How to play
Everything the game does, in one page. You do not need any of it to start, but it is all here once you want it.
Play KeywraithThe core loop
You are at the bottom of a dark arena. Enemies drift down toward you, each one carrying a word. The first letter you press locks onto the most urgent enemy whose word starts with that letter. Every letter after that fires a shot at the enemy you are locked onto, and finishing the word destroys it.
That targeting rule is the whole game. You are not choosing an enemy and then typing, you are choosing an enemy by typing, so the opening letter of a word is a decision and the rest is execution. When two enemies start with the same letter, the one closer to your ward line wins the lock.
Controls
- a – zAttack. First letter picks a target, each letter after fires.
- BackspaceRelease the current target without finishing its word.
- SpaceDodge. You are briefly untouchable.
- EnterUltimate, once the meter is full. Clears the arena in a sweep.
- EscPause.
Wards, and how a run ends
You have three wards. You lose one when an enemy reaches your ward line, and one when a projectile hits you. At zero the run is over. Assist mode raises this to five, and runs played with it on stay in your own history but are kept off the public leaderboards.
Dodging is the answer to projectiles, not typing faster. A bolt in the air cannot be shot down. Space is the only thing that beats it, and new players almost always lose their first wards to bolts they were trying to out-type.
Combo and score
Every word you finish raises a combo that multiplies your score, up to double. Longer words are worth more than short ones, and finishing quickly is worth more than finishing slowly.
The two ways of losing combo are deliberately unequal. A wrong key nicks the combo. Taking damage resets it. A typo is meant to cost you something small enough that pressing on is still correct, while a ward is meant to hurt.
The three paces
A pace is a starting position on the difficulty curve, not a ceiling. All three ramp forever, so choosing Torrent means skipping the opening minute rather than playing a different game.
| Pace | What it is | Compared to Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Calm | Room to read. It still catches you eventually. | Three quarters the spawn rate, slower enemies, shorter words. |
| Standard | Starts fair. Ends badly. | The reference. Opens fifteen seconds into the curve. |
| Torrent | No warm up. Long words from the first second. | A third more spawns, faster enemies, one extra alive at once, longer words. |
For a sense of scale: a 100 WPM typist clears roughly one enemy per second, and Standard passes that rate at about ninety seconds in and never gives the lead back. There is no cap, on purpose. An endless mode that stops getting harder is a treadmill.
Enemy modifiers
Most enemies are plain. Some carry a modifier that changes what typing the word actually requires, and each one attacks a different habit.
| Modifier | What it does | How to handle it |
|---|---|---|
| Mirror | The word reads left to right but must be typed backwards. | Read the last letter first. Fighting the urge to read normally is most of the difficulty. |
| Mimic | Re-rolls its word every few seconds while you ignore it, and freezes the moment you commit a letter. | Do not plan around it. Commit, and it stops moving. |
| Splitter | Breaks into two short fragments when destroyed. | Kill it early, while you have room for the two that follow. |
| Warden | A single wrong key erases all your progress on its word. | The one enemy where slowing down is correct. Accuracy beats speed outright. |
The three modes
Endless
One arena, rising pressure, no end. Pick a pace and see how far the curve lets you go. This is what the leaderboards rank.
Campaign
Six handcrafted levels, each built around one idea rather than a difficulty number, ending with a boss called The Archivist. All six are unlocked from the first time you load the game. Nothing is gated.
Daily challenge
One run generated from the day's date, so every player in the world gets the same words in the same order on the same day. It resets at midnight UTC.
Getting better
- Pick targets by distance, not by ease. The satisfying short word at the top will still be there. The long one near your ward line will not wait.
- Let go. Backspace costs you nothing and stubbornly finishing a word you no longer need costs you a ward.
- Dodge on reflex, not on thought. If you are deciding whether to dodge, it is already too late.
- Spend the ultimate. A full meter that dies with you was worth nothing. It refills.
- Accuracy is speed. Wrong keys cost combo, and against a Warden they cost the entire word.
There are twelve achievements, and most of them are quietly instructions: destroy a Mirror by typing backwards, take a Warden with no wrong keys, dodge five bolts in one run, reach wave ten. Working through them teaches the game better than any tip list does.
Questions
Is Keywraith free?
Yes, completely. There are no advertisements, nothing is sold, and no level or cosmetic is locked behind progress or payment.
Do I need an account to play?
No. The whole game works signed out, including the campaign and the daily challenge, with progress saved in your own browser. Signing in with Google only adds cross-device sync, the leaderboards and a profile page.
Does Keywraith work on a phone or tablet?
No. It needs a physical keyboard, so it is a desktop and laptop game. An on-screen keyboard cannot keep up with the arena.
How is Keywraith different from a typing test like Monkeytype?
A typing test measures you. Keywraith is an arcade game that happens to be played with the keyboard: enemies move, shoot and take your wards, and there is no text box to type into. If you want a clean measurement of your speed, use a typing test. If you want something to play, this is the other thing.
How is it different from ZType?
The shared idea is typing at enemies rather than clicking them. Keywraith adds a dodge and an ultimate, three separate paces, enemy modifiers that change how a word must be typed, a six level campaign with a boss, a daily challenge on a shared seed, and optional leaderboards and friends.
Will playing Keywraith improve my typing?
It will make you faster at typing under pressure, which is a real and slightly different skill. It will not teach you touch typing from scratch, because it never tells you which finger to use. A structured course is better for learning the layout; this is better once you already know it.
What is the daily challenge?
One run generated from the day's date, so every player in the world gets the same words in the same order on the same day. It resets at midnight UTC.
How do I get onto the leaderboard?
Sign in with Google and pick a username. Runs finished after that are submitted automatically. Runs played with assist mode on are kept in your own history but filtered out of the public boards.