The Horrors of Next Fest - Final Sentence
A multiplayer typing death game. Each player is sat at a typewriter, watched over by masked executioners with revolvers. You’re racing the other players to type out your given texts, but you have to be careful as every three mistakes a new bullet is loaded into your guard’s revolver and a roulette ensues. Matches run over a number of rounds, which varies based on the text you’re all playing, with your mistakes resetting between rounds. Reach the end first to survive, and hear your competitors take a bullet.
It’s a good idea and while the tutorial texts are laborious, once you’re into the general pool it becomes addictive. Matches are fast, each round within a match has a four minute time limit, but honestly if you’re using all that time you’re already on track to get your head vented by the mysterious wardens. The texts themselves are a mix; I encountered movie quotes, song lyrics, memes, purposeful mistakes and some gibberish designed to trip up players who aren’t paying close attention.
It’s not exactly a horror game. It’s got a grim aesthetic and the pressure that a death game brings, but no scares or anything really unnerving. Tension is what it deals in, as you try to balance your speed and accuracy. Each mistake is a moment of frustration, whether it’s because you mis-typed, misread, slipped or your cat decided it was the perfect time for a quick tap dance on your keyboard, as one of mine did. What really is the nail in the coffin for the idea of it as a horror are the texts themselves. Typing out “All your base are belong to us” is likely only scary if you’re an elder millenial, like me, currently wrestling with your gradual journey through middle age.
Theoretically new playable text is infinite, provided they don’t bump up against copyright, which is an excellent feature of the simple design. I’m curious about the future though, the devs say they have more features planned before their aim of an end-of-year release and I felt like there’s room to add some that effect gameplay, so I really want to see what they’ve got planned.