The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia Hands-on Preview

Two frantic, panic inducing genres of games, melting to be one: The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia gives us half bullet hell and half Mavis Beacon speed typing to create a whole new stressor never before seen by the likes of me! You play a priest living in a foul-mouthed pixelated world, doing your best to rid the population of nasty, floor-licking demons.

Bullet hell and typing, you say? How would this ever work, you say? Well! Have I got the answer for you! As you go into fights, which strongly resemble bosses in the demo, you will receive an overhead of your words to type out. These words are usually fairly easy on their own--Biblical sounding phrases with lots of 'and's, 'the's, and 'or's. If you're any kind of regular keyboard aficionado, you'll find the words to come quite natural with curveballs like 'archangel' sneaking it's way in there to keep you on your toes. Sounds pretty doable, right? Well...

While you're typing away, each word counting as a goal to whittle the enemy's health down and successfully exorcise the dark force that possesses them, you'll have a barrage of attacks coming your way to bob and weave through. These will be your classic bullet hell attacks, where the screen quickly fills up with plenty of things to avoid out of taking damage. This means that one hand will be on the directional keys and your other will be typing things--one handed. You can try to nail out the words with both hands at first, but with the intensity of the shots fired that come at you, there'll be no choice but to divide and conquer simultaneously using both of your slappers. Take damage? You drop your Bible and until you pick it back up again, no words will be fed to you to type.

I'll be honest here: I had to break down and have my partner take the typing on, while I moved the directional keys. My reflexes and typing skills aren't really catlike, so the only way to get through those limited demo fights was to assign separate responsibilities. And it worked! This led me to two conclusions that might want to be taken on board: a two player mode would be absolute magic. I would have SO much fun playing this game with another person. And a second, lesser in importance suggestion: a difficulty slider of some sort. This one is a mixed bag, because we all know how hardcore bullet hells are supposed to be--and nobody is supposed to get out alive playing typing games.

It's a mean game, but I'll be darned if it isn't super unique. It looks polished, feels overall good to play and is very entertaining with the flavourful conversations and story that take place. I can't wait to see how this gets put together over time and will be crossing my fingers and toes for that two player mode in the meantime!