I like the design choice of chilled music and graphics which contrasts with the game objective of typing fast. Makes me want to type as fast as I can while remaining perfectly relaxed.

I'd love to be able to start at higher levels. Depending on your WPM, the first few minutes are somewhat boring... but if you keep grinding for long enough, it's quite challenging.

Especially when the capital ships start shooting!

The "load your own text" option is a really fun way to read articles and blogposts. Check out http://zty.pe/?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-Type

It's fine... but I have to ask: is it really good to have another game in which you can't win?

You can complete a level -- but then a new, faster one starts. Change the semantics to "You won Level N!" and add an optional cookie to remember your high-scores, and this becomes a much more positive game.

This is not meant as saying "old news", but merely asking, is this new? I remember seeing something like this as the first HTML5 game I encountered a few years ago. Not sure if it was specifically this or just same concept.

Nevertheless, good fun! I had Typing of the Dead for Dreamcast with a keyboard and played the crap out of that. Even more so than the regular House of the Dead which I also had.

According to the website http://phoboslab.org/#games it is from 2011. I remember playing and enjoying it around that time, too.

It's pretty old, but it looks like they've made significant updates/improvements since I played it last.

FWIW, I played something similar on Amstrad Schneider CPC 464.

Yes, I remember this as a demo for an HTML5 game engine.

I played this game years ago and enjoyed it.

To make my life more interesting, I tried making a bot to play a game. I noticed the game ignores wrong keystrokes and there is no penalty.

So my bot cyclically types the letters A through Z at a few hundred keys per second. It really does the trick!

I bet sorting the letters by frequency in the English alphabet would make it faster.

I actually had some fun. I love how the shooting sound adapts to your typing!

I used to play the first version of this game [1]. This seems to be more intense and faster. Oh, and you can get the music here [2].

[1]: http://phoboslab.org/ztype/v1.html

[2]: http://nofatenetmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-phoboslab-works

Doesn't work with vimium, or probably any browser extensions with single key shortcuts - pressing T opens a new tab and so on.

The same is probably true for any other game. I don't think there are any where the input goes to some hidden text field or something like that.

That extension should have an option for disabling shortcuts for the current tab.

Press i in Vimium, ctrl-z in Pentadactyl, or shift+esc in Vimperator, and they will pass everything except esc (shift+esc in vimperator) to the page.

Thanks! I did read vimium's readme years ago, but in the meantime I had totally forgotten about insert mode.

I use Firefox with "Search for text when I start typing" enabled. Some games break due to this option, but this game is okay for me.

...as one might expect?

Missing Dvorak support in the phone

As a non-touch typist, what is a good score or wave to reach if you are a fast touch typist?

I'm not sure if I'm a fast touch typist, but I reliably make it to round 24 with around 95% accuracy. I've never passed round 26

That seems really fast. I topped out at level 22. However in the "load text mode" (link on this) it's easier; my laptop died in level 28.

and then you press backspace and you are back in hackernews!

fun little game, gets quite hard after a few min

1400 at 7am, I call that pretty good.

1200 after three game. I tend to mistype sometimes and it hitches onto some word I am not noticing and looses me precious few seconds :(

Yeah I noticed that too. I wax assuming that it would target the word nearest the bottom that starts with the letter I start with, but I don't think that is the case. Not sure, but not def tripped me up a couple times. No excuses though, definitely need to get faster.