Fugdale’s Funhouse

Object: Shoot soldiers and tanks by typing the word displayed below them.

Review: As a blogger and wordprocessor, I love to type. If going to war were this much fun, I’d have signed up long ago. In this game, players must stay alive as long as possible against mounting enemies. You start as a soldier in the center of the screen and other soldiers, tanks and armored vehicles start moving towards you from the edges of the screen. Each enemy has a short word underneath. You target enemies by quickly typing the word beneath them and hitting enter.

When you hit an enemy you will hear a satisfying gunshot and the enemy will fall dead. If you mistype a word, you will have to try again. Hitting ‘enter’ will clear your text field for a new word. The soldiers have short 3-letter words, while the larger vehicles have longer words.

Along the way you will get medical packs which you must type ‘fullhealth’ to activate and super weapons such as ‘detonate’ which will kill all enemies on the screen. Stay alive as long as possible and wrack up as many points as you can.

The game play is very smooth and the sound effects provide a satisfying response to your typing. You can set the game to 4 different difficulty levels, which effects the speed and number of enemies (but not necessarily the word difficulty). This game really satisfies, but I don’t recommend it for anyone with only one hand. I would rate it a 10, but the sequel is one step better.

Object: Shoot the baddies by typing the word beneath them. Stay alive.

Review: I didn’t think they could make a game that would rival the original Qwerty Warriors, but they did. Game play is much the same as the first version. The graphics quality, although similar, is a little more realized. Enemies and words appear a little larger.

The chief differences between this and the original version are:

• The player is stationed at the bottom of the screen.
• Enemies all approach from the top.
• You shoot enemies each time you type a letter instead of having to type the entire word.
• Once you start a word, you must finish it before shooting another enemy.
• You don’t have to hit enter after each word. Just type letters.
• More bonus items (’doubler’ and ‘explode’). And some bonus items last for a longer period of time.
• The higher difficulty levels move extremely fast.
• Players can submit their own word lists.

Although I think game play in this version feels a little more intuitive, you will occasionally find moments when you can’t target the closer enemy because if you accidentally type a wrong letter, you will often trigger a word on a different enemy and have to finish it first. Sometimes in the panic of the moment, this can really trip up the game. I also tend to like the enemies approaching from all directions like in the original version, but I must admit the words are a lot easier to read in this version. And the mechanics feel a little better. It’s a tough call as to which version is better. They both have their pluses and minuses, but I really like the fact that users can submit their own word lists and I like the shooting of individual letters better than typing the entire word, so version 2 gets my vote.

Which version is your favorite? I love to hear your comments.

For more typing games check out this post: 2 Typing Games Put Your Fingers to the Test