Freeware Pick: Get your competitive typing on with Typefighters

Typing games come in many shapes and sizes. There are comical murder mysteries and rail shooter typing games, to name a couple of examples. But Typefighters does something I haven't seen before: it takes typing and makes it a weapon in head-to-head combat.

Typefighters has eight game modes, each very well suited to use as a typing game. Stream mode, seen in the animated gif above, asks players to try to be the first to type as many words as possible out of a stream of words scrolling in from one side within a given time limit. Other modes include: Lines, a 5x5 grid of words with the goal of getting five spaces in a row even though your opponent can steal spaces; Tug, in which a line has a single word attached at any time and typing the word faster than your opponent gets the line pushed in their direction; and Projectiles, in which typing a word sends it flying towards the opponent and the match is a battle of creating new projectiles and destryoing the ones coming your way.

There is a single player mode with a customizable bot, but it's really not as fun as playing against a friend. Matches can be played via local network or the internet, though there's no matchmaking. You need to manually input the host's IP address. The game's color scheme is customizable, though, which will help colorblind folk. As an extra fun detail, the menus can be navigated almost exclusively by typing (and the one place I found where that wasn't true is just a spot where two words start with C and the first word in the list captures the keyboard input every time).

Typefighters is free and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux from its web site.

[Typefighters]