Trinity Typing Development
Initial development
Trinity Typing began as an entry for the 42nd GM48 game jam, a 48-hour game jam exclusively for GameMaker Studio developers.
Out of around 15 teams, this entry became one of my best jam games, placing 3rd overall. The jam’s theme, revealed at the start of the 48 hours, was “Non-Violence.”
Around that time, I had recently played a game called ‘Typing of the Dead’, a unique twist on arcade shooters that uses typing mechanics. Inspired by this, I came up with the concept of a typing game where the player diffuses conflicts through words rather than weapons.
Given the time constraint, I aimed to keep the game within a manageable scope by making it an endless game focused on high scores. This strategy allowed me to polish the core gameplay loop rather than spend too much time adding content—a tactic I’d seen work well for other developers in previous jams.
For the jam, I created a light-hearted scenario: a priest mistakenly sent to hell due to a clerical error in heaven, now needing to talk his way out of battles to escape. Over the 48 hours, I assembled the game and added mechanics to keep it engaging, such as enemy attacks that obscure the words players must type.
When I submitted the game, I was thrilled to see it place 3rd—especially knowing some of the competing teams were significantly larger!
Continuing post-jam
After the jam, I saw potential for polishing Trinity Typing and decided to release it on itch.io (play here). About a year and a half later, in the summer of 2023, I finally revisited the game. I began by adding quality-of-life updates, including a revamped main menu and a volume slider that hadn’t made it into the original jam version.
I also addressed player feedback to improve the game’s depth and balance. Firstly, the jam version had a limited pool of around 50 phrases, which quickly felt repetitive in a high-score game where players could type 60+ phrases per run. To fix this, I expanded the phrase pool to three sets of 100, categorized by difficulty: easy, medium, and hard. Now, as players progress, the game pulls from increasingly challenging sets, making the gameplay more dynamic.
I also balanced enemy attacks, making them slightly less aggressive at the start to give players time to warm up. With these updates, I published Trinity Typing on both itch.io and Newgrounds, where players can enjoy it in their browsers.
Post-mortem
Trinity Typing was never intended to be a major project but rather an exercise in iteration and polish. It was valuable practice in project scoping—an essential skill for any designer and developer.
I’m proud of how it turned out and pleased to include it in my portfolio.
Gameplay screenshots
