Typoman is a downloadable Wii U game that comes out this week and boy is it a change of pace. It’s one of the new independently developed games that Nintendo is releasing for the Wii U, and it has a pretty neat mechanic.

As your stick figure Hero travels through the game world, you find letters lying scattered in the environment. With the Wii U’s GamePad, you can rearrange those letters into words that will change the game.

In an example from the trailer, in a section full of poisonous gas the Hero could place a “p” at the end of gas, making gasp. This created a bubble of air in which he could take a breath.

In another part, the player rearranges some letters to spell “fear,” which scares away a monster. It looks like it could get pretty tricky!

Typoman looks seriously cool, and it’s only $13.99. It looks like it might be a little creepy for younger players, but the design is absolutely gorgeous. Nintendo added that if you downloaded the demo of Typoman during Nindies@home, you can get the full game for 15% off until December 19.

Typoman is the first game developed by Brainseed Games. It was featured in the Nindies Lounge at Pax Prime in Seattle, and was nominated for numerous awards at game shows throughout the summer. At E3 2015 it won Gaming Trend’s Best Art Style award, and at Game Connection it won Best Casual Game.

At Gamescom, the world’s biggest gaming show, it was a nominee for Best Indie Game.


This article was written by

Simone de Rochefort is a game journalist, writer, podcast host, and video producer who does a prolific amount of Stuff. You can find her on Twitter @doomquasar, and hear her weekly on tech podcast Rocket, as well as Pixelkin's Gaming With the Moms podcast. With Pixelkin she produces video content and devotes herself to Skylanders with terrifying abandon.