The Coolest Platformer You've Never Heard Of - Dr. Dray

typography kind of sounds like a word I just made up so recently I started taking classes for graphic design as a novice in that field one of the courses I'm forced to take is one on typography the study design and use of fonts and lettering during my first few weeks in class I've learned two major things one typography is a massively important aspect of graphic design I mean it's the art of being able to use fonts and lettering correctly to the point where information is communicated so efficiently and effective i l that the typography isn't even noticed by the readers think about it when you're reading these captions you don't think about the form in which the information is being presented you just read the letters on screen that's because this text contains good typography and two typography is kind of boring it's an area that demands subtlety and understated and there are many tedious aspects of typography that need to be learned in order to better understand and utilize it the anatomy of fonts type faces hierarchy readability ility versus legibility as well as the history of typography itself and although there will always be some who find all this to be intensely fascinating most of you probably couldn't care less which is why after watching literal hours worth of videos on this subject I thought to myself surely there must be a more entertaining way to learn about typography so me being me I turned to Google to my surprise there are actually quite a few games about typography out there we have such Classics as I shot the serif just exhilarating stuff here yeah most of these games aren't particularly deep or interesting they're just simple web browser games designed to help you learn various aspects of typography and while I'm sure someone would have a blast bling Kern me for hours on end I want something deeper something more challenging a game that will really teach me what typography is truly all about and damn it font guess are just isn't going to cut it fine I guess we'll try typewriter and guys I found it not just a good game about typography but a great game overall a real Hidden Gem so much so that I'm pretty confident when I say this is not only one of the best puzzle Platformers I've ever played but almost certainly one of the coolest Platformers you've never heard of now if it's as good as I claim how come you haven't heard of it well after some research I think I've discovered three major reasons for this game's obscurity reason number one huh yeah this isn't just your standard obscure steam release it's a mobile game and if that wasn't enough of a slap in the face for all you self-proclaimed hardcore Gamers it also costs money this game was released back in 2013 which according to my calculations was right in the middle of the global smartphone boom it was actually about this time that I got my first iPhone in it was an era of the App Store that I associate with tons of simple but fun games being released one after the other and while increasing smartphone sales meant that a game that made it big could stay big for a while the subsequent increase of software for the platform also made it difficult for most games to gain visibility and as for nowadays when most modern mobile games are dog who the hell wants to spend $35 for an app to take up space on your Retro Bowl machine reason number two who typewriter was developed by cosmographic you know the French Indie developer whose only other game since is another Puzzler from mobile devices except this one costs $550 and was released the same year as Pokémon go yeah that cosmographic I wonder why people haven't heard of them after some light stalking I managed to find a variety of social media for the guy including a Twitter account that's still getting used and proclaims that his next game should be ready for release in 2025 I'll have to add that one to my calendar however Google claims that the studio itself is temporarily closed so I'm not really sure what's going on with them at the moment also I found an Etsy storefront under the same name selling wooden cororo so now I'm just confused as for the publisher IAT films is another French company who get this makes films Wikipedia incorrectly lists them as the developers which is weird but weirder still is the fact that in the company's 37e history this is the only video game they've ever worked on there's also bulky pix a mobile game publisher that was liquidated back in 2016 as well as art a European Public Service Channel focusing on art and culture that has published a handful of other games though typewriter remains their most well-known well that's not saying much and reason number three what I mean come on it's a game about typography unless you're a graphic designer it's probably a field of study you've never even heard of still I find it kind of bizarre how little publicity this game has gotten it certainly had its chances it has great reviews it won an award at an indie showcase it was even free for PlayStation Plus subscribers back in 2017 for God it was published by a public service Channel you could literally advertise it on public television but no barely 500 reviews on Steam not even 400 reviews on the App Store and hardly any coverage on YouTube outside of a couple trailers in the occasional playthrough and or review hell the latest version of the game on the Google Play Store barely has a 100 downloads whatever relevance this game might have had has clearly long since passed which is a shame since quality mobile games are needed now more desperately than ever and modern Indie Games particularly good indie games seem to receive a lot more publicity today than they would back in 2013 if it was released nowadays then with the right marketing and publicity I think it would have a good chance at gaining way more relevance than it ever did the long-term success of games like Journey Fez Shovel Knight and even more recent projects like Celeste and Hades show that gamers are more than willing to take a chance on Indie projects if there's enough positivity surrounding the game but that doesn't really explain why Vandal is bombed so I guess you can disregard everything I just said all right enough talking about the game Let's see if we can actually justify spending 14 Quarters on this thing in typewriter you control a pair of balls take my money the game immediately throws you into the tutorial which offers you the opportunity to quickly learn your large and Incredibly diverse move set otherwise known as right left and jump I mean I guess they got to keep it simple for mobile games but playing it on anything else kind of just feels underwhelming this game renders 97% of your keyboard irrelevant what's the point of it being a board at that point now a key Stick that's what you're really need you do have the additional ability to wall jump but that's about it your move set is pretty vanilla levels primarily consist of platforming and a light puzzle solving with the main challenge coming from the fact that your character consists of two separate but connected entities cuz you know balls this definitely makes platforming a bit trickier it's difficult to fully control their movement which is something the game recognizes and in some instances specifically designs platforming and puzzle solving challenges around it's nice that we get the occasional Challen chenge from the developers though by and large the game is pretty easy most obstacles don't take more than one or two attempts to bypass and frequent checkpoints mean this game isn't very punishing either however the gameplay isn't really the point with typewriter instead it's the environments and presentation being emphasized Above All Else typewriter is divided into eight worlds each containing four levels and depicting a different era of typography and type face design levels are largely made up of the letters of each individual type face and are themed around the ideas invent ions and environments they're often associated with just the fact that the developers managed to create levels themed around something as simple as fonts is incredibly impressive to me it really emphasizes this game's unique theme and sense of identity the levels themselves are wonderfully artistic they may be Silhouettes but they're paired with some gorgeous Dynamic backgrounds and in my opinion this pairing serves as the most obvious demonstration of this game's Artistry each World contains 33 Collectibles for you to find 26 letters six asterisks and one secret Amper sand none of these are particularly difficult to find I mean sometimes you have to go a little off the beaten path to find one of the Amper Sands but I found pretty much everything on my first go also the asterisks are the Only Collectibles that actually do anything each one you collect provides a little page of information detailing how typography was advanced in each respective era I guess it's kind of disappointing that a vast majority of the game's Collectibles don't actually do anything but I honestly don't mind it too much it gives you a little something to do out of blasting through each level as quickly as possible and seeing the full collection of letters allows the font design to be easily appreciated as opposed to when you're just trying to platform across them as for the asterisks maybe it's just because I'm a history buff but I think having these information sheets on the evolution of typography as a reward for your efforts is pretty cool then it means by the end of the game you'll have your own little pocket encyclopedia on the history of type all in all this game is a true dedication to the history Evolution and beauty of typography which in in turn is only emphasized by how beautiful this game is in its own right as for the tutorial itself it doubles as a lesson on the origins of typography depicting early forms of written communication such as cave paintings kinea form and hieroglyphics before moving on to more modern writing systems like Chinese characters Greek lettering and finally the Latin alphabet it's a brief but solid introduction to some of the most significant advancements in human history and while we do flash through quite a few Millennia in the span of a couple minutes it does provide a bit of context for how exactly we got from cave art to curls some basic platforming later and a white dot appears push it over some scales and the tutorial is over we arrive in the Overworld and the title makes self known it's a pretty basic introduction but a Scenic One at that and a solid setup for the game as a whole the first stop on this typographic journey is gothic home of scribes fancy letters and whatever the hell else monasteries were used for immediately the game dumps you head first into an atmosphere unlike any other ink blots creaking wood and dark Haze penetrated by sunbeams these details give the environment an air of sanctity that has almost been forgotten in our Modern Age this is the environment where typography was truly born I absolutely adore the finer details here the lighting effects the particles the way the background looks like a sheet of parchment it all meshes together wonderfully and feels Sublime if the introductory sequence was enough of a sampler of things to come then this level serves as your wakeup call and it sets high expectations for this game's presentation also I love the music for this world it starts slow a drum beat gregori en chanting then the music slowly swells and other instruments are added in as you progress throughout the levels symbols strings church bells a synthesized organ and by the end you've built up this crashing grandio Rhythm and that reminds me I kind of neglected to mention it before but the music in typewriter is absolutely Elite alongside the dynamic visuals this game also offers an Adaptive soundtrack which is when the music swells Fades and shifts as you progress throughout the stage which is kind of surprising to see to be honest there are AAA titles that don't even bother implementing adaptive music so to see that level of effort coming from the designers of a 10-year-old game being put out on the same platform as Minion Rush I'm not complaining but it's a bit mind-boggling to say the least every entry on the soundtrack is at the very least pretty solid which is impressive considering the sheer variety of musical styles that the soundtrack has on offer whether it's DS orchestral compy positions or the abstract Jazz of the Futura levels the music almost always serves as the Perfect final ingredient when tying together the atmosphere of each level World 2 is gamont which shows the creation of what we now know as serif fonts you know when fonts have those little like feet at the ends yeah seraps this world is water themed which I'm kind of confused about I can't think of any particular relation between water and the gamon font or the era from which it originated but but whatever at least it's Unique and it doesn't feel inappropriate per se the level has some cool references to the Renaissance the invention of italics and the religion- driven book burnings that took place at the time because the people of that era were just not very cash money like that I'd say it's a fairly Pleasant feeling world and I think the theme primarily serves as a way to transition from the previous world to the next part pre-industrial part natural speaking of which World 3 is aido one of my favorite type faces due to it being way too clean looking for as old as a is if Gothic depicted the late Middle Ages and gond repped the Renaissance then the dto stages perfectly embody the enlightenment this world is so peaceful and just outright lovely to be in the creeping Ivy and marble columns are an elegant visual counterpart to the orchestra playing in the levels background we get some cool 3D effects with these gazebos sprinkled throughout the levels and the collectible asterisks detail the emergence of print media commercialized type faces and even the world's first encyclopedia all things that are relatively normal in modern society it feels so classically classy if this world's presentation doesn't evoke the spirit of 18th century European High Society then I'm not sure what will next up is Clarendon which brings us to the wild west where slab serifs reign supreme eh I'm not a huge fan of this one it's mostly because of the level design gimmicks like this Minecart section which I will say I like how writing over the letters here knocks off the serfs it's a cool way to reference the creation of sans ser type faces man those 5 minutes and I shot the siif really paid off unfortunately the controls for this section are a massive pain the only way to make your Minecart jump is to jump within the minec cart so you need to be able to control your balls and the cart independently even though they're bound to the same Keys someone really didn't think that one through huh it goes without saying but I will anyways this is super wonky to control then we've got this section where you have to avoid being shot at else your balls will explode these shots aren't difficult to dodge or anything anything but it's just frustrating how slow the game forces you to play in response and then oh joy a section that combines the two the minecart section may feel clunky and the target section may be annoying but this this is both these sections take up half the world too it's just kind of unpleasant to play through Futura offers yet another thematic change of pace and is a world based on the geometric Simplicity and functionality introduced with the bow house school as well as the abstractionist art movements that gained popularity in this era such a funky level it's the first in the game that feels completely detached from nature or anything tangible in our world which is sort of reflective of the artistic movement it embodies I think this is when it hit me how cool it was to see such variety from this game's worlds and environments on its own Futura is able to seamlessly blend numerous different movements and Artistic Styles into one grand level which is kind of what the game itself does just on a much grander scale for example Gothic and Futura aside from being typographic Styles don't really seem to have much in common yet this game is able to combine these Styles and their Associated artistic movements into one game alongside various others with just as little in common with nothing feeling particularly out of place here it's very impressive the level itself provides a bit more of a challenge with these unstable platforms slightly trickier puzzles and this one section where one ball hangs lower than the other it only took half the game for them to come up with this still nothing too tricky times is a snapback to reality and is so heavily themed around industry that I can hear tolken turning in his grave as we speak it's so cool this Noir assembly line with its mechanical background music then a smooth transition into the art deco styling and swing music of the Roaring 20s we also get some awesome platforming challenges themed around the invention of Cinema the construction of New York City and Theo's classification system for fonts showing off the different styles of seraps that the previous worlds featured feels like a newspaper come to life and I love it just like I love helvetica another one of my favorite type bases God I'm such a nerd the mandatory ice world of any platformer helvetica mixes an Alpine landscape with 1960s Swiss Aesthetics and it rocks this world looks outright phenomenal a lot of the type bases throughout the previous levels sort of looked modern but helvetica is the first one that truly feels modern and its white on red environment certainly offers a strong break from levels prior the background music here is definitely one of the game's best such a track with its chugging guitar line and uptempo drum Loop it feels like I'm in a spy film I wish there were more gameplay gimmicks tied to real world events like in previous levels is what I would say if we didn't have this awesome section dedicated to 60s counterculture look at that having such a stark transition from clean lines and natural landscapes to a psychedelic Haze helps the section really hit different the colorful background doubled Vision floatier physics this section even reverses the controls that's it's not just a trip to look at but to play through as well an awesome way to end an equally awesome stage this world is definitely one of the game's highlights finally we arrive at pixel where typography is propelled into the digital age man they went crazy for the white here at the end huh this level feels Tor made for the Retro gamer in all of us with its circuit board backdrop and call backs to early stages of the internet en coding as well as arcade Classics like breakout Space Invaders and Tetris the Space Invaders and Tetris sections are actually somewhat tricky and alongside this world's low gravity platforming pixel actually offers slightly more of a challenge than this game's other worlds it feels like an appropriate way to cap off the game not just in terms of difficulty but thematically as well as the game itself informs you with the Advent of the digital age fonts are more accessible to the common man than ever before and making your own fonts has never been easier either as we arrive back in the Overworld the blocky barrier that had blue balled us before is promptly destroyed revealing a Showcase of all the fonts that we've explored throughout the course of the game at this point we've reached the official end of typewriter the white dot appears it turns into the moon naturally and the credits roll however this isn't the end for us real Gamers no no no hidden at the bottom of this Lake we do have one more bonus stage comic Sands a monument to early 2010's internet meme culture this level is a strong departure from the clean professionalism and Atmospheric beauty of the game's earlier stages let's give it a go and sh this stupid can't comic Sands is a gauntlet and totally unlike any other world in this game one Long Level no checkpoints awkward jumps and a giant kitten with laser eyes to ensure you maintain a constant pace and generally make your life miserable as cats like to do after the beautiful and laid-back nature of most of the other worlds this is a massive spike in difficulty as the level demands nothing short of Mastery of this game and its physics especially if you're aiming for all collectibles the Amper sand is ridiculously difficult to get here it's not hard to find it's right there but you have to hit this P at just the right moment with just the right speed to get it it's unbelievably tricky compared to the rest of the game this level is straight up frustrating to complete but in the end I did it and that's typewriter all in all a pretty short game I was taking my time with this one too but I still managed to Beat It in a little under 3 hours and I think that highlights my biggest problem with it this game isn't long at all nor does it have much of a challenge to offer we do get a lot of cool historical references in the level design but few of them offer much of an increase in difficulty with a couple bordering on being annoying only a handful of obstacles are designed specifically to confront the atypical design of the protagonist but the game doesn't really go all the way looking at it purely from a gameplay perspective typewriter surprisingly doesn't bring much to the table that's particularly new or creative I can't say it's all that replayable either I mean once you've earned all achievements which takes another what 30 minutes that's pretty much it there's not much of a reason to come back to it unless you're just itching to delete your save data it's not even that well made I encountered more than a few bugs during my playthrough but above all else I think being on mobile is definitely what hurts this game the most I mean with such simplistic controls it's obvious that this game was made primarily with smartphones in mind playing it on anything else just highlights how basic it is from design standpoint however given its length and price tag it fails at being the two things people want from mobile games infinitely replayable and free it doesn't matter if the game looks generic or has the stupidest advertising campaign you've ever seen as long as it fulfills those two criteria it's still going to do massive numbers because you it's homescapes no wonder it was so difficult for them to get the word out on this game how are you supposed to advertise it when it's exactly the opposite of what your target audience wants with that in mind is is it really justifiable to spend $35 on this game is it at all reasonable to waste money on a painfully short experience for a platform that's flooded with competitors offering free entertainment for weeks could that in any way be considered a good deal oh hell yeah it's probably not much of a surprise considering how much I've already gushed about it but for those with a short attention span allow me to make this abundantly clear I completely adore typewriter it may not be the best game per se but as an artistic experience $3 is an absolute steel for this thing in terms of presentation alone this is easily one of the most beautiful games I've played in a long time and as a mobile game it's truly in a league of its own nothing comes even remotely close it may not be terribly long but it's driven by a singular Focus it's a game wholly dedicated to showing off the beauty and history of one of the most underappreciated art forms out there it's a short but concentrated experience it knows what it wants to be and doesn't try to be anything that it's not the gameplay isn't complex but it's not supposed to be because every second you spend focused on the gaml is one second taken away from admiring the backgrounds the music the lighting the history the effects and the fonts themselves the developers wanted to prove the significance and beauty of the seemingly mundane so they themselves crafted an interactive work of art in honor of their subject which I would argue accomplishes that goal with flying colors it is undeniably one of the coolest games I've ever played it's gorgeous both visually and sonically it's well researched it's accessible to all plus it's the only platformer I know of where you control a pair of balls I mean the joke's practically right themselves as I was writing this script the YouTuber noodle uploaded a video sharing his thoughts on the balers gate discourse which you should definitely watch by the way his argument is primarily the same as Nelson The Game Dev who started the discourse after he was horribly misunderstood and mistreated as a result they state that as cool as it is to see games as mind-bogglingly massive in scale as balers gate that level of scale unfortunately cannot be the industry standard simply because smaller Studios that don't have the resources will run themselves into the ground trying to create something that they simply don't have the time or money for which is nearly what happened to larryan Studios while they were making balers gate it's those smaller more focused EXP experiences that give the game industry variety that keep things interesting for us Gamers and I'll be damned if typewriter isn't indicative of that I've never played anything like it there's certainly no other mobile game this artistically distinct and it's definitely a refreshing change of pace from the garbage you usually see heaped onto these platforms it's exactly what I wanted out of a game about typography and hopefully it serves as a reminder to all to try new things and keep your gaming experiences interesting I guess what I'm trying to say is that you best not let me catch you out here playing [Music] homescapes

Channel: Dr. Dray

Views: 440

Keywords: with, the, boys, random, guy, 66, randomguy66, randomguy, dr, dray, comedy, music, dr., video, 2023, gaming, game, essay, type, typography, games, platformers, mobile, ios, android, fun, platformer, rider, type rider, type:rider, typerider, type: rider

Id: yneblfmys1k

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2023