A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Buy Now$14.99 USD or more

Backspace Bouken is a Japanese-inspired old-school dungeon crawler with a fast-paced typing battle system and ridiculous storyline. Fight monsters by typing their dialogue as you progress through the game and climb the tower. Fast and accurate typing will be rewarded, and maybe you'll even become a better typer!

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Features

  • Fluid typing-based battle system that tells the story as you play.
  • Fight a wide variety of enemies and bosses with unique and compelling behaviors and twists.
  • Explore numerous floors of a tower in classic first-person dungeon crawling style.
  • Solve puzzles and collect passwords and information from your enemies to progress through the game.
  • Save NPCs from the tower in a collectathon fashion.
  • Get rewards for completing encounters and filling out your map.

    Check out our upcoming Playdate game Bloom!
StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux
Release date Dec 13, 2019
Rating
Rated 4.4 out of 5 stars
(54 total ratings)
AuthorRNG Party Games
GenreRole Playing, Action
TagsAction-Adventure, Dungeon Crawler, JRPG, Turn-based, Typing, Unity
LinksSteam

Purchase

Buy Now$14.99 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $14.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:

Windows_Release.zip 99 MB
Linux_Release.zip 101 MB
Mac_Release.app.zip 101 MB

Development log

Comments

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(1 edit) (+2)

I wish you could manually save but otherwise it's a fun game. Also could use a map overview.

This was such an entertaining idea! Had a lot of fun with it (even though, as it turns out, I'm not that good at typing!) 

Great presentation and a really neat idea. I'm not sure my 12 year old is going to stick to it, though, since death is so punishing and the save mechanism is not conducive to spending a half hour or so at a time as a "lesson". It's a pity because he seemed so excited at first...

lovely, a lot of fun, and entertaining writing! as a typer i really enjoyed this. however, i have to agree with other criticisms - the setting of difficulty at the very beginning is strange, and the inability to save on command is frustrating. i tried to play the numb lock but set the difficulty too high. this resulted in me dying a bunch, and since i couldn't save, i lost lots of progress each time i died. aside from these issues though, i still enjoyed my time! great work from all who worked on this.

I have my keyboard layout set to US International, where inputting ' usually requires the key combination '+space.  In this game I can't input ' at all.  Just pressing ' does nothing, and pressing '+space is interpreted by the game as just space.  (Running on Lubuntu, if that makes any difference.)

Sometimes when I make a mistake, it gets stuck. I can't delete anything and cant type further. What can I do?

(+2)

HEY!!! This is one of the better typing games I've played in a long while!! Typing of the Dead on PC was my go-to but this one really takes the cake! I like it better than Epistory to be quite honest. ;) Hope your team is doing great and stay safe! ^_^

(+1)

I haven't finished the game yet, but I want to say this is my favorite typing game so far. It's really engaging and fun.

(1 edit)

Shockingly fun, love the old-school PC game style. My only complaint is i hate having to search for the password-protected doors after finding the password.


eta: another problem is i keep having issues with not being able to beat the final (?) boss, because sometimes the game freezes on "just try backspacing".

Is there a way to save this game or is it only at certain autosave points?

(+1)

Hey! The game saves automatically at certain points - which is indicated by both a unique sound effect and an Asterisk cutscene. This is usually before a boss fight or when encountering a new floor. Hopefully that helps!

(+4)

Okay! Thanks for clearing that out!

I want you to know that I love your game but I hate the "Quit without saving????" message considering it's impossible to manually save.

(+2)

I enjoyed this game a lot! The graphics and music were very pleasing, and game play for the most part was smooth. I like the puns, jokes, and characters! Makes me wonder what kind of world it is, where monsters and humans coexist, and being a typist/adventurer(?) is a thing. I had a bit of trouble in the beginning trying to figure out the mechanics of the type-fighting, but eventually did after dying a few times. A tutorial or something would've saved me five minutes, but afterwards, it's pretty intuitive. I also wish there was a full-floor map that you could view to see your progress, as the mini-map is limited, and it's quite easy to get turned around and wander for minutes when the walls look the same. Overall, I enjoyed this game (my typing ranges between 60-90 wpm), and the bosses with their unique word choices and mechanics made it fun. Great work, y'all!

(+1)

I enjoyed playing this game SO much!  Having a typing-based battle system feels, for me as a casual game player, quite niche but it was so much fun to use my typing skills for a game rather than data entry or admin.  The narrative is straight-forward and uncomplicated but there is enough random, weird and strange characters and events that go unexplained which forces me to use my imagination to connect the dots which means I feel way more invested in playing and in the story.  Add to that a gorgeous, perfectly executed soundtrack and, for the 3 hours it took to complete the game at 100%, I felt totally, enjoyable immersed.  Thanks for making the soundtrack available.  I don't know how much replay value the game has for me outside of trying to do a speed run, but it's such a fully realised, well executed game.  I really really adore it.  Thanks!

(1 edit) (+2)

I was enjoying the game so much, and then two design decisions seriously hampered the experience for me right before the end.

First of all, the game's difficulty is determined entirely by your starting fight. I apparently did too well there. The hallway fights were no problem, but the two final boss fights (behind the secret door on floor 9, and at the top of the tower) were impossibly tough. There are too many long sentences that I can't possibly complete in time with my wpm, so I'm pretty much guaranteed to take too much damage and lose these fights every time. (Though see my Edit below.)

And secondly, the auto save mechanic is atrocious. I explored to the final boss, couldn't beat him, backtracked, got to the secret boss, got a save point there, couldn't beat him either, then tried to backtrack further and explore more of the tower to gain more health for the fights. So I explored the remaining incomplete floors to 100%, went back to the boss battle, died, and... all progress since the last auto save was reset. Terrible, terrible design. Maybe there's a good reason for not allowing manual saving, though I doubt it. Even then, there can't be one for not auto-saving any time you cross the corresponding boss checkpoints, or whenever you change floors.

The typing aspect of this game is truly original and (except for the inflexible difficulty scaling) enjoyable, but the dungeon master part of the game, and the save system, are designs that have become history for a reason.

I'm upset =(.

EDIT: I did eventually recall a game mechanic to prevent boss damage and hence beat the game, but my second point in particular still stands.

Where's the password for the door on the 9th floor? I've gone through every other floor save for the final boss 100% and I can't find it.

The captain on the 8th floor has the password.

SPOILER





It's "firewall"

thank you :)

(+1)

Gotta say, this was a really fun one. Great work.

Glad you enjoyed it :)

Best game if you like to type!