Typoman’s dark world of hostile creatures and broken machinery may at first appear similar to the 2011 puzzle platformer Limbo. But, in fact, if you look a little closer it marks itself as different as many of this world’s components are made out of letters. So, Limbo meets Scrabble?
As the trailer shows, you start off as just the letter ‘O’ rolling along the hard stone ground of what appears to be a grim wasteland of steep mountains and dead trees. Within time, you join forces with an ‘E’ which you then use to hop along on. And later an ‘H’ gives you legs to walk upright in a humanoid fashion. Lastly, an ‘r’ gives you an arm so you can push, pull, and carry objects. All of the letters that form your body of course spell out the word “Hero.”
The creators of Typoman say that you’re weak and must use your wits and creativity in order to survive this devastated land and its dire creatures. What this mostly involves is forming words out of the letters that you find around the world, as “the letters that seemed to be so threatening at first hold powers you yet cannot imagine,” according to the creators.
It’s actually a game you may want to play along with a dictionary. As solutions to puzzles may be puns, or you may need to form unexpected words in order to trigger the physical actions they’re tied to to survive. One of the most basic examples is that to activate a platform so that it rises up as an elevator you need to turn on the generator next to it. Rather than just pull a level to do that you need to create the generator out of the word “ON.” Obviously, puzzles will get much more complex than that.
Typoman should be heading to a number of platforms when it’s ready including PC and consoles.
