Short Version: Vibrant / Enigmatic / Innovative / Enchanting / Origami / Qwertyopolis / Bastion-esque / Yummy like a donut / Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious / Fun!
Now type all that as fast as you can and imagine evil bugs melting while a beautiful paper world and magical story unfold around you with every word. Huzzah, you just played my homemade Epistory demo!

Epistory is a lovely adventure game in which the keyboard is mightier than the sword. You control a girl who rides a giant fox and has the power to fight off villainous baddies and reshape nature itself through words. As you explore the mysterious world around you, you are both guided and followed by the melodious narration of your own story, which lures you ever deeper into the unknown.

Epistory's gameplay is wonderfully unique - you wander around on your giant fox, solving simple puzzles and magically eliminating any obstacles and enemies in your path by typing words that float above them. You earn experience points by completing these typing challenges, and can earn many more points by rapidly completing multiple typing tasks in a combo. Once you level up, you can develop various abilities that will help you better explore the world or chain longer word-combos.

The gameplay might end up feeling a bit repetitive (explore, solve simple puzzles, type floating words), but the added skill progression through leveling up, along with developing new magical spells as you continue through the game definitely helps alleviate that. Meanwhile, the world itself is a joy to explore. The colorful visuals are gorgeously lush, with a unique paper-art style that meshes perfectly with the story and gameplay. The audio is also well done, with quality voice acting and pleasant background music that changes to fit your current situation.

Conclusion:
Epistory is simply brilliant. It is one of those games that does something so weird and new and does it so well that you'll remember it fondly years down the road. Do yourself a favor, and give this remarkable game a try.

Received a free copy for testing/reviewing purposes. This review is part of the Steamified Community Review program. For similar reviews and fantastic giveaways please visit http://www.steamified.com/

Pre-TL;DR: Epistory is such a rarity in that it handles a unique gameplay style so intuitively that in no moment does the game feel overly gimmicky. Responsive controls, cathartic gameplay, rewarding world, inventive powerups, and an interesting story. When Typing of the Dead is the main competition, I highly recommend you pick up Epistory.

PROS:
- Satisfying gameplay. I have gotten the most use out of my Corsair K70 keyboard playing this game than I have doing anything else on my PC. Even if you don't have a mechanical keyboard, killing waves of bugs with efficient typing attacks feels so amazing.
- Clever controls. The game recommends using E,F, J, and I to control your character through the overworld so you can seamlessly switch between moving and typing, which feels very natural. Also, fun little typing interactions like spamming R and U over and over again to simulate forcing a lock on a chest, and ASDF for turning a crank were some of my favorite moments of the game.
- Beautiful, diverse world full of secrets. The world is made of paper and origami, with the story literally being written on the stage. It's extremely rewarding to explore and unlock new areas to see everything the game has to offer. Great game for completionists (good luck with those "Diamond in the Rough" achievements though).
- Fun powerups. Throughout the game you gain 4 powerups that not only help you progress but aid with all types of battle. Often times you'll have to switch back and forth between powerups, so no power is ever made obsolete.

CONS:
- Can get repetitive during longer playtimes. The main objectives of this game are to 1.) Destroy waves of bugs and 2.) Solve puzzles to continue through the world. I only played this game for 1 to 2 hour sessions at a time, so I really didn't mind this and found every instance to be engaging. But if you like to binge your games, this might be a drawback.
- Kind of short. As of writing this I have 7 hours of gameplay, with about 1 hour being only the arena mode (which is so fun). Again, if you like to binge your games, you might beat this in one sitting. However, an indie game with 7 hours of gameplay is generally okay in my book regardless.
- Not terribly challenging. Maybe I'm just amazing at typing, but I didn't find the game to be all that challenging. I also wish the level cap was a bit higher. I was able to unlock all of the upgrades before the last dungeon.

Beautiful!

Fantastic fun! This game looks great, sounds great, tells an engaging story, and has a phenomenal typing mechanic.

As you walk around, you interact with the environment and attack enemy insects by typing words. You'll also learn special abilities that will imbue your words with special power. Fire will burn the next word for multiple-word enemies or light torches and bushes on fire if used on the environment. Ice will freeze an enemy in place or freeze water. Spark will zap multiple enemies at once or activate electric devices. Wind will push enemies back or activate wind turbines. These abilities can greatly sway combat in your favor, allowing for interesting strategies to tackle the larger enemies or hordes of smaller insects. I found spark to be the most effective as attacking several enemies simultaneously is a huge help when facing a large swarm of insects. Later battles require you to use specific powers on specific enemies, so you'll need to constantly shift between your abilities while holding back the swarm of insects.

The map is broken up into several areas that you can unlock as you explore, as well as metroidvania aspects that reward you for revisiting areas you've explored previously. There are also several simple puzzles to the game, so you're not merely walking around and just typing words. The one thing I didn't like about the environment is it let's you access Chapters out of order. This doesn't affect the game at all, but I'd rather unlock the story linearly.

The game features an adaptive difficulty, so you should enjoy it regardless of whether or not you're a dual finger-wielding keyboard ♥♥♥♥♥♥ or a proficient typist. I type at 90+ words per minute, and I felt challenged playing this game. Part of the challenge here is that the words will overlap or blend into the environment, making it difficult to see what you're supposed to type. Also, the Wind-specific font color is very similar to the generic font color, so it's often difficult to tell when an insect needs to be attacked with wind. This leaves you typing a word repeatedly wondering why the insect won't die.

TLDR

Pros:
- Great storytelling
- Great voice acting
- Adaptive difficulty
- Beautiful environment and art style
- Interesting, fun, and challenging typing mechanic
- Great merging of words into the environment
- Supports large selection of keyboard layouts, including QWERTY, AZERTY, and DVORAK

Cons:
- Words can be difficult to read during combat (stack on top of each other, blend in with background, move quickly, etc)
- Able to progress story non-linearly
- Difficult to tell which enemies must be attacked with Wind
- Inaccurate typing statistics
-- words per minute is recorded anytime words are on the screen, regardless of whether or not you're typing them
-- game records an error if you switch to a new word before finishing the first one (sometimes you need to do this to attack a fast-approaching enemy)
- Difficult to switch between abilities during heavy combat
- Uses several esoteric words for big enemies, making you have to try and read the word letter-by-letter to see what you're supposed to type (refer to Con #1 to see why this is bad)

I picked this up today because it was on sale, and I didn't put it down until I finished it. I need to go back and improve my wpm for achievement purposes, but damn if I didn't enjoy every minute of it. Cute ending too.

It is rare that I feel compelled to write a review for a game.

Thusly I shall endeavour to review this game in as little time possible as my new typing prowess will enable.

During my Epistory journey, I learned new words - ones I will no doubt employ in my life going forward. I also learned to type them quickly, and come to expect them to reveal new lands or zap bugs.

My only regret is that this game isn't longer. I would buy more game if they had made more game.

Apologies, English is my first language.

I genuinely recommend this game as a treasure amongst rubble.

To me, in my 4 continuous hours of gameplay, this is an excellent exploration on anxiety and struggle; full of strife, mini accomplishments, and moving forward, it tells a grippingly, maddeningly vague story.

While somewhat dramatic at times, this game has a lovely way of allowing the user to relate to the character. Even with the gender difference between myself and the main character, I feel connected.

Gameplay requires typing...to attack you have to type the words above the monsters' heads. It has adaptive difficulty to help keep it interesting and challenging.

Give it a try someday. If nothing else, the style is gorgeous!

This is one of the best games i've played in a long time. Simple and elegant gameplay. Simple yet amazing graphics. The storyline is very well done. I would love to see more of this style of game from the publisher and really reccomend that if you're at all interested to pick it up. You won't regret it!!

Took me 6 hours to complete the game. Was a fun game. Very different concept would like to see more games like this. Interesting story. Not much replayability.

Awesome game if you like typing games. Also great practice if you are learning to type various keyboard layouts.

Beautiful graphics and story.

Recommend 9/10... never give 10/10, there should always be margin for improvement even if the product is this nice.