BabyType

BabyType is a multi-language educational game aimed at teaching fast touch typing skills. While its title suggests that the game it was created for younger audiences, adjustable difficulty levels and friendly design make it suitable for all ages.

The game is divided into levels that correspond to the number of keyboard characters that the player must type, with the lowest being three (two letters and the space bar). Each successive level adds two more characters, so level 3 is followed by level 5 etc. The player may freely choose the starting level of the game, which effectively defines gameplay difficulty.

Every level is divided into several progressively more difficult stages, all of which have the same structure, and the objective is always to type a randomly generated sequence of keys within a time limit. In each stage, the main character (a cute fuzzy creature of some sort) moves across the screen from left to right, followed by some kind of peril, like a monster, a crusher or disintegrating floor, moving at a constant speed. To escape this threat, the player must remove obstacles ahead of the protagonist, which are represented by blue blocks with keyboard characters on them. Pressing the matching key removes a block. Failure to type fast enough, or typing wrong keys, results in the character being reached by the monster/peril before they can escape. While there are no lives in the traditional video game sense, failing a stage adds to the mistakes meter that, once filled up, means the end of the game.

Stages within a level grow progressively more difficult as more different keys are used. The first stage will always be the two new keys plus the space bar, then their number will increase up to the current maximum, so the end stages of level 15 for example will include up to 15 different characters in the sequence that must be typed. Stage backgrounds and monsters are selected randomly and only have an aesthetic function.

The game awards points for each successful keystroke but also keeps track of mistakes the player makes when a key is pressed that does not match the current block. Once a game session is finished the high score table is displayed that tallies score, average typing speed (in strokes per minute) and the percentage of mistakes made during playing.

The game supports several different languages (English, Russian, German and French) as well as different keyboard layouts including UK, US and Swiss variants.