GAME MODES
Five ways to play
KEYSTORM is one game with five quite different shapes. Solo is the arcade run, the daily is the one everybody plays identically, co-op and versus need friends, and drill mode is the one that actually makes you faster. Here is what each is for.
Solo
The standard run. You pick a difficulty, the waves get faster and busier, and it ends when your last life goes. Personal bests are tracked separately per difficulty, so easy and brutal do not compete with each other.
| Difficulty | Lives | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | 5 | Short words, slow arrivals. The place to learn what each enemy does. |
| Normal | 3 | The arcade curve, with mini-bosses between full bosses. |
| Hard | 2 | Longer words, faster sprinters, more divers. |
| Brutal | 1 | A typo drops your target lock entirely. Pays triple. |
Before every solo run there is a briefing screen showing that difficulty's lives, enemy speed and score multiplier, the rules that apply only to it, and the record you are chasing. You also choose your word list there. Enter starts, so it costs one keystroke once you know what you want.
Daily challenge
One run per day, seeded from the date. Everyone who plays on a given day gets the identical sequence of words at identical speeds, so the only variable between two players is their hands. It always uses the Classic word list and runs on hard, because a personal setting would make the scores incomparable.
Playing on consecutive days builds a streak. Miss a day and it resets to one. The streak is the only thing in KEYSTORM you can lose by not turning up, which is deliberate: a two-minute run you can finish on a busy day is a practice habit that survives contact with real life.
Co-op
Up to three players share one battlefield, one pool of lives and one score. Each pilot has their own colour and their own ship, and their shots are drawn in that colour so you can see who is handling what.
The rule that no two live enemies start with the same letter holds across the whole field, which means two people physically cannot fight over the same target. You do not need to coordinate, only to divide the screen.
One player hosts and shares a four-letter room code. Co-op is desktop only, because the board has to be the same shape for every player and a phone runs a portrait layout.
Versus
Up to three players on separate fields running the same seed, so nobody gets an easier wave than anyone else. Every enemy you destroy sends extra enemies at your opponents, and the bigger the word the bigger the attack. Last one alive wins.
Versus rewards different play from co-op. In co-op you clear whatever is most dangerous; in versus you take the long words, because those are what hurt the other two.
Drill
Opened from the key report. A drill weights word selection towards the letters you personally keep missing, so instead of practising a general list you practise your own weak spots. It runs on normal, because the challenge is meant to come from the letters.
Drill is the mode most likely to make you faster, and it only works because the game has been recording every keystroke you have made. How that works.
Word lists
Every mode except the daily lets you choose what you are typing. Classic is short and varied, Common is the words English uses most, and Code is programming vocabulary. Your choice is remembered for next time.