There's nothing louder in my apartment than my mechanical keyboard, except, well, myself, when I lose a ranked Fortnite match at 3 AM. Still, that keyboard is that clackety-clack soundtrack of my entire day, and on days when my partner stays home, it ends up being one of her biggest pain points about being around me. So, I simply switched it up for a cute low-profile board... only for her to love it so much that she stole it for herself.

The real fun, however, began when I noticed her typing speed while she worked from home. She hovered around the 50 WPM mark with solid accuracy, but I figured we could push that number tremendously higher. So, I whipped out one of the weirdest teaching tools from the late '90s: The Typing of the Dead.

The Typing of the Dead has aged really well

This is edutainment at its weirdest

One of the only games my partner ever remembered seeing or playing was The House of the Dead. That's why I made sure that the 2022 remake would be one of the first games she played after I built her first-ever gaming PC earlier this year. Sure, it's a mid-spec build with a 1660 Super, but it does the job.

More importantly, though, was the fact that she loved the remake (despite my objections to how soulless it felt). So, without further ado, I went ahead and downloaded The Typing of the Dead, which is pretty much abandonware at this point. A simple download and fix later, she was in the game, and she loved the idea of typing to kill zombies, with each key being a bullet.

This was Sega's attempt at edutainment back in 1999, and honestly, barring the graphics, the game has aged insanely well. It still holds up as one of the most creative ways to make touch typing fun again. This is where productivity meets gaming, and we both stay happy.

We took three days of preliminary averages

Her accuracy was remarkable, but the speed not so much

Way before we installed The Typing of the Dead, we first spent three days randomly taking her WPM averages on MonkeyType. It was pretty much the same deal every time — 50 to 60 WPM, with accuracy hovering between 85 and 90 percent every single time. The best we got was 62 WPM with 94% accuracy, but that was an outlier among tens of tests with a 50 WPM average.

This wasn't bad at all. At least, not for someone who only types occasionally, and that too, for work. Still, there was plenty of room for improvement, especially since a lot of pauses and missed keystrokes were rather obvious. This honestly just made me even more curious to see if Sega's silly little experiment would work on her for the better.

So, we decided we'd have her play the game for four or five days, and when the next weekend arrives, we'd go back to MonkeyType and check her average WPM with the same test parameters over two days. And thus began the process of typing zombies to death.

The grind — five days of zombies and keystrokes

This game is genuinely funny, and those are rare

The Typing of the Dead is an insanely funny game, and just as enjoyable. This game doesn't care if you're a beginner or an old-school typist. Its campaign is built smartly, and the difficulty ramps up with each chapter. The words get longer, the phrases get so much weirder, and the pressure genuinely becomes palpable in the later levels. On normal difficulty, my partner managed to breeze through the first couple of stages, but Chapter 3, which the game calls 'for intermediates'.

Undoubtedly the most surprising part was just how much faster she was from the get-go. It was like seeing zombies lumbering towards her suddenly flipped a switch inside, and from day one itself, she was jolting out accurate keystrokes like she'd been doing this for years. Still, by the time the later levels rolled around, and the phrases started coming with more punctuation and numbers, she began to struggle, even pausing a few times in the middle of zombie hordes because of how overwhelming it got in the final two levels. What we did was stay consistent, though — 30 minutes every day, for five days straight. Sometimes, I forgot, but she still made sure she played, saving the occasional screenshot.

The boss fights were the best part

Boss fights ramp up the tension incredibly

The boss fights in the mainline games of the franchise, or even in the one that Typing of the Dead is based on, which is The House of the Dead 2, are decent enough to be passable. You keep shooting and reloading and as long as your aim is half-decent, and that's what gets you to the next level.

In The Typing of the Dead, however, the boss fights genuinely feel tense, because as the grotesque bosses lumber towards you and get closer, the tension to complete the phrases on the screen increases, also increasing your odds of missing a few keystrokes here and there. There's even a Rush mode in every single level, where you get 30 seconds to take out 10 zombies, but the phrases keep getting tougher and the zombies keep piling up. These instances present some of the toughest, most stressful fights in each level.

Heck, even in the first Novice chapter, my partner struggled to complete the boss fight, and had to replay the level since the boss defeated her in the first go. Stage 2 was easier only because she knew what was coming, and from Stage 3 onwards, the boss fights ramped up significantly. I definitely think it's the boss fights that play the most significant part in helping the player type faster, especially in tests where the pressure comes from time limites.

The results: 20% improvement in a single week

Is it just the typing game or the fact that she simply started typing more?

Five days later, we got to the weekend, and it was time to check her progress. The difference was immediate. Her average WPM jumped up by about 23–25%, with a lot fewer dips below 95% in terms of accuracy. She still made/makes the occasional slip when the nerves kick in, which is why she makes me leave the room before taking the test on MonkeyType.

Overall, however, the improvement is simply undeniable. From struggling through "apocalypse" and "decapitate" to flying through entire sentences without blinking, she has clearly improved her typing, which is a testament to the game working as intended, even a quarter-of-a-century later. In fact, it was definitely the weirder, nonsensical phrases that helped her results on MonkeyType, since the tests on that website are always random strings of words instead of any meaningful phrases.

A trip down memory lane with productivity perks

Not only did I get to give my partner a walk down memory lane with one of the only games she remembered, but we also managed to make her WPM shoot up significantly. What remains to be seen, however, is if she can reach 100 WPM and more over the next few weeks and months by simply ramping up the difficulty of this game.

If not, there certainly are other typing tools we can employ, but the most important fact is that she is now addicted to seeing that WPM number go up, one keystroke at a time.