Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun's free typing spinoff doubles its wordcount with 3 new levels and over 400 extra phrases

Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun: Words of Vengeance originally launched as a stopgap/marketing gimmick to coincide with the announcement of Boltgun 2. But it appears to have gone down swimmingly with the Boltgun playerbase in its own right, having accrued a 'Very Positive' Steam rating out of 1,700 reviews. The 2.5D blaster's free-to-play spinoff swaps out clicking on enemy heads to kill them in traditional shooter fashion for keyboard-based mass murder a-la The Typing of The Dead.

Words of Vengeance is deeply silly and entirely disposable, but a far more entertaining way to test your WPM than Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. There is one recurring complaint developer Auroch Digital has received, however. Well, actually there were two complaints, but one of them was from players who had mistaken Words of Vengeance for vanilla Boltgun and were aggrieved that they had to kill people with words rather than bullets, so we can disregard that.

The actual complaint was that there wasn't enough of Words of Vengeance, from both a structural and lexical standpoint. In response, the developer has released a new update that effectively doubles the spinoff's size.

The update introduces three new levels of keyboard-based blasting, with Canyon Magrails, The Deep Vault and one other level borrowed from Boltgun increasing the total to six. Alongside this, the update adds 400 new phrases to broaden the diversity of the typing challenge and reduce repeated words. Finally, the update adds a small mechanical flourish in the form of timed textboxes. These are implemented mainly for health pickups, lending you greater control over your chances of survival.

That extra slice of typing-based terminating should help keep Boltgun fans satisfied until the sequel arrives next year. Boltgun 2 seems like it'll be a mostly straightforward follow up to the original, introducing new weapons, enemies and locations. Its branching singleplayer campaign sounds slightly more ambitious, but even if the sequel ultimately transpires to be Just More Boltgun, that's by no means a bad thing.