Mastering the English language can be tough, trying to convince my youngest that there are hidden letters in words and trying to understand the difference between digraphs and trigraphs causes all sort of confusion. But how will using combinations of words to help you navigate a perilous world work within a game? Thanks to Brainseed Factory and Typoman Revised it’s beautifully executed.

You play as HERO, who literally made up of the letters to form his body, you’ll be going up against FEAR and HATE, who are out to hurt you but there is a mysterious muse that will help to protect you at certain sections of the game. Throughout your journey you’ll navigate puzzles and various platforming elements. You’ll run, jump and swing your way around the level while rearranging letters to help unlock gates, generate power and shield from enemies. Talking of enemies, they are made of typefaces just like HERO, the only weapon you have is your ability to create words that can manipulate the environment to ensure your safety.

Some puzzles are easier than others, spelling the word ON will activate a platform or elevator, while spelling VOLT will generate power to a machine that can help you on your way. Spelling the word LIE generates a small machine that will swallow words and spit out the opposite, another clever concept on the wordplay. There are times where you’ll have to consider that American spellings of words to get you through but it’s never to complicated.

The level design is excellent, there are a few frustrating moments with some of the ledges not allowing you to grip on to as you would expect, but generally there were no issues with how the game controlled. There are lots of clever touches to the game, for example, as you reach a bridge that is held together with the word ROBUST, as you run over it starts to break leaving the word RUST. Generally the game can be played at a leisurely pace, you have enough time to contemplate your next move with a set of letters. I enjoyed the timed sections, where you needed to think and move quickly to avoid death. They got the heart racing as you did all you could to keep HERO alive.

The game is fairly short, but the achievements will have you going back to pick up the ones you have missed. I’m not sure I’ll manage to complete the game dying less than 5 times but it could be fun trying. There are also collectible quotes that lend to the game’s narrative to collect during your playthrough.

Typoman Revised looks beautiful, indeed there is a resemblance to limbo thanks to the deep blacks that are used, except Typoman makes more use of colour. The soundtrack is amazing, and lends itself to the game beautifully.

Typoman Revised is a really enjoyable game that really makes you think different thanks to the wordplay involved. It can certainly get more difficult when you have a higher number of letters to deal with but there isn’t a puzzle you’ll won’t overcome. I definitely had more LOVE than HATE for this game.

Thanks to Brainseed Factory for supporting TiX