From the moment Typoman: Revised begins, it’s clear this world is one of wily wordplay. Featuring a hero built literally from the letters H, E, R, and O, and situational challenges requiring creative letter arrangement (such as combining O and N to turn on a switch), there’s plenty of brain-busting charm in the presentation. With each new puzzle solved, you’ll progress further through an increasingly dangerous world, where monsters built of words like DOOM and GREED loom.

Typoman works best when it demands you dust off special areas of creative thinking rarely required in platformers. Solving these puzzles keeps the journey satisfying and undoubtedly leaves you hungry for more. Sadly, the platforming mechanics are far from tight, and frustrating deaths from a simple timed jump happen all too often. Respawning is relatively quick and fortunately, redoing an entire puzzle isn’t necessary. In other words, a degree of much-appreciated forgiveness is built into the slightly loose controls.

If pushing around or tossing letters feels a bit too time-consuming, a nifty Wordscrambler mode is included. So, once you slap a bunch of letters together, you can quickly open a menu with the Y button and manually rearrange the letters. Frankly, it’s an ingenious solution because in some spaces it’d be otherwise impossible to physically spell a new word.

Along the way you’ll be able to collect glowing quotation marks, which will reveal more to Typoman’s tale, line-by-line. The slowly revealed story is easily accessed from the pause menu, which makes for an interesting progression map as you can see how far you’ve come (or if you’ve missed any pesky quotation marks in the past).

From the get-go, it’s clear Typoman: Revised has a graphical presentation and soundtrack worth praise. Even though it’s a relatively quick playthrough, a great deal is present for the eyes and ears to enjoy. And while it certainly takes cues from the phenomenal game, Limbo, the word mechanic gives it enough unique charm for it to stand alone with its own individual spirit.

If you’re after a game that marries clever word puzzling and platforming, you may find an unexpected gem. Just be prepared to have your platforming patience tested far more than it ought to be.

Quick disclaimer: Typoman was originally released on the Wii U, but sadly its intuitive touch screen function is no longer supported.