words suitable for kids?

[gizmomelb]

Hi,

I love the look / art style of this game and the girl and fox protecting the land, I'm just curious if the words are kid friendly (8 years old) and also is there something like a child mode / dictionary?

I know my daughter would fall in love with the fox, but if she's not quick enough to type initially she will get very frustrated with the game - I'm hoping if there isn't already, that there will be options to select child friendly dictionaries aimed at different ages / school levels and also response times for kids as they start to learn to type faster,

thank you.

[TheThibz]

Hello,

Thanks for your interest in the game. As far as the words are concerned there should be no bad or offensive words in English. The other languages are translated but I trust the translator would not have fun with this kind of stuff. Though there are some words that she probably would not understand, she would improve her vocabulary.

There's no "kid dictionary" but we will allow custom dictionaries to be created by the community (via the steam workshop, slightly before the release). But even with an easier dictionary I think some parts of the story uses difficult words (though I would need the confirmation from someone whose mother tongue is english...).

We plan to add an adaptive difficulty to cater to every kind of typist.

[gizmomelb]

hi, thanks for the reply and information.

I'm happy to help look over any dictionary / story dialogue as a native English speaker if that is of assistance?

Also the ability to have custom dictionaries in the future sounds great - I have many friends who are primary school teachers and being able to grade the words the kids need to type might make this game of interest to them.

thank you.

[VirginRedemption]

Thanks for the offer. It's really appreciated but we are already working with a native English speaker who's in charge of the script.Cheers.

[MimosaVendetta]

I have come across the word damn, which an 8 year old has PROBABLY heard before.

[StreetPreacher]

Came here looking for this exact kind of info. I have 2 girls around 10 years of age who would absolutely LOVE this game, but are not fluent typists at all. Would love to see several very easy kid-friendly modes, perhaps starting with single letters only, and then posssibly harder modes progressing to things like "cat," "dog," etc. And VERY slow enemies to give kids enough time.

Game looks great - can't wait to play it.

[VirginRedemption]

Hi! The adaptative difficulty suits to young kids but it depends of the age and the familiarity with the keyboard. The game will slow down but the words will remains the same. They will just need some patience. Cheers.

[Vetlon]

Would love to hear if anyone has gotten this for a younger child yet? My 7 year old son has problems with fine motor skills like hand writing but he can type fairly well, thanks to Minecraft and a typing program he uses in school every day. I would love to get this for him to provide even more incentive to improve.

I want to know if the adaptive system will be too frustrating for him. His teacher told me he types about 30wmp but I am guessing those are really short words.

I also want to know are there any parents who can provide feedback on whether the game is appropriate for a child?

[Tony Soprano]

I posted a review on the game which has my thoughts on using the game as a learning tool: http://steamcommunity.com/id/deadlyrom/recommended/398850/

I haven't played on difficulties other than hard, but I imagine it would work very well as a practice tool, improving muscle memory due to gameplay being words and not sentences. Adaptive difficulty would likely help a ton - there's tons of studies that show this sort of real-time curve adjustment helps in educational and learning. Just look at Rocksmith, it basically does the same thing with a guitar.

The game is very fun and it's very inexpensive. There really aren't many typing games on the market (Mavis Beacon is far from a game and so boring) and Typing Of The Dead may be found inappropriate, even with the mature language turned off - not to mention, the typing part of that game was simply tacked on as a gimmick and not created with typing in mind, as Epistory was.

Typing is a good skill to have - coming from someone that types 130WPM, don't kid yourself in thinking this game is just a novelty. Most of the practice with keyboards that kids get these days are from non-tactile virtual keyboards on phones and tablets that only use thumbs or gestures - the only benefit being familiarization with the general layout of QWERTY. Typing with all of your fingers on a physical keyboard is a totally different ballgame.

I found a lot of the words while roaming the overworld and dungeon to be simple, short and able to be typed with one hand (in one region of the keyboard), which will also lend to memorization of the keyboard layout.

Also, 30wpm at 7 years old is awesome. The average typing speed is 41wpm.

[mreed2]

Someone typing at 30 wpm should be fine in this game. Someone who is at the "hunt and peck" stage, on the other hand, probably wouldn't enjoy the game very much, although depending on how far the adapative difficulty will slow down the game...

[Vetlon]

Thanks for the responses. I will go ahead and buy it for my child and watch him play. After some play I will post a response here and let other people know how he's doing.

I often wish that there were still some good typing games like Sierra-onine used to make (King's Quest, Space Quest, etc). Although you did not have to type quickly it was an excellent way to build early typing skills. All he really has now is scribblenauts, which is still pretty cool, but not quite as elaborate.

[mreed2]

While old-style, with a parser, Sierra games are dead (there /are/ games in the later style, with no parser, still being made -- I can dig up a link if you are curious). The old, pure text based, format of Infocom is still around, as "Interactive Fiction".

You can find free games in this genere here: http://ifdb.tads.org/ -- most can be played online, or you can download the appropiate client and play on just about any sort of device that you care to name.

You'll need to do some hunting to find one that would hold the interest of a 7 year old, though -- might start here: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=6a23xff9er4s83pl... :)