Project update 1 of 5
Not even a week after launch, we’ve already hit 50% of our baseline goal! If we’re able to double what we have now, we’ll be able to finish Steno Hero, adding in screen reader support, additional songs, and some cool bells and whistles like a high score table and WPM meter. That’ll be fantastic. But even better would be if we made our first stretch goal, which would allow players to play Steno Hero using any song in their music library. That’s the one I’ve really hung my heart on, and I’m hoping hard that we’ll make it. With 40 days left to go, we’ve got an excellent chance!
We’ve gotten some good press in the week since we’ve launched, like [this article in the Journal of Court Reporting’s online edition](http://thejcr.com/2016/03/21/ncra-member-develops-steno-arcade-to-promote-learning steno-and-keyboarding/) and this article from Cliqist, which quite fairly asks us to provide more information about the other games in the Steno Arcade series beyond Steno Hero. Those games are currently stretch goals, but even if we don’t successfully fund them this time around (though it would be amazing if we did), we’re going to keep raising money to develop them as quickly as we can.
We decided to build Steno Hero first because it’s less steno-specific than the other three; it can be played by regular keyboard users as well as stenographers, and we figured it would be a more accessible introduction to the series, even though it’s actually the most advanced game of the four. If it looks like we’re getting close, we’ll go into more detail about our specific plans for those games, but for now we’re focused on getting Steno Hero fully funded, so we’re putting most of our effort into getting the word out about it.
To that end, our amazing lead developer, Ted Morin, has recorded a video showing his hands on both his qwerty keyboard and his steno keyboard, simultaneously tackling our slowest song, I’m Your Moon, as well as a demonstration of JavaScript coding using his steno machine, which is not directly related to Steno Arcade but is pretty dang cool all the same. You can see it’s a total cinch for him on the steno keyboard but much more of a challenge on his regular keyboard. That’s something we’ve been hearing from a lot of users.
A sampling of recent Steam reviews:
With a normal keyboard the game is VERY hard, even on the lowest, and by VERY hard I mean the hardest difficulty is pretty much the Dark Souls of typing games.
I saw the game and thought it would be dumb… I played it and screamed at the game and threw my laptop on the ground… It’s broken now… 10/10 would do it again.
Do not play unless you are very fast and love music.
Everyone agrees: We need to add some slower songs for the regular keyboard crowd. We’re gonna do our best to make that happen as soon as we can. Stay tuned for more developments, and please help us to spread the word about the campaign if you get a chance! The more eyes we can get on the game, the better.