Do you happen to have an unhealthy obsession with fonts? The serifs, the descenders, the ascenders, those heavenly acute terminals and swashes… Well, if you do, then you’d probably be interested in playing the game, Type:Rider developed by Cosmografik, Agat Films & Cie – Ex Nihilo.
The gameplay is reminiscent of those “minimalistic” platformers that are so popular nowadays. You control two little dots that are supposed to look like a colon and move around like any other platformer, completing puzzles and… platforming. You can collect letters of the alphabet and asterisks too. You can wall-jump, swim in water, push around platforms, etc. Each level is themed around a certain typeface, which I believe is in chronological order. For example, the tutorial is about cuneiform and other ancient writing systems. What I didn’t like, however, is how little it actually does anything with the level, oftentimes. It just seems like random pictures on the background and the odd text popup here and there. It’s not as though it’s actually showing you a cool narrative of how the font came into existence, or the backstory. Just stuff in the background and a random text popup of some dude’s name every so often. You have to just go back and read it in the in-game book if you want more information, but why would I do that when I can just look it up on Wikipedia? I suppose, in an abstract sense, you can argue that the level design DOES have to do with a narrative, but it’s such a stretch that it might as well not even be related.
The lack of originality with this aesthetic of black, shadowy figures and platforms on top of a colored/white wispy background is another part of the reason I decided not to rate this game as high. I can name at least five of these games off the top of my head that have the exact same aesthetic, and I already don’t even play platformers as is since they’re all pretty much the same mechanics recycled over and over. It just feels bland and generic, even more so than usual. I mean, it is pretty neat that a lot of the platforms are letters, and it’s pretty creative as to how the shape of those letters actually come into the gameplay. I also liked the music. I definitely fit into the theme well and made it feel wondrous and mystical.
The controls, on the other hand, feel extremely smooth. I’m honestly surprised that the game was able to be translated so well to the Nintendo Switch, because so far on all the games that I have reviewed for Switch that have been ported from PC have had very mediocre and awkward controls. It feels nice and fluid to hop around with your “character.” It’s just a tad slippery, but you do definitely get used to it. All the buttons make sense, and there isn’t a weird, irrelevant menu to do things. I guess that’s because it’s a pretty minimalistic game, but still, I’m sure there is a dev that would’ve somehow screwed it up
Overall, it’s a pretty mediocre platformer game. I guess it’s fun if you want to challenge yourself and go for 100% completion, but beyond that, it’s nothing more. The tie-in with typefaces is very shallow and I think the game would be exactly the same if they didn’t even bother calling it Type:Rider. It had a lot of potential based off what I read from the game description, but it definitely fell flat and I was pretty disappointed by that. I give it a 6/10 mostly for the fact of it feeling extremely generic and lackluster. I would only recommend this game if you would like the (somewhat limited) exploration and seeing how typefaces tie into a map, but otherwise, I’d just spend my money on some other black shadowy platformer game with an actual story.
Nintendo Switch Review
Video games are my passion. I've played countless games for 15+ years on various different consoles ranging many genres. Favorites are action/adventure and RPG's just because they're so immersive and I love being able to lay out a strategy for going down tech trees and looking for loot, but I'll pretty much play anything that isn't a sports game.
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