Hey, remember Space Invaders? How about Centipede? Now, do you remember your typing class in high school? Wait, what? I’m not kidding. You probably thought, while you were being endlessly drilled in high school on page after page of typing letter after letter that there’s no way that something as seemingly tedious as typing on a keyboard, whether you learned on a computer or an actual typewriter, could ever be fun. But you – and me, and everyone else who ever had to endure typing lessons – were wrong.

You can blame game designer Dominic Szablewski for ruining our collective pre-conceived notions and irrational prejudices against the sport of typing. His Linkedin page describes him as a “Freelance software engineer, Creator of the Impact Game Engine and Aspah Microblogging Software.” With Z-Type, Dominic’s set up a game field very reminiscent of that in classic 2D arcade games like Space Invaders. You sit at the bottom and “shoot” at words as they come floating toward you on little saucers by typing the words themselves. You have to type the complete word in order to destroy it.

A little tip here: Watch for the big words and shoot them first. They tend to give birth to more words. Make sure your spelling is good and your typing is fast, because the more levels you get through, the bigger the words get, and the faster they come.

The game has two modes: Normal and Expert, and you can pause the game at any time and go check a dictionary by hitting the ESC key. I’m still working through normal mode, myself. This game can become very addictive. Resistance is useless. Eventually, you will be overwhelmed by your inability to type fast enough to keep up with the hail of evil typography that rains down upon your hapless head. So beware, and brush up on your typing and spelling. You’ve been duly warned.

You can play the game right now by heading to the Z-Type website.

And here you thought typing was dull and tedious, didn’t you?