Today, we are taking a look at Blood Typers, a third-person survival horror game where your typing speed is the only thing that can save you.
In Blood Typers, players are put in the shoes of an independent film crew who is lured to a mansion under the promise of meeting a recluse horror filmmaker who mysteriously disappeared half a decade ago.
Will the film crew survive a real horror movie, or will they perish in this monster-infested nightmare? Find out in our full review for Blood Typers.
Blood Typers
Developer: Outer Brain Studios
Publisher: Outer Brain Studios
Platforms: Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: February 20, 2025
Players: 1-4
Price: $9.99
Frequent readers are probably familiar with the fact that I enjoy typing. If writing articles for a job and the constant keyboard reviews did not clue you in, then perhaps the coverage of titles like NSO: Typing of the Net and The Textorcist might do the trick. My love for this weirdly niche activity/genre is ever-present, which is why I jumped at the opportunity to review Blood Typers.
The “typing game” genre has been stagnant for a good while, with titles like The Typing of the Dead: Overkill having been released more than a decade ago. Even when a new game comes around, it’s usually more of the same, not only being painfully easy but also featuring the same old gameplay loop we’re familiar with, which is where Blood Typers‘ uniqueness shines through.
In Blood Typers, every single action is tied to typing a word, including walking, attacking enemies, and using items. The genius move is that, by all intents and purposes, Blood Typers is a 3D survival horror game like any other you’d play, except for the fact that it has a really unconventional control method, which translates surprisingly well into a genre where the player is meant to feel helpless.
Blood Typers‘ levels have the player making their way through a randomized map while collecting red tapes that need to be inserted into a TV. Finding all five tapes allows players to fix the elevator they arrived in to exit the stage. Levels have increasingly complex multi-floor layouts, as well as red barriers that need to be dispelled, welcoming enemies into the map but also unlocking new rooms.
The game has a heavy focus on multiplayer and team play, with each character having different powers that set their role as damage dealers, item finders, or supports. Playing solo can be a little rough, not only because the game’s levels are large and require a lot of walking around, but also because of small inventories.
Having every single action be performed by typing means the game can be a little heavy on the old wrists when playing solo, especially since levels on average last 30 minutes or more depending on difficulty and character chosen. Just walking around requires a lot of fast typing, and that doubles when dealing with groups of enemies.
To keep things interesting, Blood Typers has a “safe mode” setting that can be turned on or off by interacting with the fleshy computers spread throughout each level. Turning the safe mode off invites hordes of enemies into the level, meaning players have to risk getting attacked to progress, as certain items and passages are blocked by safe walls.
The game does a lot with its different enemy types, making it so players always have to tackle encounters in different ways. Some enemies have armor that requires words to be typed out multiple times to damage them, while others stand tall as massive walls of flesh, spawning weaker enemies while the player has to work through a massive list of words to wipe them out.
The enemy designs present in each level also serve as fun callbacks to horror movies and games, ranging from Resident Evil-like zombies to J-horror yokai and techno abominations that wouldn’t be out of place in something like Videodrome.
Word complexity in Blood Typers is affected by a mixture of its difficulty settings, enemy types and the weapon being currently used. More complex weapons, like the Necrolexicon, have a high amount of ammo but also force the player to type very difficult words when attacking, giving the weapon a risk and reward factor.
On top of that, certain characters have a spread of stats that give them affinities with different weapon types, allowing them to stun enemies longer when attacking in melee range if their violence is high, or reload guns faster and have an easier time passing skill checks if their handiness is high.
These different stats also tie into the group play aspect, as each character’s perk is balanced out by their strengths and weaknesses. Characters with the less impressive perks usually have an overall better stat distribution, while others might have really good perks but not have a lot of health or stopping power.
Blood Typers stands not only as a massive love letter to horror media but also as a significant shake-up to the typing game genre, innovating in its gameplay while also being a fun co-op experience.
It’s rare for a title to try out something so new and for it to land so spectacularly, especially since this seems to be developer/publisher Outer Brain Studios’ first game in the genre.
If you enjoy typing or unconventional survival horror games, you should give Blood Typers a try. There’s something surprisingly fun about its mixture of genres, as it manages to be an incredibly smooth and chaotic experience even when played solo.
