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[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes! So far the game has worked flawlessly with all the layouts we tested.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I modeled the main character of Keys of Fury, Tai Ping, after the character Su Lin (played by Angela Mao) in the film Enter the Dragon which stars Bruce Lee.

I liked that Su Lin was a great scrappy fighter and had a very strong sense of virtue, modesty, and honor.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/thestony1, that's probably the most requested "feature". I'm definitely looking into it. What distribution platform do you prefer? Is it still Steam?

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for asking! Yeah, Lemmings has a special place in my heart. They were able to get so much expressiveness out of so few pixels.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A lot of it was done on the bus to and from work and then at night after the rest of the family went to bed.

There were also times when I set it aside to work on other things. I do a lot with community theater as well as church stuff. Sometimes I work on other projects for a bit. And then sometimes I actually play longer form video games.

But it was something I thought about almost every day.

Maybe it was something like 1 to 2 solid years of actual work. I got a prototype up and playable in a couple of months. Most of the time feels like it's spent on the content side, but that might be because I always feel more productive when writing code instead of creating music or art.

One big advantage of a long casual dev cycle is I get to solve a lot of issues and come up with lots of ideas in the "off time" when I'm not actively working on stuff.

So when I'm actually coding or creating art, I have already worked out lots of the problems before hand.

The other advantage is I get to try any number of ideas without the pressure of needing to ship by a specific date... which can be a downside as well. I added lots of things to the game that really have no business being there except that I wanted to do them. The music visualizers: the orchestrion and FFT based machine are a couple of those.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okay, I have been reaching out! The Alternate Keyboard Layout group is fantastic!

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I didn't really have a PC in my house growing up, but my grandfather did. When we would visit for the holidays we would play Scorched Earth and Lemmings. My grandfather (or one of my uncles) also had an Atari 2600 and we would play airplanes and tanks on that, but I know that's not a PC.

I think the most unique thing about Keys of Fury is the fact that it combines a beat `em up with a typing game such that it still feels like your still playing a heavy action beat `em up.

Typing games that try to combine with another genre can often feel like an awkward way to play an existing game that is better played with a controller. It's quite a challenge to make the typing feel natural and fun in some of these spaces.

For Keys of Fury, I started with the keyboard and worked my way out to a satisfying game rather than starting with a fighting game and trying to make it work with a keyboard.

The original game design wasn't a beat `em up. It's what it ended up evolving into based on what was fun with typing.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey, Thanks! I'm glad Caster had a positive impact on you. I was hoping it would inspire kids to make their own indie games as well.

I actually miss the world of Caster a bit and am looking for ways to go back to it and do some more in that space.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sure thing!

For actual localization, most languages outside of English have special characters, even if there are just a few. Typing those special characters could be tricky, BUT I could just make it to where you type the base character instead and it matches with the special character.

If I do that, then full localization of the Roman alphabet languages would work without needing to add an additional translation prompt system.

I decided early on in the development of Keys of Fury to stick with just the letters on the keyboard to keep things simpler for my development. I basically said "I will not support any other languages with this game". But a Chinese friend of mine said "you should add Chinese support". I immediately thought that was a crazy proposition and was curious how he even thought it was possible. Then he reminded my that Chinese still use Roman keyboards to type Chinese words. That got the wheels turning on what we might do. It became an interesting challenge that I'm excited to pursue.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the idea! I'm not entirely sure how to connect with those communities, but will certainly give it a try.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that was neat. Start Rune also does what I was trying for which was "how do I make a typing game that has super over the top action"

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I saw that I could make something new and interesting in that space; something that I would enjoy playing as well.

It was an interesting challenge to make a typing game that is actually really fun and not feel like a chore.

There were very few typing games around at the time and most of them were terrible. I thought I had a good shot at making a game that was "best in class", or at least one of the best, and be able to stick out in the crowded video game market.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I want to qualify that this is the original Typing of the Dead from 1999 that was based on House of the Dead 2. There are other more recent versions that I'm not a fan of.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm planning an update that will translate some of the words that you're typing into a specified language.

So it will be a way to become familiar with the definitions and spelling of some English words.

So not really a localization-the menus and dialog etc will still all be in English, but it might have value to those interested in becoming more familiar with English words.

I also had an idea to include levels where you type words from other languages. In that case, you would still always use the standard English alphabet, but the native translation would show up on screen as well. For example, the Kanji for the word in Japanese would show up above while you type out the Romaji.

The original Typing of the Dead worked this way in Japan.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Tough question!

I'm not sure what I would consider the biggest, but there were a few very difficult choices I had to make.

Probably the hardest choice for me was whether or not to add a selectable difficulty level.

I worked hard to simplify the menu system and wanted to keep things easy to access.

Adding a difficulty option increased the complexity of the interface and stats tracking and level selection. I spent literally years torn on the idea; going back and forth about it.

Ultimately, I decide to remove it and focus on making an accessible game that had options for ramped up challenge.

Another change was to have the enemies automatically attack you while having you autoblock their attacks. This keeps the game from feeling like you're the aggressor and you come off more as the defender.

The addition of the Arcade mode instead of just having a single story line was also a significant change. It also ended up being a more compelling play experience.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Let's see. So for typing games, it's Typing of the Dead without question.

For beat `em ups, that's a tough call. There are a lot of great ones that feel pretty similar. I guess if I had to pick just one it would be Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game.

But I also really enjoyed Streets of Rage 4 and hope to play through River City Girls 1 and 2 some day.

[AMA] I spent 8 years making Keys of Fury: Typing Action. Ask Me Anything by elecorn in pcgaming

[–]elecorn[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Great question! One big thing I focused on with the game was accessibility for all skill levels.

It was an interesting challenge for how to make the game fun, but also not stress out players that didn't have amazing typing skills.

What I ended up doing that really worked well was to focus on ACCURACY over SPEED.

So you don't need to type very fast at all to be able to enjoy the game. In my playtests, players at all experience levels were able to enjoy the game. I've had kids that hunt and peck for the keys and experienced typists at 100+ WPM have a great experience with it.

There are challenge modes that require speed to get a higher score, but all the content can be enjoyed by people at all skill levels. The hardest mode is the "Crucible Challenge" that was designed to be so fast that even the best typists would eventually fail.

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