Remember the typing game, Letters 2, that was reviewed here in November? Well, the author, Hannu Pelkonen, has released a very significant addition to the series: Words!
After entering your name and choosing a language, words begin to scroll from right to left. Stop the words from reaching the edge of the screen by typing them! The bottom of the screen displays your score and the high scores of previous players. Each letter in a completed word is worth 1 point, and typing a wrong letter will cost 5.
It sounds flawlessly simple. However, if you're unlucky enough to get stuck with two overlapping words that move at a similar speed, they could be unreadable for the entire width of the screen. This is rare but frustrating and a guaranteed loss.
Though lacking the power-ups of Letters 2, Words uses the same slick interface and addictive dynamic high score display that updates your rank in real-time while you play. In addition, since most typing is done to form words, Words proves far more useful for improving ones typing chops. Unfortunately, the automatic high score submission is buggy and often fails to submit a score to the server properly. A minor nuisance to an otherwise polished, enjoyable and useful typing game that features four (4) different languages: English, German, Finnish, and Swedish.
The world of typing games is small, but Words and Letters are both worthy additions. Mavis Beacon and The Typing of the Dead will welcome Pelkonen's creations with open arms... and you should too! Click.
Got 1402 points. That makes me 33rd in the past 24 hours, and 212th in the last 7 days.
i got to 4th place with 2390 but my score didn't register. got screwed on autopoisoning. anyways, the words get way blurry at the end and you see double letters and it lags.. still a pretty good game. i got to relearn the periodic table of elements all over again
seems the scoring doesn't work on firefox. my scores won't go through in ff but the go through in ie.
One of the other major flaws in this game is that the scrolling is choppy. My games end because I can't read the word, not because my typing can't keep up.
The absence of powerups makes this a much better game than Letters, in my opinion -- there were quite a few times where I'd be penalised for pressing a letter which had just been removed by a bomb.
Words seems to be a great way for me to brush up on my touch-typing... I'm currently #9 for the day, and I'm probably going to be spending far too much time on it this week :).
Fun! Makes more sense than Letters, as a typing practice game.
Another minor nuisance to watch for is when the last letter of a word you just finished is the same as the first letter of the next word. You don't have to type it again, and if you do, you lose points.
Hi, I don't know if it's just my computer but I found when the words speeded up, around the 1000 point mark, they became really hard to read because of the flickering. I am playing on a laptop, so it might be my screen.
Nice game though! (c:
Well this is a pretty nice game. I moved up to 108th place my first try. It is kind of frustrating when two words overlap eachother, and also when the words start moving at a good speed, the letters seem to somewhat melt into eachother making it difficult to read. Other then those drawbacks, the game is good, and it helps you type better!
Hit 1590 points and 50th rank on the first go. An excellent typing game that beats the pants off TyperShark.
Every so often my computer clicks off the screen I guess, but I'm positive I have no spyware or virus's so I have no idea why. Maybe I will have to get around to fixing firefox, but every time I open that browser it freezes... Well I got to 106th daily before it ended up clicking off and me losing.
Who every heard of "mikrophone"? I think it uses a british dictionary, I get some interesting words. Mallactran anyone (or something spelt like that)?
Agree on the scroll speed issue. I had a hoot typing the words, but as they got faster, I couldn't READ them because of the "blur" as they went across the screen. I'm still not sure what word I went out on because I couldn't tell if it had one "r" or two of them!
Good game, could use some cleaning up of the scroll to be perfect!
Oh yeah, 5th place for the day. And it would've been first, if it hadn't been for that meddlin' mannogalactan.
For those able to reach the levels at which the words become blurry, I'm wondering if increasing the refresh rate on your monitor helps at all?
It does seem to have a problem when the words get too fast (once you get past 1000 points or so), and it's nothing to do with monitor refresh rate. I've also caught a couple of typos -- at least, words which aren't in any version of English that I know, or in online dictionaries!
Despite this it's still the game from this site that I've had most fun with in the last couple of weeks.
I noticed that as well, Jon.
Also of note:
http://img424.imageshack.us/img424/6563/pr0n6sm.png
Internets these days, with their dirty dancing and ghetto-blaster boom boxes...
Words? Soon the sequels will be Phrases, Sentences, Paragraphs, Pages, and Novels!
Actually, I probably end up clicking off because I'm on a laptop, use a mouse, and never disabled the touch pad.
By the way, the scores have increased dramatically, what was my 108th spot is now 208th, but I did just get 90th with 1699.
The bleeding of the words seems to come from that the word's speed is set sby how far it jumps per jump, so in the beginning they say, move 2 pixels per jump so it takes them 100 jumps, but later it could say move 10 pixels per jump so it takes 20 jumps. But this causes it to no longer be smooth by jumping so far. That's just my guess.
Novels! What a great idea for a typing game! The score per word typed could be affected by a multiplier that would be the current page number of the book you're typing out. Difficulty levels could be based off of the content, such as a "very hard" difficulty setting being some sort of science textbook or something along those lines. With all of the Creative Commons/GPL licenses out there, I'd bet this would be possible without any copyright hassles, too. I love it!
A fun game...funky words. Here's a couple I ran into: triumpf and mtbf.......MTBF? WHAT?!?!
LOL @ dave. =)
And at MTBF. Hahaha. Mean time between failures.
Novels is a great idea! You could catch up on the public domain classics and improve your typing skills at the same time.
I agree about not missing the powerups, and the scoring issue is strange. It's worked on Firefox 1.5 for me, but failed on another computer with an older version of Firefox.
almost went out on the word (or not word) "contemt." i thought it said content, and typed that over and over, continually losing points, until i realized that it was an M...(contempt?)
and i finally went out at 2322, 24th in the last 24 hours, on "neglicence"
...i dunno what dictionary these words are coming from
O_O! Well this is coincidental. I played once earlier today and just played once more now. I got 1 point away from my previous score! I can see my name twice 159th and 160th! Just goes to show how consistently bad I am at typing ^_^
Now I just need to brush up on my Dvorak skillz and starting showing people that QWERTY is the worst layout ever...
>_> dvzine.org for more info
died at 1986
"bankruptcy" killed me =P
I learned a new word today: Desorb. =]
Anyone else get a word not in English?
I lost because it had a letter not in the English alphabet.
Daaang.
My score was 1424. I would have gotten much higher, but it's hard to read the words as they go by. The letters start to blur... and that's not cool.
:(
I thought I was a great typist averaging around 6 characters a second in a free program I've got but all your scores over shadow mine of 1145. (850 first go).
The blurryines as the text goes across the screen is annoying though. . .
i've tried three times now, each time finishing the top 10 for the past 24 hours. each time i get a hash check error so it doesn't save my score. i tried it in firefox and with the imbedded IE extension for firefox. it's frustrating! anyone else getting this?
great game though!
The problem with the words jumping at higher speeds could be solved by increasing the movie's framerate, but just cranking that up probably isn't the best solution.
Instead, simply moving the end-wall closer and closer would create the same effect as speeding the words up, without making them difficult to read.
I didn't see any contact details to suggest this to Pelkonen though. Ah well.
The "jumping effect" is caused by cheat protection.
Words and Letters are not frame based games like flash games usually are. Speeds of words are timer based not frame based, so if your computer is too slow to show the game at full fps it starts to skip frames. This prevents cheating by slowing down the computer. Have you tried if playing at medium quality helps?
Thanks for great comments and improvement ideas.
Thanks for dropping by, Hannu. =)
I agree with David, just above your comment, who suggested narrowing the play field rather than speeding up the text. That may allow for a wider range of computer specifications to maintain a satisfactory experience with the game at higher levels.
And what is it that prevents Firefox from updating a score successfully?
I was having problems with the score saving. I shortened up my name and it work, so maybe it doesn't like names past a certain amount of characters. Maybe..
Good call Ishgabibble, that was exactly it! I was using 'jayisgames' and that was apparently too long. Shortening it to 'jay' did the trick. =)
cheers!
re the scores: oh, very nice, thanks ishgabibble.
if you're still reading, Hannu, congratulations on some nice work =]
I'm thinkin its a 10 character limit
Must be 9, jayisgames is 10 and it never worked.
The score saving bug is now fixed.
Thanks for finding out when it appears. I haven't noticed it because my nick have never been longer than 9 characters :)
Damn! In the finnish list it wont accept the letter Ä! Its frustrating!
definitely easier than letters. I don't like when the words overlap because then you can't see what letters you need to type, and a few words are spelled wrong...or i really can't spell.
how d'ya play this game??????????????? I am absolutly clueless
This was one of the first games I played when I found out about this site. I still enjoy it. The words have definitely become easier, though... They used to all be scientific or British spelling or just very, very strange. They seem to be "normal" now. Hmm.
2628: 3rd of the day, 21st in past 7 days, 125th in past month =D
i still got a lot of scientific words, interesting.
4059 points, 1st in last month. I was so tired by the end that on the last word I could not get my fingers to start moving, which finished me off. It probably didn't help that I had played another game just before, without a break at all.
as im argentinian, it was for me a lot of work typing english words... but is cute
score-807. I've noticed that my left hand aches considerately more than my right...
208th last 24. i didnt know some of the words though!
Love this game! Rather relaxing, even if the point is to type as fast as you can. I'm not very good yet, but I know this is one I will be playing for quite a while.
This is by far the most useful typing program i have ever used. Normally the typing is so boring that my interest wanes long before any benefit comes from it. On a sidenote it is also the only program i have seen to allow me to switch to the swedish language. That part has allowed me to fine tune my comprehension skills by simpling learning every new word that shows up.
Don't think anyone's played in a while. I didn't do so good and got 1st in 24 hours, 7 days, and last 30 days.
sigh.
Too bad. Looks like host site is dead. Is the game available anywhere else?
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