Grammar Nazi

By: Derek Yu

On: February 11th, 2008

EDIT: Petri has informed me that he’s working on an update that addresses a lot of the issues I mention below. The update should be out shortly and I’ll make sure it gets mentioned here.

Grammar Nazi is a new “type ’em up” from Petri Purho, the developer behind the IGF-nominated Crayon Physics Deluxe. The goal of the game is to type words to attack your opponent. Longer words do more damage, but leave you more vulnerable – while you’re typing your protective shield goes down.

I really wanted to love this game, because I’m a big fan of Petri, typing, and blowing things up… but damn, it’s too unforgiving. I can’t even beat the first guy – trying to dodge the shrapnel he drops is like trying to dodge raindrops in a storm. No matter how carefully I time my attacks, it’s impossible to fire off an “it” without taking some damage.

To make matters worse, fired letters don’t register until they’ve made contact with the enemy. Because of the enemy’s shape and movement, even a correctly typed word may show up as a typo.

And last but not least, “”http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/antidisestablishmentarianism">antidisestablishmentarianism," which should, in theory, cause a nuclear explosion killing the first boss instantly, does nothing. It doesn’t even count as a word! Why?! /me cries

Posted in Abstract, Freeware, Shoot-em-ups, Windows | Tags: PetriPurho

Petri Purho

Derek you should have waited couple of days; I’m working on an update. I’ve already fixed couple of bugs and made the typing much easier and now I’m working on adding more bosses to the game. Actually there’s only one boss, because I didn’t have time to add more. It was supposed to be one of those 2 hour games, but I ended up using 8 hours for it.

Hopefully I’ll get the update done tomorrow. Also I’ll add antidisestablishmentarianism to the dictionary just to satisfy you.
Derek

Ah, hurray! I will update the post accordingly when the time comes. Let me know!
raigan

custom game development!
zzzdude

you know you can just edit that one file with the list of billions of words and add it along with other random words that aren’t already in it…
I don’t have the directory open at the moment, so I don’t know the filename.
It’s also alphabetized, so I’d assume you would want to put your words in the correct place and not at the beginning/ending of the file.
Al King

Humus, well, it doesn’t tell you words, you can beat the game with relatively short words, and there are very few situations where you just want to think up a long word, so it doesn’t really emulate an real-world situations and improve your vocabulary that way. I guess it could indirectly, if you go about looking for good ammunition :P

Unfortunately for me at least it was more about typing accuracy than anything else – it seems hyper-sensitive, which isn’t helped by the fact that letters which miss aren’t counted. Anyway, looking forward to the update, here – it’s a very clever concept.
Derek

Humus was, unfortunately, a spambot. So he had to go bye-bye.
Xagarath

Floccinaucinihilipilification would have been a better choice. Or pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconoisis
Adalore

Ah the micro stopic volcano disease or what ever. :P

Lets see if it’s been updated now…
dustin

The gameplay mechanics in this are pretty awful (especially how it only registers what you type half the time) which is a shame because I love the idea and the aesthetic.