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[mildmojo]

This is really cool.  Very smooth, nice atmosphere.  The sound didn't work for me, but that's probably because I'm emulating.

The look is quite similar to an idea I had for this compo (which never materialized), involving a person reading a book or a scroll.

On the controls, I found navigation a little tricky.  I sort of expected it to behave like an electric typewriter or word processor, where holding the space bar down would repeatedly space the cursor across the page.  Once I read the directions (heh), tabbing made this a lot easier. 

I'm the sort of typist who immediately backspaces mistakes, so having backspace go all the way to the beginning of the word gave me headaches.  The backspacing to previous tab stops was nice, though.  I'm not sure how to reconcile that.  Also, what are you supposed to do when falling words overlap each other?  I've been hitting return to get a new line, then tabbing forward to the spot underneath the word I just wrote.  If the words fall right-to-left, I end up doing a lot of navigation.  Tricky.

I understand the enemies, I think, but what do they do?  Are they harmful?  Am I supposed to avoid them?  Pressing delete, as mentioned in the instructions, doesn't fire contermeasures or anything.

When the text goes backwards, is that the sheet being flipped over?  I sort of expected an infinite sheet of paper, but pressing enter a bunch of times sometimes moved text back down toward my cursor.  The names on the high score table are sometimes corrupted by this, too.

Nice job on the little red ink annotations, they look great.  The end-of-game text appeared over some of my typed text in one session, though.

Awesome! Congrats!  My high score is $20.45.

[Pishtaco]

This is really cool.  Very smooth, nice atmosphere.  The sound didn't work for me, but that's probably because I'm emulating.

Thanks! What are you running it on?

The emulation might also be the reason for the weird things you are seeing. It should be like typing on an infinite sheet of paper, with the typed words never moving back down the page. But I'm moving the paper up by copying the texture over itself, moved a few lines up, which maybe doesn't agree with your emulator. (As I write this now, I realize this is not the most sensible way to do it.)

On my keyboard Del is just above Backspace, so it felt like a reasonable compromise to have del go back one space and backspace go back one tab. So for overlapping words you can press down and then backspace a couple of times.

The enemies make thoughts go faster when they bump into them. You can get rid of them by matching them in the normal way.

I'm happy the notations turned out well. I spent hours worrying about an algorithm to place them in a suitable spot, but eventually decided that the kludgy thing I had would work fine 75% of the time, so left it as it was.

[Melly]

This is an unique take on the subject, alright. Pretty nice, though moving left and right can be a bit of a hassle.

[AdamButcher]

Realising you could press TAB and Backspace gave me like 10 more dollars!
Always pays to read the Readme.

Strangely compelling, really smooth and tangible feeling- I feel like I'm at a type-writer which is great.

Gameplay could be stronger, but perhaps not given the idea.

[mildmojo]

Thanks! What are you running it on?

Wine in Linux.  This is a GM game, right?  I think I have about a 25% success rate with them, so it's cool that this one works.

The emulation might also be the reason for the weird things you are seeing. It should be like typing on an infinite sheet of paper, with the typed words never moving back down the page. But I'm moving the paper up by copying the texture over itself, moved a few lines up, which maybe doesn't agree with your emulator. (As I write this now, I realize this is not the most sensible way to do it.)

Huh.  Yeah, something strange is going on.  Every time a word matches while the paper is scrolling (after pressing Enter), the texture flips, pivoting on the X axis.  So the high scores and intro text can appear backwards at the bottom of the screen, now scrolling up, and slightly lighter:



This even carries over into the high score image; some of my high score names are backwards and not beside their scores.

On my keyboard Del is just above Backspace, so it felt like a reasonable compromise to have del go back one space and backspace go back one tab. So for overlapping words you can press down and then backspace a couple of times.

Whoa.  Never seen that configuration.  I don't even like the keyboards with two vertical columns of three insert/home/page down keys instead of two rows of three; yours would kill me.  What model is it?

I'm happy the notations turned out well. I spent hours worrying about an algorithm to place them in a suitable spot, but eventually decided that the kludgy thing I had would work fine 75% of the time, so left it as it was.

I think the 75% solution is great here.

[increpare]

finally played it.  Hurrah! for a concept well-executed 

[Crackerblocks]

I love the look of the paper after typing a whole screen of text, mistakes and annotations. And especially with STOP! STOP! STOP! spammed everywhere. Utter madness.

My only issue was running fullscreen was dropping my frame rate slightly causing some of my keypresses to not register.

It's too bad the free-asociaton idea didn't completely work out. At first I was typing full sentences, just making stuff up. Maybe bonus points for typing random correctly spelled and theme appropriate stuff?
But nevertheless, lovely work! High score = 33.60

[JLJac]

Love the look the page gets when scanned over by the gameplay. All the overlapping text and little red notes are awsome A bit hard though, might be because english isn't my main language...

Really great idea, keep the good work up

[Pishtaco]

Thanks for all the comments.

shrapnel - Yes, it's GM. I think the problem must be about copying surfaces, since the two times that happens is when the paper moves up and when the high scores are rearranged. Maybe it's a graphics driver thing. I've got a laptop, so Ins and Del and suchlike are crammed in together in the top right.

Crackerblocks - are you sure there's a difference in speed between windowed and full screen? I guess I've mostly been playing fullscreen, and it's been okay. I also originally had some code in to stop you typing too fast, to make it more like an old typewriter. I took most of this out, but didn't rewrite it properly so there's a trace left which might feel like missing a key now and then.

[jeb]

Wow this game really impressed me, but in separate and sometimes false ways:

1) It began with the nice presentation. Atmospheric clock ticking and good typewriter sounds. I began playing and could actually imagine sitting in a drafty British room, with cup of tea by my side.

I wasn't sure what to do, so I simply tried to type the words that appeard on the screen. I was somewhat frustrated that the words were outside of the screen and tried to adjust with the arrow keys.

It got me 65 cents.

2) I thought "hmm... maybe I misunderstood something" So I read the introduction text again. And then it struck me, "Aha! There's some kind of super-advanced text analyzer going on here! I should write a story with the brainstorm ideas that are falling down!" So I started writing again, and based on the ideas that dropped down I ended up with a story somewhat like this:

At the library there were a group of cats who could speak Latin. They couldn't speak Italian because that was forbidden. They ran along the iron fence to the door, because the door was there for their convience. In the library worked a Georgian librarian. I found myself in the north attic, looking at a symbol on the wall. Oh, the symbol vanished! This was in a house on College Street.

I got 0 cents this time.

3) I figured I still didn't really understand the game, so I opened the readme (I got the game from the torrent). There the game idea was neatly explained and I played again. This time I got to see more of the text effects, but was also very annoyed that the keyboard was fixed to the English layout (hard to find "?" for me).

At least I got $22.15

[Bob le Moche]

STOP!
                    STOP!
This game is up there with the typing of the dead. There should really be a way to scroll up at the end and watch your descent into madness.
              STOP!
                                      STOP!

[JLJac]

Yeah, I think so too. Would be nice if you could get your script as a .jpg. And maybe a little scene in the end where the publisher reads it and is all like    

[Fifth]

Heh, that would be pretty cool.

Anyway, you pulled off this idea really well; the atmosphere, feel, premise, and execution were all quite excellent.

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

I loved STACKER, and this game didn't fall short of that standard you set for yourself.  You are like genious.

I have a question, though.  How easily could your program work in another language?  Because you should release a spanish or french version (Russian is probably too hard to make work in GM).

-PENCERKOFF

[JLJac]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

Love your style man Gotta start introducing myself too!

[Titch]

$35.25

I find the red ink thing a little confusing. Other than that it's super shiny (in a dark and evil Lovecraft way).

[Pishtaco]

At the library there were a group of cats who could speak Latin. They couldn't speak Italian because that was forbidden. They ran along the iron fence to the door, because the door was there for their convience. In the library worked a Georgian librarian. I found myself in the north attic, looking at a symbol on the wall. Oh, the symbol vanished! This was in a house on College Street.

That's wonderful . I wish I could have made that game.

It sounds like I should put in an instructions screen and the possibility to reassign some of the keys. Also I ran out of time to do the red ink thing properly. It's meant to be like the star power in guitar hero or a screen-clearing bomb in a shmup, and should at least make the player feel powerful.

On reviewing the things you've written - I dunno. I think what looks entertaining as it scrolls past while the game is going on will get old fast if you look at it again later. And I think it would be a problem, technically; I don't want to keep a huge texture hanging about in memory, and writing it to disk sounds like a pain.

[skaldicpoet9]

This game is brilliant! This has to be one of the most original game ideas I have seen. An automatic typing game who'd of thought? Anyways, I am hopelessly addicted to this game now. I spent the last hour trying to beat Titch's high score lol...

[Noyb]

$31.30

Incredible idea, and the implementation is very well done. It really did feel like a writer trying to get his mad thoughts out as fast as possible in the endgame. (Anyone read the Sandman story about the writer and his muse?)

Backspace tabbing backwards felt a bit weird. Would it be possible to use shift+tab as a backwards tab instead? Word uses that shortcut, but I'm not sure how common it is in other applications.

[Xazak]

After searching the forums and even trying out a few different Google queries, I absolutely cannot find a link to download this game. The main download page here is broken, going to a "Cannot find this file!" page.

I wouldn't normally resurrect a thread like this, but this game (this very thread, actually) was linked to from 1up's annual 101 Free Games article, and there's probably going to be a lot of people trying to find this one.