Holy Wow Studios launches Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing sequel

The first episode of the sequel to Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing launches today. Find it here.

The first game — a quirky 8-bit Mavis Beacon — meets was a surprise hit for the local Greenpoint developers at Holy Wow Studios.

Good typists can apparently get through the first game in 20 or 30 minutes. This reporter has always thought of himself as a good typist, but couldn’t beat the binary level. The end is, we have heard, really worth seeing.

Play Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing here.

Dan Vecchitto and Jaclyn Lalli are the two developers behind all the games and the company’s cofounders. So far, Holy Wow has given away all their games for free. This next series of games will come out for free, but the goal has been to build up a fan base and a list that they can use to support a crowdfunding campaign around their big goal: Icarus Proudbottom: Starship Captain, Lalli said. 

Here’s how Lalli describes that game: “You’ll be Icarus, the Captain of a ship, and you have to order your crew if you want to maneuver the ship, fire weapons, scan objects, etc. Basically, the focus will be on communication with your crew to get
through various missions and adventures.”

Or, as she put it, like Star Trek the show and movies works, but the games never have.

For now, the typing games are building their reputation the most, though they have others (Tax Man is interesting). The first typing game is pretty much a straight series of typing challenges (with commentary on the surveillance state and funny lies). Vecchitto says that the player’s autonomy will increase with this next series of stories, saying: ” The context is different this time around – you use typing to
question witnesses, search for clues, and other crime-related stuff.”

The two have been making games together since 2009 and build their games in Greenpoint.