RhythmicTypeX

Adaptive design

At the beginning of each round, you type 16 characters and your speed is then measured. The tempo is set according to your performance, as well as the size of the grids, and the speed automatically and gradually increases with your performance to help you train efficiently. You can also modify the tempo in real-time with ARROWS keys. You can always get better, up to 750 BPM if you can!

The rounds are 20 minutes long and at the end, you can see you performance results.

Supported keyboards

The target keyboard layouts are the US (QWERTY) and the German (QWERTZ), but 91 variations of these 2 layouts also work for this game. See the list of supported keyboards:

https://sharpenedgames.eu/rhythmictypex-supportedkeyboardlayouts/ (Открывается в новой вкладке)

Blind Typing

If you already are familiar with 10 fingers typing and you already know which finger types which characters, you can look directly in the upper grid to train typing looking directly at the grid only, The rhythms to give your fingers a new sense of dexterity and ease in typing.

Customize your training

You can isolate the specific characters you want to play with and the 'Focus' option in the game will help you to work on your week spots to make them strong by adding methodically the characters that you miss with the other characters in that context to the beginning of the characters list, so that you can practice them in priority. You can turn this mode on and off, as well as reset the list to its initial state when you are satisfied.

The options look like this:

Rhythmic training methods

For the purpose of designing this game, I made a Proof of Concept as Bachelor project in Games Programming, where I studied various rhythmic training methods used by processional musicians to acquire dexterity. Most of the rhythms used in this game, as well as the adaptive mechanic have been tested by participants for this research.

If you are interested in the exact methodology and the work associated with this game, you can find more information here:

https://sharpenedgames.eu/rhythmictypex/ (Открывается в новой вкладке)

Here below, you can see examples of rhythmic patterns used in the game. The grey squares are the subtle beats and the brown ones, they accentuated beats.

Common rhythmic patterns

These are examples of known rhythmic patterns:

New rhythmic pattern discovered

This rhythmic pattern is one that was associated with the best typing performance and speed during the research for my proof of concept:

20 minutes, a few times a week - Practice makes perfect

The rhythmic patterns success each other in an order that was also tested during my research and it is progressively and methodically evolving during the 20 minutes session, or round, so that you can progress efficiently. This game is a tool that has wisdom from classical and jazz musical training and it can be used to push your typing performance to a level of great ease and flow. You can develop your own training strategies by choosing your characters or making strategic tempo changes and see what works best for you. Have fun!