Buy Type:Rider

Type:Rider is a strikingly ambitious game. It’s a platformer that has you play as a pair of dots who jump, swim, and solve environmental puzzles to progress. It’s also an educational game that teaches you about the history of typography as you play.The game plays out as a series of side-scrolling levels that hinder your progress with puzzles and obstacles instead of enemies. The usual platformer ingredients are on display here, like spikes, lava, water, and moving platforms. It might not sound terribly original, but the developers have pumped tons of creativity into the game’s design. Each world is based on a particular font, and the environments are made up of giant letters in that font, plus whatever new printing technology became available at the time.The controls aren’t as precise as they could be, but checkpoints are closely spaced so you never lose much progress. Every good platformer has collectibles, and here they’re the letters of the alphabet. A number of asterisks are also scattered throughout the levels; grabbing them unlocks sections of text that teach the history of writing and typography. The history is fun to read even if you’re not particularly interested in fonts.Like in Limbo, the graphics are silhouetted and stunning, set against abstract pages of text, drawings, and photographs. The music is pleasantly atmospheric, changing with the timeframe the levels take place in.One problem– and it’s a minor one– is that stopping to read the text sections as you collect asterisks in the game does a disservice to the gameplay. It’s far better to play the levels without stopping for the history lessons, and then read the texts you’ve collected between levels.Despite the somewhat mushy controls, Type:Rider is an incredibly fun, unique platformer. It manages to entertain and inform in equal measure, which is more than most games try to do.

A short but sweet review for a short but sweet game; Type:Rider is a simple and delicate platformer type game - great for the casual gamer! It involves some clever physics mechanics, it's very pretty to look at and listen to, little to no learning curve so it's quite easy to play, and you may even learn a thing or two about the history of typography (font) while playing. It's a little bundle of quality craftsmanship from the developers/designers, you can tell a lot of love went into the game.

It's affordable as it is, and if you see it on sale, go ahead and grab it. I'd definitely recommend it to anybody.

8/10. Enjoy!

A beautiful, fantastic puzzle platformer that also happens to be educational, Type:Rider teaches you about typography through the ages. The design is impeccable: each era has a distinct visual and auditory style that is wrapped in a remarkably soothing package. The generally easy game does have the occasional difficulty spike and there are some rare typos/translation errors in the historic entries (nothing rendering them incomprehensible/unpleasant - at least in the English version) but it is definitely a journey worth taking. Don't let it's relatively short game time put you off, your time will definitely be well spent with this game!

Once again, a great concept that's ruined by its mechanics.

The game looks good and sounds good, and you can even learn a thing or two about the history of typography. Fantastic! The downside to this is sluggish controls that ruin most of the fun. You steer a colon (the punctuation mark) around the levels, but it reacts quite slowly to your inputs – it feels like it is constantly wading through sticky goo, but even in the air it feels inert. (To clarify, i don't mean that the controls are unresponsive per se, it's rather the slow-moving and slowly-reacting behaviour of your character.)

And then there are the "usual" issues many indie games suffer from these days: No way to skip past the opening titles and no options menu (you can't even change the display resolution, and the in-game language is set to whatever region your OS is set to).

As much as i would like to recommend this game, i can't because these issues weigh it down too heavily.

At first, I thought I've found another game as good as 140 or Thomas Was Alone. It was until the second set of levels... Now first of all, the graphics are very good execpt for the Futura levels in my opinion. The music is really enjoyable too and the ambience is there. There's quite a few pages about typography history. But as with any games, the gameplay is the most important part and it's where this game has many issues...

First of all, the controls. Your character is a colon. Sure, it allows for some tactics with lines and such, but it also makes it hard to control. Also the gravity and acceleration are so wacky... It just doesn't feel right.

Then you get into bugs, a game breaking bug where a letter (letter are obstacles and platforms in this game) is facing the wrong way, making the level impossible to finish. In case it happens, you have to restart the level all over again and hope it's fixed. Sometimes the music/sounds go away and sometimes when you pause or alt-tab, the controls doesn't work anymore and you have to Alt+F4 out of the game. Also i've had an issue where my character got stuck in the middle of a letter and I had to restart the game...

Some more issues: the maximum resolution is 1600x900, there's no 1080p, there's a few frame drops throughout the game and the last achievement is really frustating. Also you need to modify your computer settings to change the language of the game (It's in your natal language or pc language by default).

I didin't enjoy playing through this game very much because of all the CONs i've listed. There are way more fluid and responsive platformers out there that you should play first, if you're out of platformers, you could always pick this game up, but with it's controls it's quite frustating to play.

I am book worm and I love this game.

Great soundtracks, fun gameplay and charming art concepts.

This is a real eye-opener game. Unique design concept deep heart and it made ​​a very good detail. Plot is entirely inferior to Hollywood blockbusters. Role model is very fine, making good interface. So what? You worth trying to play!

這TM叫遊戲~玩個球!!
對,沒錯.就是玩球!他給你兩個球.讓你玩球.滾啊滾..
還建議你帶上高級的耳機去享受..
我去..整個遊戲比GAL還坑人.
幾張圖片加還算挺有意境的配樂就能賣錢了...

This is a fairly fun game and I appriciate a game developer attempting to teach their audience about history. The gameplay is straight-forward and mostly intuitive, though some mechanics are unique and require a little getting used to. You can tell that the devs put a lot of work into their level design and creating an atmosphere that compliments what the player is learning about.

One major drawback to this game is the sloppy manner in which the educational aspect is presented. The developer's refusal to use the past tense is a constant annoyance. Numerous errors in sentence structure, grammar, and spelling plague the text. This is somewhat ironic in a game dedicated to teaching about the history of writing.

Overall, the game is entertaining and does an adequate job educating the player. I'd recommend this game, but I'd wait for it to go on sale.

Great concept, amazing visuals, interesting historical lessons. But this game is a platformer, so it needs responsive controls. Alas, this is not the case here. Movement is sluggish, the character (colon, in fact) reacts slowly and even the most basic actions require a lot of patience and luck.

Bottom line: this is a nice history lesson, but a bad platformer.

Fun game for those who like platformers. Soundtrack is relaxing, puzzles are fun and the difficulty is good. This game is not about shooting and killing, but to collect. I recommend this game!

You go around collecting different letters and learn about the history of fonts.
What more do you want?
Visuals are cool and music is cool, It somehow manages to make you interested in fonts and is fun to play!!
18/10

Well here is the thing. Usually when you want to jump right, you press the correct buttons to do so and expect that to happen. If you play this game, get used to the little dots jumping left when you want them to go right. What if you want them to jump left? No sorry they don't do that they only jump in place then. They are also slow to respond to command so get used to not being able to react to sudden changes in your way when they happen.

It pains me to press THUMBS DOWN for this game because it looks so pleasing to eyes and you get to learn from it but the mechanics ruin the whole thing. I dont know if I will even finish it because tetris level is torture with these controls. Boo.

In this game you control two balls (colon) which travels between the history of typing and fonts. You also take the help of a dot at the end of the level to open doors. From cave drawing to 2000s pixel font. In each level you have to go through A to Z (they are platforms). Also a-z, 6 asterisks and a hidden ampersand to collect in each level. The game ends too soon though. Each level takes like 10-20 minute to finish. The last level (pixel) takes a bit more time to finish though. The platforming is simplistic, you can move,jump and wall jump. Art design is nice. Solid and fast paced gameplay. Interesting puzzles. And a great secret level after finishing the game (a cat/catlike animal chases you from A to WTF xD). Game is bit too short though (even after collecting all colons,ampersands and asterisks). And theres a bug: You can't change resolution. Example: you change resolution from 1024x768 to 1280x720 and go in game the keyboard will not work. But the keyboard will work in the main menu. If you exit and restart the game it will be fixed though. But when you take screenshots you will find out that it isnt saving screenshots in 1280x720. Its saving screenshots in 1024x768. Not a big problem though. This bug can be easily ignored.

+ Great Art Design
+ Solid And Simple Gameplay
+ Teaches The History of Typing And Fonts
+ Interesting Puzzles
+ Fun Secret Level
+ Unique In The Platforming Genre
+ A Good Game To Have 100% Acheivements/Stats

- Bit too short
- A Bug/Glitch (can be ignored easily)

Rating: 8.5/10

Cons:
You can get stuck/become unable to jump/fall out of the minecart. Doesn't happen too often though, and the respawn points are fairly dense.
If you leave mid-chapter, you lose progress (collectibles) from that run.
The final (secret) level is infuriatingly difficult, as is getting one of the achievements that requires you to play through a whole level without dying.
The text on pretty much every page in the books has typos/missing words/grammatical errors/odd English, giving the impression that it wasn't written by a native English speaker, or even proofread for that matter.

Pros:
It's stylish, I suppose.

Ultimately, you'd be better off just reading the Wikipedia article on typography.

I really wanted to like this game but aside from its visual style it takes very little risks and screws up a lot of things that it should have correct.
The look of the game is wonderful and continues to be for the whole game. There isn't much else to say, go look at those screen shots and you'll agree.
The way the game behaves ruins the whole experience. From getting stuck in minecarts (to the point where you have to reset and play the same part over and over again just so you can perfect not getting stuck) to the world not resetting objects that have moved (such as objects not rotating the right way for you to pass from one to the other in order to finish the level). There are puzzles in the game where your character (I know its a colon) has to interact with buttons or switches to move objects around during which the camera is pulled back so you can see whats going on, but if you spend more than a minute or two on these sections the camera pulls back in and you can't see more than a character length or two around you making the puzzles nothing more than several minutes of you trying to guess what is happening.
Another issue I have is how you don't ever really feel in control of your character. In parts where you have to keep moving forward so you don't die you will struggle trying to keep control of your character and will start to notice that only one of the dots on your character is taking the lead while the other is only causing you problems.
I was hoping for a lot more variety in the level design but this game ended up being a below average platformer in a gameplay sense.

I got in a fistfight over whether the protagonist is an umlaut, a diaresis, or a sideways colon, and I'll fight you, too, if you pick the wrong side.

As a learning experience, Type:Rider is great: A nice, quick breeze through the history of typography and printing from cave paintings to universal desktop publishing. Each level covers an epoch in written language, and the visuals and music come together gorgeously to convey the feeling of the era.

Unfortunately, the game-ification of it all feels tacked on. Type:Rider would be better served without fatal platforming sections, traps, and 'puzzles' that are less about solving them than about making mechanics work correctly. Is it fair to expect players to weave through a deadly field of Tetris blocks when your jumping physics don't seem to have predictable, repeatable results? You can convey the excitement of the Helvetica level's ski-jump aesthetic without making players dodge icicles with a pair of dots subject to a bizarre, fickle sense of gravity.

It's also a shame that a game that is necessarily as much about publishing as it is about typography does so poorly in laying out its encyclopedia entries, missing the odd punctuation or word here and there and lacking any fine tuning in the letter kerning, leading to ugly spread-out lines to meet the full-justify layout.

So it's not perfect. But you'll learn something and be really impressed by the design work. Art and publishing nerds should definitely give it a go.

Very basic and short game. It is a well built game though. Levels are great and the game is fun. Provides a good 2+ hours of fun.

While being a casual platformer Type Rider is first and foremost an interactive educational experience.

With two jumping dots you travel through history of language and printing learning about various types, their creators and some major printing inventions. From the oldest cave paintings to the Gutenberg's printing press and from offset printing to the first word processors.

This game has good music, magnificent visuals and fairly simple platforming in its core.

I really enjoyed Type Rider, though I wouldn't recommend buying it just for the gaming alone. Nothing to do here if you're not interested in history of printing and plan to skip all the text pieces.

This game is just not worth your time, not because it's boring or a bad concept, but because it plays so poorly. Controlling your character is sluggish; the physics is clumsy; the camera is sometimes zoomed in so close, you have to decide whether to make a leap of faith or attempt to stop and wait; and there are too many instances where it's impossible to tell whether something can be traversed or is just background.

Outside of actual gameplay, the game seemed utterly confused by my controller and couldn't consistently give me instructions for either gamepad or mouse and keyboard, but what's worse is that the menus wouldn't respond properly, either. It was easier just to use my mouse to get anything done, but then when trying to read through the typography lessons, mouse input was ignored, and I had to switch back to left analog to scroll as slow as humanly possible through text.

Other issues: Clarendon. Everything about Clarendon.

If you're looking for a similar style of game, I would recommend you just go play NightSky instead. Then read up on typography if you're so inclined.

This game taught me a lot about the origin of different fonts and how far we have come in terms of taking an initial style and evolving it over the hundreds of years. A lot of the material covered in this videogame was replaced by the works of William Shakespear and John Steinbeck in my English classes. Not that I’m complaining, though having sat through a five-hour game drilling fonts in my brain kind of makes me wish we had covered this to some extent.

STORY & GAMEPLAY
First and foremost: The campaign is not story-driven.

You assume control over two colon circles as you play your way through the nine font styles, serving as chapters: Gothic, Garamond, Didot, Clarendon, Futura, Times, Helvetica, Pixel, Comic Sans MS. Chapters 1-8 break off into 4 sections. Chapter 9 is a single-section bonus chapter. In order to progress through the chapters you will need to collect letters of the alphabet for that particular font; including asterisks and ampersands scattered throughout each section. Collecting these characters will uncover facts about the history of typography from the age of Gothic font and Latin influences in the 11th century right up to Pixel font of our time. The game does an excellent job in teaching information relating to the origins of each font and additional information of interest. The array of sources used only becomes evident once you complete the game and sit through the credits.

I pulled off just under 5 hours of game time, including going back and achievement hunting after completion. There isn’t much in terms of replay value. Once you complete the base campaign of 9 fonts that’s pretty much it. However, you can go back and replay missions and read through pages for that individual font at will.

In terms of controls I experienced no difficulties whatsoever: A to move left, D to move right, SPACE to jump and ESC to bring up the menu. The game will teach you additional controls to navigate through pages you’ve unlocked during the game. Several reviews on the store page complained of “awkward controls” and “slow game speed”. Neither of which I experienced during my playthrough.

GRAPHICS / ART STYLE
Although the art style may seem fairly simple, there is quite a bit of detail added to convey the era for individual fonts. Clarendon font takes on a Wild West approach - corresponding to its time of discovery - with the use of tumbleweed and a Salon. The Times font shows off a more industrial point in time with the use of construction poles, gears and machinery. You will occasional see typography related art-work being showcased in the background which further aids in understanding past methods, technology and era.

AUDIO
Progressing through the game not only changes the art style and era of typography discoveries, but also the music. I thought this was a really nice touch. All the tracks were satisfying.

OVERALL
Quite possibly one of the best educational videogames I’ve played. Learn as you play, play as you learn: A mutual relationship.

PROS
+Pick-up-and-play approach.
+Progressive difficulty.
+Excellent art style and soundtrack.
+Plenty of information scattered throughout the game + wide range of sources used.

CONS
-Limited in terms of replay value, though not a major complaint on my part.