because, through having to complete lots of micro-actions (reading, typing each letter, processing, repeat) in order to fund, build and manoeuvre your forces, Touch Type Tale brings that feeling back.
Touch Type Tale is entirely mouse interaction free. Everything from menus, orders and the changing of formations is given or interacted with through typing out the instructions on your keyboard. For tasks such as fuelling the mine cart you’ll just type one (normally capitalised) letter, however opening up your barracks or specifying which town you’d like to go to next will take much longer inputs. All of the words — bar names — are real words and so play well to the QWERTY layout, although I do wonder how that works with localisation into other languages.
As an RTS title, its a little bit more complex than your tower-offense games due to you needing to create and actively nurture your gold income which can come through manning trading stations that slurp up product, harvesting wheat or setting up mines with resources and workers to collect the haul. Because of this its possible to sometimes overfocus on your economy, or to not focus on it at all and fall to superior numbers. Despite the levels being quite small, with most having between 10 and 30 ‘capture’ spaces on the map (many which don’t have building spaces on them), it does often feel as though the developers had a specific path in mind for you, especially when the enemies attack quickly rather than when triggered by unit passage or the passage of time.
But, despite that complaint, there’s a lot of reasons to stick with it. For a start, it’s not only beautiful but that careful design carries through the UI (which even has ALT & CTRL icons as reminders) to the audio; Touch Type Tales sounds fantastic in action, and that’s not least down to the developers bringing the iconic Jim Broadbent in to do the voices and it’s clear that he had an absolute blast recording it.
There’s a lot to love here, but I think that — beyond the moments when I managed to flip control of the battlefield into my favour — my favourite moments were when it broke away from the standard point capture and I took in some of the goofier animations; loading the ballista, cooking food and the shooting-gallery style stage where the screen was divided up into the full keyboard layout.
Touch Type Tale is done so well that I don’t think anything is going to be able to follow in its footsteps for a long time.
Touch Type Tale is available now for Windows PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
