Show HN: 0xDEAD//TYPE – A fast-paced typing shooter with retro vibes

i you smash your keyboard it works too

Passing each column should count for 10 points, and your score should be dinged -1 point for each keypress. Pressing a key that's not on the screen should be a -5 point penalty. Game over if you drop below 0 points. That would solve the button mashing easy win problem.

Also, perhaps my skills are lacking, but the game essentially becomes impossible after the columns become 6 blocks wide — the fraction of open (i.e. fully breakable) rows becomes small enough that open rows between adjacent columns are often further apart vertically than the ship can travel, given its speed and the game's horizontal scroll rate. I like the sibling commenter's suggestion of pseudorandomly carving navigable paths between columns, as opposed to the current method of having a uniform 80% probability that an individual tile is breakable.

switching between moving up and down and typing is a weird modality. I almost would have liked to hit `esc` and `i` (a la vim) to change modalities.

A lot going on for honest players. (And then you use your typing fingers to move, that stops everything.) Perhaps some fauxlgorithmically-generated 'word paths' with noise around them (or without) would be nice. (e.g. what's that thing, the Markov-chain kind)

That's a fun game! I found out I have muscle memory for j/k meaning up/down, instead of w/s.