The Typing of The Dead: Overkill

The Typing of The Dead: Overkill

113 ratings
Survival guide
By GrgoljBlaster
Basic and advanced tips'n'tricks to help you not get eaten and type the mutants back to hell
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Introduction
Survivng the zom... I mean mutant apocalypse isn't easy. Everybody wants to get a bite of you and some of the baddies are quire nasty. But fear not, as this guide will help you overcome some challenges and learn essential skills to help you survive and rack up points.

Let's go!
Difficulty levels and hardcore mode
The game has three difficulty levels:
  • B*tch - easy
  • Agent - medium
  • Motherf***er - hard


Choosing the right difficulty level is essential. On easy you'll need to type simpler words, with short phrases only appearing during boss fights. Medium consists mostly of short phrases and is the ideal level for most players. Hardest difficulty will make you type phrases and sentences only.
Difficulty levels don't impact number of monsters or the time given to the player to type out the words. Also, you won't need to worry about upper-case letters, spaces or other symbols and punctuation - the game fills those for you.

Hardcore mode
After beating the story mode on any difficulty you will be able to activate Hardcore mode on any level and any difficulty. Playing on this mode adds two very important twists:
1) you have to take care of spacing and puctuation
2) misstyping a letter will reset the whole phrase and replace it with a new one
Pickups
There are several types of pickups and collectibles to be found in each level:
  • Health packs
  • Slow-mo powerups
  • Posters
  • Vinyl Records
  • Comic books
  • Figurines
Picking up objects is done by pressing Tab (it's just above Caps lock button). The game will only explain this once to you at the beginning and in the heat of battle so it's very easy to miss explanation for this ability. You won't be penalized for spamming Tab so use sparringly, especially when hunting for collectibles.

Health packs

Grabbing a health pack heals you for 3 bars. You cannot be overhealed.

Slow-mo powerup

When you pick up this powerup, the screen will become yellow-toned and all the action gets much slower giving you plenty of time to react to approaching horde.

Collectibles

As mentioned above, there are four types of collectible objects. Grabbing each one will net you 2000 points and unlock a portion of bonus content. Most of them are not very obvious to spot or aren't focused too long (hence the tiny screenshots here) so keep that pinky finger ready to mash Tab.
Collecting all items on a level is required for getting better final score.
Choose your target
Many times you'll be confronted with several enemies so it's important to prioritize whom to shoot first. Luckily, the boxes around phrases help a lot with this.


Notice how there are different colored boxes on each mutant. Here's the breakdown:
  • gray - harmless enemy or too far away
  • green - enemy is still far enough not to harm you
  • yellow - this enemy is near you and might attack
  • red (flashing) - top priority! this enemy is preparing to strike

There are, of course, exceptions. Pay close attention to movement of other mutants, as some of them can get quite fast to you. Remember that only one enemy at the time can attack you, so you can control the tempo of the encounters by stunning the attacker first while others keep waiting in line.

A special rule comes with enemies that throw stuff at you - you should always focus on taking down their projectiles as these guys won't rush towards you, so there's plenty of time to beat them.
Stuns and cancels
Let's discuss two techniques that are essential for longer survival.

Stun
To stun a mutant you just need to type first five letters of it's phrase without making mistakes. The impact will knock the monster back for a brief moment, breaking its attack and giving you more time to complete the phrase. Fat mutants are more resistant to stuns so they recover quickly.
Stunning a monster will still keep it as your next attacker (red box around phrase).

Canceling an attack
Even though this sounds like something out of a fighting game, it's not far from there. To cancel typing of current word/phrase press Backspace. This is a lifesaver as it will allow you to shift your focus at incoming projectiles or faster mutants. Canceling out the phrase will not break your combo nor replace the phrase (if you're playing on Hardcore mode). The enemy who you're currently attacking will have arrows in corners of its phrase.
Combo meter
In the upper-left corner, next to your healthbar, you'll se a gun barrel. Whenever you score a kill, one bullet is added to it until you fill it up with 5 bullets (golden bullets mean you've got a kill without missing a single letter). Then, it will reset, the announcer will shout out your new combo rank and you will score higher for further kills. Keeping up killing mutants without getting hit or missing more than 3 times in one phrase will increase your rank up to Goregasm when each kill nets you 1100 points. Random typing won't affect your combo as long as you don't start typing any of the phrases shown on the screen.
    The combo ranks:
  • Extreme violence
  • Hardcore violence
  • Ultra violence
  • Psychotic
  • Goregasm
Conclusion
Remember:
  • Pay close attention to faster mutants and target them first
  • Always go for a stun, especially when overwhelmed by monsters
  • Don't bother with puctuation and spaces if you're not playing on Harcore, but you may type them if that helps you keep up the pace
  • Mash Tab :)

I hope this guide helped you get into the game more prepared. If you have any suggestions or corrections, feel free to post them in the comment box.
16 Comments
kaileb.kim 27 Aug, 2023 @ 2:33am 
One useful bit of info I read from the manual is that while spaces and punctuation are not required outside of Hardcore mode, they do count toward stuns. This saved my hide a number of times after I found this out and it helped me bring up my scores dramatically
spaceseeker19 11 Apr, 2023 @ 8:36am 
Using BACKSPACE to back out of a word to shoot projectiles is the exact content I was looking to find. Thank you!
vertigo 6 Feb, 2022 @ 5:30pm 
Fantastic guide, I never would have known about stuns or even cancelling without it. Thanks! :combokill:
Neomerlinux 7 Jan, 2022 @ 11:05am 
Thank you very much! I totally missed the TAB info and was wondering when and where the game will decide to enlighten me about how to use healthpacks. Thanks again! :steamthumbsup:
expresidents 1 Feb, 2019 @ 2:15pm 
Typos of the Dead!

"You won't be penalized for spamming Tab so use sparringly, especially when hunting for collectibles."

This sentence is extremely murky; at the very least, imprecise. Since you wrote a tutorial on how to play a game that, in essence, evolves your brain to think about words and sentences and the differences in syntax, I find it egregious that you wracked out such a sentence. First: did you mean "sparingly" or "sparringly"? One means to be sparse, to use wisely, only when absolutely necessary. The other means to spar someone in battle (if it's even a word; I don't have time to look in my OED). I have often contemplated on the depths of your brain, surmising that such a thing could actually be called....a "typo"?

So my question is: Press the fuck out of tab or don't press the fuck out of tab?
Worldzworstgamer 2 May, 2018 @ 3:22pm 
Thanks so much. I was playing this game today and if anyone saw me playing it while streaming it I guaranteed could not understand why I was not picking up items to help me. In the games instructions nowhere does it say Tab to do this. Absolutely ridiculous the people behind this game did not address this.
Hipster Elephant 6 Oct, 2016 @ 12:28pm 
Good guide. Although the guide to the Wii version of Overkill referred to the Slow mo as 'Slow mofo', although that's just being nitpicky on the guide.
GrgoljBlaster  [author] 27 Jun, 2016 @ 12:37am 
Unfortunately, no character switching in this game :(
75338 26 Jun, 2016 @ 2:02pm 
MFer. Here I was thinking that Bitch was the girl character, then Agent and the black dude...
Pirefyro 15 May, 2016 @ 1:04am 
Thanks for this.