Pesky Game Avatars - Typing Terror Edition

The aim of the game is to type quickly, and accurately. Your accuracy will not be the majority of your points, but it is still very important. It would be a shame to miss out on the avatar score by a few points because you were fumbling around on the keys. So, practice! The good thing is, the words are always the same ones. Once you play through quite a few times, it should be no trouble for you to type them. Muscle memory is quite handy!

Now, you really need to be able to finish the entire game in order to get the best possible score you can, obviously. So there are 5 normal rounds, and then on the 6th round you will encounter the giant boss. His (or her) words are much longer and harder to type than the normal words that are thrown at you. If you can finish the rest of the game easily but have problems on the boss round, I would recommend writing down the words and practicing without playing through the whole game. It takes quite a while to play through the whole thing if you are only having trouble on that part. Once you feel confident enough, go back to playing and fly through that final round with ease!

However, if you are having troubles getting through the entire game, there is only one thing you can do: Practice. Some people are better typers than others naturally, but that doesn't mean you can't improve your skills! Just try to play through the game a few times each day. Stay calm, relax, and just think about the letters that you're typing rather than how close the robots are getting to you or anything else. Once you're comfortable with the game you'll find yourself improving much more quickly. :) It's easy to start panicking when the pace of the game starts picking up around the third or fourth level. The words are longer, and the robots are moving at a much quicker pace. This will just keep increasing, but trust me, you can handle it! It will just take some getting used to. It is also important to keep in mind that at this point, typing quickly is better than making sure everything is super accurate. If you spend even 1 more second than normal because you're worried about mistyping, you're losing out on valuable time! Your accuracy will improve the more you play the game. The main focus is to be able to finish the entire game, improving how well you play comes second. This also applies to how many lives you lose. Ideally, you shouldn't lose any. But if you're just practicing, losing lives is not a huge deal.

Okay, so hopefully you can finish the entire game at this point. But.. now you're looking at your score like "How is that ever going to get me an avatar? I'm way too far away from a decent score!" The unfortunate news is that this game relies on luck to get a good score. I know, relying on luck can get pretty frustrating. :( I'm sure you've noticed by now that there are three different kinds of robots. The normal yellow ones, red ones, and broken ones with upside down words. Red robots and broken robots give more points. The red robots give 20 points (compared to the normal 5 points), and the broken robots give you 100. Unfortunately, getting a high enough score relies on you getting a lot of broken robots. Don't get too down; it definitely can happen!

The biggest (and best) tips that I see floating around are that you should restart the game if you have less than 400 points when you finish level one. Maximizing your points early on is very important. At level 5, if you do not have around 2500 points, it's best just to restart. Keep those in mind as you're trying to get a high score, because it is nearly impossible without those tips.

Once you're pretty comfortable with the game, during levels 1-3, you should let the robots start getting closer to you. (Not too close!) This gives you more chances to get the bonus robots. If you destroy every robot that pops up the instant it appears, you most likely won't get very many points. The robots on these levels are slower, so you should have time to quickly destroy them if they get too close for comfort. But if you're lucky, you'll get some nice red or broken robots in the background you can destroy to help finish the level with more points than just destroying a whole bunch of pesky yellow ones.

I should also mention that you should not be losing lives if you're seriously trying for the avatar. They give bonus points at the end of the game, and throwing them away is a shame. :( So, do not lose any lives! Your accuracy should be about perfect on levels 1-3, aside from a few mistakes now and again. Levels 4 and 5 you should still have pretty good accuracy, but it does not have to be perfect. Keep in mind that you have to finish typing a word before you can start on another. Make sure you aren't wasting points because you forgot to hit the last letter. Your accuracy on the boss is very important too, so mastering those crazy long words would be extremely helpful.

As always, don't let yourself get too frustrated. Small breaks here in there between attempts are very helpful for your sanity. If you find the game too frustrating, just play a game or so every day when you have some free time. You're bound to get lucky eventually.

Good luck on your quest for the avatar! (I hope you get a nice shiny trophy too!)