The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia

The office computer runs MS-DEUS and the search engine of choice is Godle. Players assume the role of exorcist Ray Bibbia. While Ray Bibbia might be a man of god he doesn't take the Word of God too serious. Ray Bibbia is more in the tradition of Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General, Don Camillo as portrayed by Terence Hill and Padre Cortez, he's just more bad-ass than these. Ray Bibbia is clearly in for the demon smashing.

And the Textorcist is totally focused on demon smashing in form of boss fights. Between the boss fights there is varying gameplay but it's not extensive. There is a little bit of exploration and a little bit of puzzle solving, mainly with the goal of receiving information about the location where the next boss is to be found. There are also dialogues and further information revealing the story. One could say that The Textorcist is a boss rush game with a little bit of other content between the bosses.

The bosses themselves are great. Mostly well designed, with multipe phases, moves and type of attacks. The majority of the time in boss fights will be navigating through bullet hell wave attacks while trying to hurt the boss somehow. And there's the twist: as bosses are demons and the protagonist is an exorcist the weapon of choice are exorcisms in form of texts, hence Textorcist, and you have to type these on your keyboard. Typing to attack is not new, games such as Epistory and The Typing of The Dead are using similar mechanics but The Textorcist lifts it to a new level. The verses are displayed at the bottom of the screen and there's a cursor highlighting the current letter to type. But there are various boss attacks that can make it more difficult, like letters being covered with slime when Ray Bibbia was hit by a slime attack. Each typo takes you back one letter, when Ray Bibbia is hit he loses his spellbook and has to retrieve it within a couple of seconds, otherwise all progress on the current line will be lost and it's back to letter one of the line. If Ray Bibbia is hit again while trying to retrieve the spellbook he loses one life. If you manage to finish a line the boss is losing a life and enters the next phase with changed behaviour and attacks. All of this is probably best explained in a video:



The Textorcist is challenging. In the first update of the game a couple of days after release the difficulty was decreased but it's still challenging enough, especially the higher bosses. While directing Ray Bibia through the bullet hell on screen using the arrow keys with your right hand you have to type exorcisms with the left hand only. You may find it even more difficult when you don't play the game in your first language, luckily this disadvantage vanishes because the exorcisms for higher bosses are in Latin :) With difficulty being high it's nice that you don't have to run through half a level to get back to the boss after a failed attempt.

Noteworthy are also the elaborated pixel art visuals of the game as well as the music. All in all The Textorcist is a great game and a recommendation if you like challenges and a diversion from the usual mechanics.
 
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