Posts tagged typing lessons

Strong touch-typing skills can go a long way towards making your time at the computer more efficient & productive (and less frustrating). No matter how strong of a typist you are, anyone can benefit from an improvement in this area, and growth is fostered when we are focused, motivated and challenged. So if you are looking for a place to learn touch-typing, or a way to improve on existing skills, you should be asking yourself “what could I possibly do to stay focused, motivated and challenged while typing?”. The answer, of course, is typing games.

Online typing games are a perfect way to give your fingers a rigorous typing-workout. Such games come in a variety of different formats and many include stories, music or other thematic elements to make the play more engaging. Before you know it, you might spend 30 minutes practicing keyboarding and having fun. The incentive to score or pass a level adds an extra layer of intensity to the practice session which, for most of us, will compel us to push ourselves that extra bit needed to facilitate improvement.

Now, there are a lot of typing games out there, so I figured I would take a little time to sort through them and compile a list of the best options the web has to offer. As part of my work in running The Keyboard Playground, I have grown to be very familiar typing games and websites, so this is a well-researched list. Of course, it’s also subjective; for a more complete list you might want to check out this directory of typing games. Here they are, in no particular order:

Top 10 Typing Games

KeyMan – This game has a lot of good elements to it and seems to run smoothly. It’s basically PacMan except that you navigate through the maze with the keyboard instead of the arrow keys. It’s fun to play, and a decent way to practice your knowledge of the keyboard layout, but slightly limited in that you aren’t spending as much time typing in this game as you do in some of the others on this list.

Keyboard Revolution – This like like a light version of guitar Hero using the keyboard instead. You have letters floating up the screen in time with the music and you need to press them as they pass over the designated area. This is similar to KeyMan in that it is a catchy game but has a low density of typing involved.

Typo II – I like this game because it used the whole keyboard, not just the letters. I also think it’s interesting because you are typing nonsense phrases which makes it more necessary to touch-type.

Typer Shark – TyperShark is the most commercial and popular typing game on the web. It’s the classic example of the ‘type the falling words’ genre except in this case you are trying to type them before they are consumed by sharks.

Great Red Herring Chase – The idea behind this game is that you are in a car chase and you need to give directions to your driver by typing. It becomes a little bit like those choose-your-own-adventure books as you have 4 choices for lines at any given time and the story goes to different places depending on which line you type. Certainly not a game for everyone, but worth checking out if you are looking for something a little different.

TypeDown – A fast-paced typing game in which you need to eliminate the rising words from the column before it reaches the top. This requires non-stop typing for the duration of the rounds, around two minutes. Unlike many other typing games, this one pulls it words from a dictionary so the words are always different.

Typeroids – There are a number of different games in this format, but I think this is the best one. It’s nice and simple which is good because the game concept is also very clean so its a good complement. This game requires an intermediate amount of typing as sometimes you will be working feverishly while other times you will be taking short breaks in between waves.

The Typing Test – This game in unique in that it is actually 5 different typing games in one, and it’s a daily competition. You login each day to work your way through the various tasks and then you can find out how you perform relative to other players.

TypeRacer – The gameplay here is very straight-forward and relatively uninteresting, but what sets this game apart is the ability to compete in real-time with other players. You can challenge someone in particular or you can get set up with random opponents.

Typing Race – Not to be confused with the previous game, this is a Facebook typing competition where you race against other players and earn points based on how you perform.

That’s it, enjoy!

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