Target Acquired: Backspace Bouken

Backspace Bouken, from RNG Party Games, is a DOS-style dungeon crawler that features typing as its core mechanic. The game centers around Kana, a girl armed with a keyboard, who attempts to reach the top of the Tower of F8 on a quest to save her sisters. Each monster she encounters speaks to her - often using humorous dialogue or speaking in strange ways - and by typing out their sentences, she unleashes attacks. Creatures can attack as well, but Kana is able to dodge attacks, or attacks can be negated if she types quickly enough. She even regains health by stringing together multiple hits in succession. In this world, spaces are the key to defeating monsters, and there are a limited number of them, but Kana can conserve spaces by combining certain word pairs into contractions. Kana is able to refill her spaces by reading hint signs and backspacing over them, deleting the words and collecting the spaces for use in combat.

The game is now available for PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam and Itch. Check our coverage here.