It lets you shoot stuff. And it helps you type faster.

Type words. Shoot aliens. That’s the premise of [Z-Type][1], an awesome little HTML5 shmup game I found out about yesterday (hat tip: [Matt Mullenweg][2]). I can’t help but smile a little at the name; doubtless it’s a play on [R-Type][3], one of my favorite old games. The gameplay here is very unlike R-Type—actually it’s extremely simplistic—but it’s oddly entrancing. My first time, I scored 2649 points with 88.3% accuracy (hey, I never said I was a good typist!) before dying in a hail of words. Can you do better than that? Try it out and leave a comment with your best score! P.S. If you like typing games, but want something a bit more competitive, I encourage you to check out [TypeRacer][4], an online multiplayer typing contest drawing source texts from a wide range of songs, novels, non-fiction books, etc. [1]: http://www.phoboslab.org/ztype/ [2]: http://ma.tt/2011/01/z-typing-game/ [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-Type [4]: http://play.typeracer.com/