TYPE OR DIE

A keyboard horror rail-shooter for the browser — an original, legally-distinct homage to the classic "type words to shoot zombies" arcade genre. Built with Three.js (WebGL) and Vite. No art or audio assets: every zombie, building, and sound effect is generated procedurally at runtime.

Story

The canal city of Porto Morto has gone quiet. You are Agent Verdana of the Bureau of Ergonomic Defense, armed with a field keyboard wired to a car battery on your back. Fight through five canal districts, then face Aurelius Vane, "The Chancellor" — a banking tycoon with strong opinions about compound interest and the apocalypse.

How to play

• Type the word floating above a ghoul to open fire — every correct letter is a shot, finishing the word drops it.
• The first letter you type locks on to the nearest matching ghoul; typos break your combo (and your accuracy grade).
• Don't let them reach you — you have 5 hearts. A ghoul that lands a hit is knocked back and gets a fresh start on its word.
• Every letter you land shoots a piece off — hands, arms, jaw — and the final letter takes the head. Watch the canal: some of them wade out of it.
• A rare barista ghoul (amber eyes, still carrying the cup) refunds one heart when dropped.
• Each district has its own weather — mist, blackout, blood moon, storm — and the synth score gets busier the closer the horde shambles.
• Idle on the title screen for a while and the game will play itself (arcade attract mode — any key takes back the controls).
• Boss fight: type his full doom-laden sentences before the amber timer runs out, or take a hit.
• Three endings, decided by how you answer his final question — truthfully, greedily, or strangely.
• Esc pauses. Enter confirms / continues (continues cost coffee).

Scoring: 10 points per letter with a combo multiplier every 10-streak, kill bonuses by word length, and a final rank (D–S) from accuracy, WPM, and coffee consumed.

Run it

npm install
npm run dev      # dev server, prints a local URL
npm run build    # production build in dist/
npm run preview  # serve the production build

Requires Node 18+.

Tech notes

• Rendering: Three.js with an HDR bloom post-processing pipeline (ACES tone mapping + UnrealBloomPass) — fog-drenched night canal with rain, lightning, drifting ground mist and embers; procedural multi-jointed ghouls (elbows, knees, swinging jaws, clawed fingers, glowing eyes, wounds, fluttering rags) with shamble/lunge/death animations; a first-person sidearm in a gloved hand with recoil, muzzle flash and ejected shell casings; visible tracer rounds, impact sparks, shockwave rings and score popups per keystroke; canvas-texture word labels as billboards, vertex-animated canal water, window-lit facades from generated textures.
• Gameplay flourishes: typed dismemberment (each letter strips a part, the last pops the head; the boss loses his hat, arms, and jaw one phrase at a time), ghouls that climb dripping out of the canal, five per-district atmospheres crossfaded along the rail, bullet-time on wave-clear and boss-final kills, a healing barista ghoul, and an idle-triggered attract mode where the game demos itself.
• Audio: all WebAudio synthesis — an adaptive four-layer score (sub pulse, bass, creeping arpeggio, hats and dissonance) that follows how close the horde is, layered gunshots that pitch up with your combo, splats, panned zombie groans, thunder, a low-HP heartbeat, boss roars, a generated convolution reverb, and a wind-drone-and-bell ambience.
• No trademarks: all names, words, phrases, and story are original.