Drak(c)ula

This is a typing game where you immerse yourself in Dracula's story while improving your typing and spelling. Enjoy a calm experience with different keyboard layouts. Type accurately to unlock the entire book and relax with a unique typing adventure.

Spell words correctly

Spelling is an important skill, and I have struggled to find a practical and fun way to practice.

Sure, the best thing would be to write a book of my own, but if you haven't tried, it's pretty hard to write something original. Also, I prefer to write words I know how to, which isn't helping my vocabulary. To improve my spelling skills, I've found repetition, repetition, and fast feedback to help. Typing and retyping a word you struggle with helps you learn it. Typing many different words lets you see patterns and recognize words built up of common sub-words. But typing a word 100 times is bad if you don't spell it correctly. I have caught myself doing that whenever I have to write a word I don't know how to spell; I make a guess and then use my computer spell check to fix it. Doing this allows me to write text fast. However, I am training the muscle memory in my fingers to type the incorrect guess, and even though I get to see the correct spelling afterward, it is not as powerful as typing the correct word out. You want someone to stand over your shoulder looking at you when you type, and whenever you misspell a word, they crack the whip and tell you, "That's wrong! Stop! Write it again like this...". So that is what this game does; it tells you when you have typed a word wrong and doesn't let you continue until you have spelled the word correctly.

Write Dracula

When in school, I was trained on writing sentences like this: "The ball is blue," "The businessman went to the bank," and "Trains run on rails." It was great practice but boring when the sentence had no context or story. That's why I selected a novel from the top of my "to read" list. If I don't learn anything from this, I will at least get to read a good book. If you haven't heard about Dracula, it's a classic novel about a vampire; it's still regarded as one of the best horror stories ever.

Touch typing

Touch typing is a method of typing on a keyboard without looking at the keys. This technique involves using all ten fingers efficiently, with each finger assigned to specific keys. If you are not touch typing, you should, if you care at all about typing speed. It's not too hard to learn; you have to know which finger to use on each key, and then spend some time practicing. Expect a drop in speed at the beginning; the best place to start might not be when taking notes in an important meeting. Start practicing while doing something that isn't time sensitive, like when reading a book.

Alternative keyboard layouts

If you do some research into ways to improve typing you will soon hear about alternative layouts. The keyboard layout you most likely use today is optimized to avoid jamming in early typewriters by spacing out commonly used letters. If you are not using a mechanical typewriter from before the First World War, this is no longer a problem, and the only reason to use this layout is that it has become a standard, and everyone else is using it. There are alternatives. Dvorak and Colemak are the most popular, and they are both optimized to reduce finger movement. Switching layout can increase typing speed and reduce the chance of typing injuries like carpet tunnel syndrome. Learning a new layout takes time, though, and just switching the computer layout without some practice beforehand will make it hard to get anything done for the next weeks if you have practiced a bit beforehand. There is no need to buy a new keyboard to use a new layout if you anyway are practicing touch and not looking down at the print on the keys.

Features

Spelling training

touch typing training

Dvorak and Colemak support

create custom layouts

Full Novel

160.000 words

11.000 unique words