Nanotale – Typing Chronicles Review (PC)

Three quick words take out a fast enemy that wants to ram me. After I deal with his companions another three words allow me to push a sheep out of the way and access another area. One word gives me the health I lost during the battle. Another one fills up my magic. Two of them give me a deeper understanding of a flower. Another delivers enough experience to gain a bonus to my health and an ability to slow enemies.

Nanotale – Typing Chronicles is published by Fishing Cactus, with the same company handling publishing alongside PID Publishing and 2PGames. It is offered only on the PC via Steam, Stadia, and GOG and announces itself as a spiritual successor to Epistory.

The core mechanic is good, old-fashioned keyboard-powered typing. The world is filled with words and players will interact with it by clicking keys to spell them out. Water plants will burst and make vegetation grow. The player can knock back enemies and take down their health. The main character will learn more about the world by visiting lore points, typing out words to gain information. Interactions also involve walking over particular spots or moving stealthily to avoid attacks. But typing is the most important element.

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Nanotale – Typing Chronicles sometimes features both long and complex words and plenty short and easy to spell ones. The game delivers some moments when speed is important and death is a possibility if one cannot quickly type out “unthinking” or “err” or “hydraulic”. But most of the time there’s much less pressure to move fast. Words are more of a catalyst for interactions or a way to make the world respond rather than tools to take out enemies. Careful use of the environment, focused on water and fire, is important and can affect both battles and moving around.

The word-centered magic system quickly begins to show off its complexity. Players can move objects, launch fire, deploy ice. But all their actions can be transformed by using modifiers, like “large” or “beam”. Experimentation is at the heart of Nanotale – Typing Chronicles, mainly when it comes to tweaking the world to open up new exploration options. Just find a magic node, take a look at your book and see what can happen. There’s no real punishment for trying out new things and even death is just a small setback.

Rosalind is the main character of Nanotale – Typing Chronicles and she carries her role well. A new archivist with a talent for word magic, she quickly learns that the world is bigger and more interesting than she initially thought. There are plenty of very classic role-playing game tropes at work in the game but they are well executed. Even when I was unsure of my next objective, the exploration, especially when more lore can be found near, is good enough to keep playing until a new story strand appears.

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The game is also careful to offer options for those who find that their typing is not fast enough. It’s also possible to set different languages for gameplay and story, which is a very cool way to introduce a sort of chosen difficulty modifier.

My main criticism is that I had moments when I felt a little more aimless than I wanted to. The narrative was not pushing me forward as fast as it should in a role-playing title. The variety of words, especially in combat when using English, also feels a little slim, probably because the game sticks with clear themes.

Nanotale – Typing Chronicles is a bright and optimistic game, with a look that perfectly in tune with its gameplay and story. The world, the characters, the user interface, are all designed to immerse players into this archivist quest. Even the look of the enemies suggests that they are misunderstood rather than straight-up evil. The lore section of the game is a pleasure to read. The music, with its airy strings and swelling moments, also does a lot of good work to promote emotional investment. This is a rare game where I never got bored with the soundtrack, even if the voice work is not up to the same standard.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion