A terminal typing game where words fall like Space Invaders — type them before they hit the water line, or you drown.

Pure-terminal, no GUI. Built on asciimatics.

_{termType gameplay, accelerated due to time constraints.}

Features

• Vocab mode — endless arcade: type words before they hit the water; waves escalate, combos build, lives run out.
• Story mode — type public-domain books (English & Italian) in order; resume where you left off; Zen or Challenge.
• Hacker News mode — type over a live HN front page (or the all-time top posts, offline).
• Progression — profiles, stats with sparkline charts, leaderboards, badges.
• Word packs — English/Italian, plus programming and sci-fi vocab.
• Retro audio — CC0 chiptune music and SFX.
• Cross-platform — Linux, macOS, Windows; --ascii for limited terminals.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• A terminal (Linux, macOS, or Windows). See Platform support below.

Install

From source (not yet on PyPI). A virtual environment keeps it isolated and puts the termtype command on your PATH:

git clone https://github.com/GiovanniCst/termtype.git
cd termtype
python3.11 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate           # on Windows, see "Windows (PowerShell)" below
pip install -e .                    # audio (pygame) is included by default

Run

With the virtual environment active:

If the venv isn't active, run the entry point directly: ./.venv/bin/termtype. Force the no-Unicode renderer if your terminal mangles the visuals:

Windows (PowerShell)

Use a Windows Python and a Windows venv — a venv created inside WSL won't run from PowerShell (its interpreter is a Linux binary, and the layout is .venv\bin\ instead of .venv\Scripts\). Calling the venv executables by full path avoids the unsigned-script (execution-policy) error you'd otherwise hit on Activate.ps1:

git clone https://github.com/GiovanniCst/termtype.git
cd termtype
py -3.11 -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install -e .   # audio (pygame) included
.\.venv\Scripts\termtype.exe

To activate the venv instead (shorter termtype / pip commands), allow scripts for the current session first — this reverts when you close the window:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process Bypass
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

Audio tip: under WSL the sound is routed through a remoting bridge that can crackle under load; running natively on Windows (above) uses the Windows audio stack directly and avoids it.

Display notes (Windows):

• Use Windows Terminal with a box-drawing font like Cascadia Mono. UTF-8 is enabled automatically; if glyphs still show as boxes, run termtype --ascii.
• The Windows console is capped at 8 colours, so some 256-colour touches differ — notably the Hacker News page (white/yellow instead of cream/orange). For the full palette, run under WSL or on Linux/macOS.

Controls

In a game

In menus — ↑/↓ (or j/k) move, Enter selects, Space toggles options, Esc goes back, Q quits. Esc is never destructive.

Platform support

Run on real hardware on Linux / WSL, native Windows (see Windows (PowerShell) above for setup and display notes), and macOS. If something looks off on your setup, please open an issue with your OS, terminal, and Python version (and a screenshot).

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

The game logic is split into pure, render-free modules (state, scoring, word matching, levels, persistence) that are unit-tested without a terminal, separate from the asciimatics rendering layer.

Privacy

termType keeps to itself, and you can verify every word of this in the source:

• Your data never leaves your machine. Profiles, scores, stats, and settings are stored in a local SQLite database (~/.termtype/termtype.db). Nothing is uploaded, synced, or shared.
• No telemetry of any kind — no analytics, crash reporting, ads, accounts, logins, or update checks. The game never "phones home."
• One network feature, only on demand. Hacker News mode fetches the current top-story titles from the public Hacker News API (hacker-news.firebaseio.com) over HTTPS, and only while you are in that mode. The requests are plain GETs with a generic User-Agent: termType (typing game) — no personal data is sent — and the fetched titles are held in memory, never written to disk. Offline, it falls back to a built-in list and makes no connection at all.
• Everything else works fully offline.

The only networking code in the whole project is src/termtype/game/hn.py — read it for yourself.

Credits & licensing

termType was ideated and orchestrated by Giovanni J. Costantini and coded by autonomous AI agents — Opus, Kimi, and Fable — working under his direction. The same disclosure appears in the game's own credits.

In-game credits (author, website, and these attributions) are available from the Credits entry on the main menu.

• Code — © 2026 Giovanni J. Costantini, released under the MIT License (see LICENSE).
• Story texts — public-domain works (e.g. Pride and Prejudice, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio), included as plain prose.
• Audio — CC0 / public-domain assets; see src/termtype/data/audio/CREDITS.md for the per-file manifest with checksums.

The MIT License covers the project's own source code; the bundled texts and audio are in the public domain / CC0 as noted above.

A note from the author

termType is a solo project by Giovanni J. Costantini — more about my work at costantini.pw.

I'm open to CTO and senior engineering-leadership roles, in software-product companies or corporate engineering organisations. If that sounds like a fit, I'd be glad to talk.