There’s no shortage of typing games out there, but with few exceptions, they all fall into one of two categories. On the one hand, you have games that take a broad genre (shooter, adventure, RPG) and slap a typing mechanic and a dictionary on it, and call it a day. On the other hand, you have competitive typing games that pit competitors against each other in a raw battle of words per minute. And then there’s Final Sentence from developer Button Mash, which borrows a bit from both to do something original.
How Final Sentence is unique in the typing world
The problem with most games that use typing as a mechanic is how disconnected they are from the game’s diegetic experience. In other words, there’s no real connection between the typing and the constructed world of the game. Think about The Typing of the Dead, one of the most well-known typing games out there. Essentially, it’s just a rail shooter with a typing mechanic thrown on top; the typing is entirely disconnected from the narrative (diegesis is Greek for “narrative”).
Then you have games like Nitro Type and TypeRacer, which lean much more heavily into the competitive aspect of gaming, rather than the narrative. For all intents and purposes, these games have no “diegesis,” they merely rely on the conceit of racing cars as a stand-in for words per minute.
It’s in the murky waters between these two paradigms that Final Sentence sits. The basic gameplay is the same as TypeRacer: type faster than your online opponents with fewer mistakes to win, but where Final Sentence gets fun is in how it frames the whole thing. Each round starts with you waking up in a dark room at a beat-up table with nothing but a mechanical typewriter and a timer. Standing above you is a shadowy figure with a revolver with a single bullet. If you make a mistake, they’ll spin the chamber and pull the trigger. Maybe you’ll get to keep playing, maybe not.
Final Sentence has a killer concept, but it’s a shallow experience
One thing Final Sentence does better than its competitive typing peers is gameplay; in particular, it offers three different game modes. Battle Royale pits up to 40 players against each other for a set number of rounds (the number changes each time). If you make three mistakes in a round, you have to play a round of Russian roulette. Finish all rounds before everyone else to win.
Knockdown has eight players and seven rounds. The slowest player each round is eliminated until only one is left. Finally, Duel is 1 vs 1. The match is divided into rounds. If you lose a round, you’re subjected to Russian roulette with one round added to the chamber each time you survive.
As far as what you type, there are 50 tracts of text that seem to be randomly chosen for each round. Some of them appear to be from within the world of the game, others are lists of statistics, recipes, or mathematical formulas. Some are super simple, others require closer concentration.
That’s it, which you can watch in our gameplay video above. Yes, it’s more “game” than you’ll get with TypeRacer, but honestly, I wouldn’t say it’s worth the $10 price tag. The mechanics of Russian roulette mixed with a competitive typing game are genius, but there are no hidden depths to be found here. Still, this may be the best competitive typing game out there. Between the social-first design and the buzz surrounding the game, there are usually players online (though the game may throw some bots in just to keep the numbers up), and the Russian roulette mechanic adds just the right amount of tension.
Based on the chatter on the Discord channel, there’s still more game that the developers are pushing out. In the very near future, you should be able to look forward to more advanced stats tracking your performance. The devs also promise that skill-based matchmaking is on the way, so if you’re just starting out, you won’t be going up against a touch-typing master. Finally, leaderboards and leagues are coming in the next month. I’m not sure that pushes the value proposition up to $10, but who doesn’t like to see free updates?
| Developer | Genre | Price |
| Button Mash | Competitive typer | $9.99 |
Final Sentence is a genius mix of competitive typing and Russian roulette. Unfortunately, neither the depth nor breadth of the gameplay manages to justify its relatively high price tag.
Final Sentence
