Blood Typers is a budget-priced fusion of Typing of the Dead and co-op survival horror

What makes a good videogame death? Dramatic timing? Screenshot-worthy spectacle? Or maybe just getting devoured by a monster because having to type 'AMPLE MINGE' to attack it induced a helpless giggling fit. While not a laugh-a-minute experience, Blood Typers has been a very pleasant and frequently funny surprise—a co-op fusion of Typing Of The Dead's madcap keyboard tutoring and the (still PS2-bound) multiplayer survival horror joys of Resident Evil Outbreak. Not bad for less than $10.

Despite being controlled purely through typing (with the shift keys to pan your camera left and right), this is a full-blooded survival horror game. A lack of puzzles aside, everything you'd expect in a Resident Evil or equivalent is present and correct. Inventory management, safe rooms, weapons with limited ammo, keys, complex navigation and an assortment of monsters attempting to eat your brains, with maps reshuffled roguelike style, giving each of the four scenarios (with at least one more coming in updates) decent replay value.

It's familiar stuff, except that you interact with everything through typing. Move across the room by typing the words on the floor. Grab items by typing 'grab [item]' when nearby, and fight enemies by switching to a combat stance with tab and hammering out the target words that float over each monster.

Keyboard warriors

It's a world away from the on-rails simplicity of Typing Of The Dead (which literally traded lightguns for keyboards), but that extra complexity makes for a great time, especially when you've got friends splitting up Scooby Doo-style—a decision that seems to fit all the better thanks to the game's low-fi aesthetics, chunky polygons and goofy cartoonish protagonists. Tone-wise, this is also more Illbleed than Silent Hill, with your crew being an assortment of film set staff trying to escape a cursed movie lot before its monstrous (and sometimes visually glitchy) inhabitants get them.

There's good reason to move quickly, too. While enemies can and will attack at any point, a ticking timer in the corner of the screen tells you when the next horde attack will happen, spawning a swarm of enemies that can sometimes be tactically challenging to deal with. It builds tension, and across the few multiplayer sessions I played, gave our group plenty to think about.

Even playing solo you need to study the map and optimise your route if you want to escape before ammo runs dry, and with a group, coordination and planning is half the challenge. The other half is being able to hammer out whatever the game asks you to without laughing.

My biggest fear (let's be honest, these googly-eyed protagonists make it more funny than scary) with the game was that the typing side would mesh awkwardly with the survival horror and co-op. I am very relieved to say that they go together like peanut butter and blood-red strawberry jelly. The controls work shockingly well, with even basic movement requiring constant engagement.

I especially like how each weapon's quirks are represented in how you have to type at enemies. Melee against single targets is safe if you can keep a consistent stunlocking WPM up, but mistakes leave you open to damage. Pistols are obviously safer but will miss shots on typos, making them potentially expensive if you're butter-fingered.

The flamethrower sets multiple enemies alight, with each stack of flame damage reducing the number of letters you need to type to deal the next point of damage. The SMG breaks words up into segments, doing damage for each chunk of a word, making it feel like you're firing it in bursts. My favourite weapon of choice—the adorably named Necrolexicon—is a spellbook with nigh-unlimited ammo, no need to reload and deals reasonable damage, but requires you to type longer words than any other ranged weapon, making it the tool of choice for literal keyboard wizards.

Mechanical keys

The two halves dovetail almost seamlessly. In combat, a coordinated group can decide who's going to be aiming high, low or mid, allowing the group to hit all three word targets on a single zombie simultaneously. Even prepared, a horde defense can fall apart to one panicked typo stream (or giggling fit), due to ammo wastage.

It just works as both a typing and horror game, and works smartly. You can also adjust the typing and horror difficulty levels separately. The former scales up the base word length you'll be typing, and the latter adjusts the scale and toughness of enemy spawns, and both feel immediately significant.

Still, there's a few balance issues that could be hammered out. Some of the playable characters are just objectively better than the rest thanks to their perks. The gothy Ophelia has a hugely useful extra three slots of inventory space, while caterer Wren can combine and distribute food items a little quicker, which I just cannot see making much of a difference. Doug the Gaffer has a flashlight that slows enemy movement, while set-builder Hadley is a bit faster building or removing barriers, which sounds useful on paper but in reality isn't much help.

Those balance quirks aren't a major issue but might harm the game's long-term replay value. Beyond that, at the moment it feels like the only down-side to Blood Typers is a handful of minor bugs. The procedural map generation sometimes obscured items with (intangible) scenery, and enemies could spawn in weird clumps. Through my three co-op sessions so far, the only major issue we encountered was one player being unable to target some zombies briefly. Irritating, more than game-breaking and far from enough to sour the experience, and our group is planning on playing more this weekend. Blood Typers is out now on Steam, costs a svelte £7.65/$8.99, with a juicy free demo available.