Epistory - Typing Chronicles

As a way to improve your typing, I don't think it's particularly effective compared to other methods. As a game it's only mildly entertaining. [i]However there is another, probably unintended, application which I think this game actually excels wonderfully at:[/i] [b]Foreign language learning.[/b] Hear me out: One of the most effective ways to actually acquire language is just huge amounts of exposure with different contextual cues. The outmoded conventional language learning approach assumes that we learn by memorizing grammar and mapping words to and from our target language to our native one. In this model, we "learn" a word by translating it. But that kind of learning will never make us fluent. It will give us a halting, practical knowledge that will help us trudge through various situational needs, but it will never give the open, intuitive, and natural understanding of native speakers. To achieve this, we need hundreds and perhaps thousands of hours of exposure to form a large collection of synaptic links in different networks across the brain, which recreate the holistic structure of the language in our brains. The practical application of this theory is known as "Comprehensible Input," and is advocated for by a lot of polyglots online, with many resources you can explore. But surely just typing random words would do absolutely nothing to help us learn them? Well, the great thing about this game is that the words are non-random in a rather unique way: they are thematically linked to visual elements of the game in the same vague way that we link concepts in our mind. "Fiery" elements have words like "burn" and "campfire," sure, but also "oven" and "wick." Even without knowing the words, you are forming a network of verbal relations, without the intermediate step of translation, in a way you wouldn't in most normal circumstances. For a native speaker, the number or words is not huge, and so you see a lot of the same ones over and over, which feels a bit boring. But, in a foreign language, the relatively small dictionary is actually a plus, because you will type the same words (most of which will be new to you) over and over. It's annoying in your native language, but it's very good practice for language acquisition. Often the first hurdle to listening comprehension is simply knowing which words exist so you can separate them mentally. Knowing how they are spelled will help you identify them in speech and be able to look them up in a dictionary, and gives you another peg to hang them on in the mind. These are all various forms of "acquisition" without "learning." And in general, writing, or typing, is a separate neurophysical process from listening, speaking, or reading. That means you are establishing a whole other network of intuition to store your foreign language model in. I don't know about you, but I often have the surreal experience of "remembering" my internet passwords only by muscle memory on a keyboard: that is, I have passwords which I could not write, speak, or imagine a visual projection of, but which come out on a keyboard automatically because they are now stored primarily in "muscle memory." You will develop this kind of memory for foreign language words by typing them, and this will help you recognize and recall their spelling and provide yet more network effects. Another great thing about the way this game is designed, is that the menu and game language are separate settings, and additionally, the "story" is always read in English voice. This means you can play the game multiple times with varying levels of exposure depending on your language level, you will get more out of it each time you play. So, in short, if you are a foreign language learner and your target language is one of the 11 included here I would highly recommend this, even over most other "language learning" games on Steam, which tend to lean on conventional "learn the translation" approaches and seldom provide any mechanics to encourage the kind of repetitive exposure this gives you. Obviously, you will need many, many, many more hours and types of exposure to learn a language than this game can provide, but the kind of exposure it provides is rather unique and a great addition to a curriculum.

Really fun typing game that adapts to the user's typing skill. Enemies are never overbearing with the right strategy implemented. Some minor QOL issues here and there that cause typing errors or make you switch your magic element even when you don't intend to, but overall still a game worth trying if you like typing.

Hmmm, for a paid game, sure seems like an asset flip. The enemies have such a small dictionary assigned to them. The arena segments of the game are very boring and slow. Sometimes enemies would spawn waaaay too slow and id be stuck waiting. Idk how to say in the nicest way that it just stinks of a unity game. The very little art and music is nice though I guess but the epi-story was kinda lame. I don't wanna hear "it was up to the player to interpret the story's meaning". Would recommend if on sale for learning typing but I wish there was more polish.

So far I am enjoying this pleasant experience of a game that matches typing speed with battle mechanics, mixed with a compelling narrative. It is honestly quite difficult to navigate the fox (to me) with EFJI, but the best way because then you can keep your fingers in the "home" position for typing. I typed so many words I have never typed in my life in this game. The coolest I felt was getting the 60WPM achievement only 4.5% of players have, so it's certainly boosted my typing ego lol. I like the way that this game expands, too, and it has challenging puzzles for sure. Sometimes I find myself getting lost, but eventually find my way. You can also purchase "upgrades" that help with Map functionality. Overall I'd recommend this to most gamers who enjoy indie experiences and especially people who love their keyboards & typing in general.

Honestly, this is a pretty good game. It gets a seven out of ten in my opinion. There are others that I would rather play, but this is pretty good. The other two typing games made by this company are much better, in my opinion, and the ending of the story was wrong and mixed up. And there wasn't much that you could do besides fighting enemies and switching between four different magics that did one thing each. Also, the story was pretty chill and easy and the arena was way too hard. Other than those few things, the game is pretty good. I enjoyed upgrading my stats, too. I also liked the soundtrack, too. PS as a side note, I liked how intense they tried to make the story, and I enjoyed the effort to make the story as interesting as possible (Just don't make it have an ending where all you did was for nothing! I didn't like that the story started to downfall at the last few levels!) Don't worry, I'm not saying this is a bad game, I highly recommend it, just... there are others that I would rather play.

Gotta be honest, I didn't see this review coming, but the first real boss battle had me giggling like a child! I thought "Hey, I'm pretty great at typing, I'll breeze through this game!" only to find out that they start throwing some ridiculous words your way in a very short time frame. I'm not sure, but it feels like the faster you type, the harder the game gets to compensate. So far I am having a blast with this game, which I absolutely didn't expect from a simple "typing game".

1 hour in: I bought it for content past the demo because I thought the mechanic is cool. It reminds me a bit of Bastion but the typing thing makes me feel good because I've always prided myself on typing speed. It does not seem to scale the difficulty based on your typing speed, for better or worse. I feel like it would be too hard for most people, but for me I don't need much in the way of combat abilities because I'm so fast. Even so, sometimes its close so... maybe it is just covertly scaling the difficulty. So far it does have any of the strong feelings I got from Bastion, but I think even Bastion and similar action-story games had stories that really didn't blossom until close to the end, and then the whole game felt more meaningful. I'm guessing this will be like that. Its just hard coming straight from Wanderstop to have long stretches of trite gameplay. And the voice acting... the kid sounds like an adult trying to be a kid, and all the voice acting sounds like its trying too hard to be sentimentally meaningful. Compared to say Wyld Flowers where I could imagine meeting the human characters in real life, even if they were a bit of a caricature. The map is incredibly difficult to make meaningful use of, but there is a skill you can get that just guides you to the nearest thing of interest and that's been useful. Bummed I wasted points on the skill to put things on the map. I assume there's no re-spec. I'm not quite clear if those points unlocked that guidance skill but I don't think so. I like how they put pieces of narration on the ground... I like the random words and trying deduce the algorithms for how they got selected. I like trying to make combos. I like the magic system I forget how much I paid but so far I'd pay about $5.00 for this game as a fun little experience (recognizing that I'm sure it was a LOT of work to make and hopefully a ton of people would want to try something unique to fund the creator). Alllllll that said, I'm thinking this game will shape up into something a little deeper. I just don't know if it will genuinely touch me like Outer Wilds, Gone Home, etc or feel contrived.

Imaginative and cleverly made, Epistory draws you into a paper-crafted world that unfolds with every keystroke.

As a keyboard enthusiast, this game is made for me. You should buy it if you're typing enjoyer.

Really good, although a bit hard to maintain the energy

Easy play and nice story line

really fun, i love to type

Good