60
seconds
Words fall out of the sky over a city at night, each one a glowing capsule with a tail. Type a word, press Space and the turret on the street shoots it apart. Let one land and the lights go out on a building.
Words drop from the top of the screen at a steady pace. Type any of them and press Space to fire. You do not have to click or pick a word first: as soon as your letters match, a reticle locks onto the lowest word that starts with what you have typed, the turret swings round to face it, and the typed letters light up inside the capsule. When the word is complete a Space key appears in your typing bar. Press it and a beam hits the word, which breaks into its own letters.
Every word that reaches the street knocks out the lights on the building behind it and cracks one of your shields. You start with three. When the last one goes, the whole city goes dark and the run is over.
Each word you shoot down adds one to your chain. Every five in a row raises the multiplier by one, up to six times. A word that lands resets the chain, so the best scores come from clearing the most urgent word first rather than the easiest one. Longer words are worth more points.
Power-up words have a coloured badge and a label. They fall like any other word, so you still have to type them in time.
Every eight words is a new level. Words appear more often, fall faster and slowly get longer, but the speed levels off instead of climbing forever, so a strong typist can hold out for a long time. On Standard a wrong letter is simply refused and you keep typing. On Advanced words start faster and longer, wrong letters stay in the bar until you delete them, and pressing Space on a wrong word is a misfire that breaks your chain.
Falling Words trains you to read a word once, type it without looking back and move on to the next one. Fast typists do this all the time without noticing, and here a falling word gives you a good reason to practise it.
The lowest word on screen that exactly matches what you typed. While you are still typing, the reticle shows the lowest word that starts with your letters, which is the one in most danger.
On Standard the wrong letter is ignored and your typing bar shakes. On Advanced it stays in the bar in red until you press Backspace, and firing with it is a misfire that resets your chain.
Each word is worth ten points per letter, multiplied by your chain multiplier. Words destroyed by a Clear sweep are worth five points per letter, and a Shield power-up with full shields is worth a hundred.