Steno Arcade
First of all, this is a steno game. What is steno? Look here at me playing this game on a QWERTY keyboard and a steno machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtQzTUEuPWo You can see that I don’t write individual letters, rather words at a time. And writing words at a time means that my hands don’t move much, much less than a QWERTY keyboard where you have to type every letter.
The steno machine is much faster at text entry than a regular keyboard, but it takes months to become proficient. Part of the reason that many haven’t heard of steno is that for the longest time it wasn’t public information! A major stakeholder in this game, Mirabai Knight, tried to bring steno to everyone, starting in 2010. She first had a program made that interfaced with steno machines and handled all the steno logic → that program is Plover, and I use and develop it now.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Software Training Indie Games.
I’ll divide this review for two audiences: Uninformed and transcribers in the shorthand trade.
Uninformed:
If you stumbled upon this game, you might be wondering “What the heck is steno?” which is fair question. This is very niche product for a speicifc trade/industry in which you might recognize in captions on Television or Court reporters (sometimes refered as stenographers). This means that you need a specific usb-equipped shorthand steno writer and download an open source software to convert what you input into that writer onto your computer - you still following me? - and also you’ll need to learn the complete theory and methodology of how to write steno. If you’re still confused or uninterested thenn this is obviously not the game for you.
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game