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I'm a sucker for words as gameplay; though I burn out on them pretty quick, I've been a big sucker for games like Bookworm Adventures and Words For Evil. Having not actually seen more than a few screenshots, I had wishlisted Epistory almost immediately, but never got the motivation to get it, since $15 seemed really pricy for a game like this. Then I saw it was on a Humble Bundle on the $1/PWYW level, and absolutely swooped it up.
Within the first hour or so of playing Epistory, my brain had cemented it as "Mavis Beacon Presents Okami". Six hours or so later, as I was clearing the game, I ever so subtly tweaked that into "Mavis Beacon Presents Jon Blow's Okami".
The story starts minimal and simple. You are a girl, on a fox. The world is sprawling out around you, coming into literal existence as pages and sheets of paper flying up and forming themselves papercraft style into the landscape. You come across a patch of barren dirt, go into "typing" mode, and type out the prompt - a word like "ROSE" or "CRYSANTHEMUM" or the like - and suddenly the dirt is filled with vibrant flowers and plants. Come across a rock in your path? It's dispatched by BOULDER, or GRANITE, or RHODONITE, etc etc. Felled trees? STUMP, ALDER, and similar.
And then you run into the bugs. The bugs are your enemies in this game, numerous and lethal: one hit knocks you dead. They often take two or three or twenty someodd hits to kill. They range from simple three-letter words (LIE, ERR, ODD) to enormous compounds and obscure scrabble words (ANTIDISCIPLINARY, LOQUACIOUSNESS, EXHIBITION). Most of the danger of the gameplay involves finding "nests" of them, where you're rooted in place and have to defend yourself base-defense style. Granted, you get elemental powers to help, though they're switched between by typing the keyword for the power, which can take away time from staving off the horde. FIRE has a damage-over-time effect, ultimately doing two words of damage instead of one. ICE roots enemies in place briefly, SPARK lightning jumps between enemy to enemy, hurting large swaths at once, and WIND pushes enemies back. Some enemies are only hurt by certain powers. It's a combination of typing program and Missile Command.
But god, the aesthetic is top notch. The whole thing oozes charm, everything designed to look like origami. Things burn, contort, and shift like you'd expect paper to. The world literally springs into life in front of you, Bastion-style, as you explore. Words in non-combat situations are continually evocative, which is a nice touch.
And then, when it's done, you get a pretentious "artsy" ending (thus the Jon Blow namedrop, I felt about as copped out as people say they were with Braid) and it's just... over. There's an arena mode, but I haven't messed with it. I'm afraid to.
See, I don't use the home key method. I've memorized touch-typing for the most part, and thus I'm fast but not super fast, and accurate but only once I get started; I can heck up by having my hands in the wrong place and not knowing to fix them. By the end of this, I had to stop at least twice because of hand cramps. It's... pretty intensive, for a typing game, and a lot less forgiving than, say, Typing of the Dead. Sure, there's no lives to speak of, you respawn a short distance away when you die, but when you're fighting one of the nests ("in base defense mode", in other words), you have to start the whole thing from the beginning, which can be a problem when you die right at the end because you suddenly have to get your hands to cooperate when typing EPISTOLARY when the bug is five inches away from you. There's an adaptive difficulty setting, but it takes more than a few deaths to start scaling down.
Is it worth $15? Ehhhhnnnnnnnn. I'm still questioning that. It was totally worth the buck I paid, though, and I'd definitely say grab it if it's on sale for half-off or more.
Within the first hour or so of playing Epistory, my brain had cemented it as "Mavis Beacon Presents Okami". Six hours or so later, as I was clearing the game, I ever so subtly tweaked that into "Mavis Beacon Presents Jon Blow's Okami".
The story starts minimal and simple. You are a girl, on a fox. The world is sprawling out around you, coming into literal existence as pages and sheets of paper flying up and forming themselves papercraft style into the landscape. You come across a patch of barren dirt, go into "typing" mode, and type out the prompt - a word like "ROSE" or "CRYSANTHEMUM" or the like - and suddenly the dirt is filled with vibrant flowers and plants. Come across a rock in your path? It's dispatched by BOULDER, or GRANITE, or RHODONITE, etc etc. Felled trees? STUMP, ALDER, and similar.
And then you run into the bugs. The bugs are your enemies in this game, numerous and lethal: one hit knocks you dead. They often take two or three or twenty someodd hits to kill. They range from simple three-letter words (LIE, ERR, ODD) to enormous compounds and obscure scrabble words (ANTIDISCIPLINARY, LOQUACIOUSNESS, EXHIBITION). Most of the danger of the gameplay involves finding "nests" of them, where you're rooted in place and have to defend yourself base-defense style. Granted, you get elemental powers to help, though they're switched between by typing the keyword for the power, which can take away time from staving off the horde. FIRE has a damage-over-time effect, ultimately doing two words of damage instead of one. ICE roots enemies in place briefly, SPARK lightning jumps between enemy to enemy, hurting large swaths at once, and WIND pushes enemies back. Some enemies are only hurt by certain powers. It's a combination of typing program and Missile Command.
But god, the aesthetic is top notch. The whole thing oozes charm, everything designed to look like origami. Things burn, contort, and shift like you'd expect paper to. The world literally springs into life in front of you, Bastion-style, as you explore. Words in non-combat situations are continually evocative, which is a nice touch.
And then, when it's done, you get a pretentious "artsy" ending (thus the Jon Blow namedrop, I felt about as copped out as people say they were with Braid) and it's just... over. There's an arena mode, but I haven't messed with it. I'm afraid to.
See, I don't use the home key method. I've memorized touch-typing for the most part, and thus I'm fast but not super fast, and accurate but only once I get started; I can heck up by having my hands in the wrong place and not knowing to fix them. By the end of this, I had to stop at least twice because of hand cramps. It's... pretty intensive, for a typing game, and a lot less forgiving than, say, Typing of the Dead. Sure, there's no lives to speak of, you respawn a short distance away when you die, but when you're fighting one of the nests ("in base defense mode", in other words), you have to start the whole thing from the beginning, which can be a problem when you die right at the end because you suddenly have to get your hands to cooperate when typing EPISTOLARY when the bug is five inches away from you. There's an adaptive difficulty setting, but it takes more than a few deaths to start scaling down.
Is it worth $15? Ehhhhnnnnnnnn. I'm still questioning that. It was totally worth the buck I paid, though, and I'd definitely say grab it if it's on sale for half-off or more.
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