2026-04-19 Type It All devlog

2026-04-20T01:40:00-05:00

This week marks the first full week of development since August 2025 and thus is the perfect time to start doing devlogs again.

The major user-facing changes this week were improvements to blue-command processing and the addition of music. The major backend improvements include a debug window and a massive reorganization of how MainText works.

Blue commands are the major interactive element of the game, so having multiple blue words in a single line is to be expected. Unfortunately, my old method of handling that was to just execute all of them if you typed multiple. The new version only executes the first encountered. I may eventually change it to have priorities so that "obvious" choices are fired over "default" choices like typing all the text on the screen.

The current music is effectively a placeholder, but still sounds decent. I eventually aim to have custom songs for each chapter of the story (and possibly custom songs for each act of Hamlet). I don't think all of the tracks are currently achievable with the text I have available to type, but enough is triggerable to get the feel of it.

The debug window allows me to see which music tracks have been triggered, and also to mute the music (so I can listen to something better while coding). I'm considering adding debug builds to my regular daily builds. Let me know if you want this! (daily builds are, as always, available at files.greyshadowsoftware.com)

Finally, MainText got an overhaul to add per-paragraph command words and bookmarks. I essentially had to retool how text is processed at the start as well as how it is stored and accessed throughout the lifetime of a MainText object. MainText can also now provide several paragraphs and does so based on the size of the game window.

Next week is going to be fixing a few bugs and then delving into actual content creation, with a goal of producing roughly 250 words of story each day (to meet the goal of 8000 by mid-May).

2026-04-19 Type It All intro

2026-04-20T01:30:00-05:00

Type It All is a typing game where everything is typeable. I've started this project in an effort to get something published quickly, as MorCol is going to take several years and I want to gauge the viability of games publishing sooner than that.

The inspiration for TIA was me noticing that most/all typing games are simply other genres (FPS, tower defense, adventure, etc.) with the typing of random words slapped on. I wanted to make a game where not only was typing the primary focus, but you typed full sentences and paragraphs. I've been struggling coming up with an actual "game" with this gameplay, but I believe I've settled on making a choose-your-own-adventure story where the challenge is in reaching a certain WPM in order to make choices. e.g. if you don't reach 50 WPM, you can't rush across the cave successfully and stab the villain

Additional challenge is generated by having certain words interrupt or damage your WPM or letter-collection. The examples I'm sure of so far are red words which halve your WPM if collected and yellow words which explode (destroying letters around them instead of collecting them) if they are not collected quickly. I aim to slowly introduce these "challenge words" over the course of the story, to simulate the difficulty of a long journey.

Another USP I'm putting in is dynamic music. The songs I'm composing will be split into ~10-18 tracks, with each track being associated with a certain group of letters. As you type the letters, those tracks will fade in and out accordingly.

The ultimate goal is ~8000 words of story and ~2 hours of gameplay with a 2$ price tag. Depending on playtester playtimes, I might bump that up to 3-4$. The game will be released on Steam, Itch.io, and the high seas simultaneously. Steam will have the mentioned price tag, Itch.io will have pay-what-you-want with a suggested price of roughly double Steam's, and the high seas version will obviously be free. The demo version on Steam will consist of the first chapter+challenge word of the story.

If you want to try the alpha builds of the game, you can check them out on my fileserver.

Ibb's Dev Blog - typeitall

2026-04-19 Type It All devlog

2026-04-19 Type It All intro