The director of Tactical Breach Wizards is genuine: animate phrases, no longer letters!

Image courtesy of Suspicious Traits.

My attention was instantly caught while I was quietly observing a Moscone West lecture room during the 2025 Game Developers Conference. Suspicious Traits’ founder and Tactical Breach Wizards director Tom Francis was elaborating on his strategies for narrative and humor in his IGF award-winning game, and he discussed the topic of captivating text presentation. In Tactical Breach Wizards, he clarified that Suspicious Traits enhanced all the game’s dialogue by animating it word by word instead of letter by letter. Each rapid exchange resonates with the sound of a typewriter, and players who merely want to see all the text immediately can press the “advance” button to fast-forward through it.

Suspicious Traits’ previous titles Gunpoint and Heat Signature animated text letter by letter, Francis (not me) mentioned. When he tested word-by-word animation, he remarked that it was like “night and day.” In a brief video demo, he showcased the two styles side by side, stating that the traditional approach was, as he put it, “very smooth.”

“I believe that’s an issue… because it lacks rhythm,” he said. “It’s too smooth; it’s just like a continuous flow [of words].”

Even without the typewriter’s clicking sound, the word-based dialogue moved with a somewhat erratic pace, adjusting speed based on the sentence’s structure. “I think the reason it works is that it aligns with how our brains process speech,” he said before quickly noting, “This is not science. This is just a theory.”

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He expressed surprise that this method “wasn’t more common,” mentioning that “90 percent” of the indie games he plays rely on letter-by-letter animation (triple-A games often depend more on voice acting—which may change if game studios continue to negotiate with SAG-AFTRA regarding generative AI).

As someone who has been contemplating interactive text in games recently, I found Francis’ argument to resonate deeply. There’s simply no denying it—more developers, especially indie creators, could elevate their storytelling by adopting this approach.

Captivating text helps players engage with a game

Here I must make a confession. Lately, I’ve operated under a simple rule when assessing the quality of any particular game. It goes like this: the sooner I can actually play a game, the more likely I am to stick with it. Lengthy cutscenes (especially those that are essentially motion comics) make me restless, and smaller games that limit my freedom of movement or actions in the initial moments leave me longing for something more interactive.

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This may surprise readers who know I’m fond of high-budget cinematic games like Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 or Star Wars Jedi: Survivor; however, these games often stand as exceptions to my rule. A vibrant cutscene that sets up the story without relying on an information dump significantly contributes to paving the way for gameplay. Spider-Man 2‘s opening sequence utilizes antics to set up a confrontation with Sandman, and Survivor‘s somber opening scene establishes the tone and stakes for the first mission.

When indie developers can’t afford an extravagant cutscene, they often rely on artistry and interactive text (whether it be dialogue options or pressing a button to skip) to establish the beginning. My threshold for “gameplay” is low enough that tapping, clicking, or pressing a button to halt text often jolts my focus into gear. However, here we encounter a challenge faced by text-focused games like Disco Elysium: when text is not presented engagingly, it diminishes even the most vibrant writing that may exist beneath the surface.

In a 2020 interview with GameSpot, Disco Elysium
Lead designer and writer Robert Kurvitz indicated that the game would not have resonated with players if ZA/UM hadn’t endeavored to make the text content “comprehensible.” The game’s strong dependence on twentieth-century ideological and philosophical concepts would not effectively translate into mainstream entertainment without extensive modifications to the text. To achieve this, they developed a system that rendered text “as engaging and as dynamic as Twitter,” drawing inspiration from messaging applications and notification systems. “You must do everything in your power with the meaning of the text to ensure it is as impactful and as personal as possible,” Kurvitz stated at the time.

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This brings us back to Francis’ support for word-based animation.Tactical Breach Wizards is not precisely the first game to utilize this approach! Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles such as Golden Sun and Fire Emblem employed it extensively—in fact, the sound and feel of that progressing text is partly why these games remain memorable for me.

Honestly, if I could find a way to animate letters one at a time on this site without disrupting it (a significant challenge), I would!

Animating letters individually could prove essential. The Animal Crossing series employs this technique alongside whimsical babbling sounds to make every villager enjoyable to engage with. However, it’s a deliberate choice, not a matter of convenience. If your game features straightforward scrolling text animating letter by letter—without additional consideration for font, screen placement, pacing, or accessibility options—it can easily transition from a pleasant experience to something far more generic.

Francis pointed out that this method is particularly effective for comedy, as humor thrives on timing and the exact way words are presented. But it is not the only genre that benefits from this approach. Every type of game could enjoy and benefit from sharper, more intriguing text content.

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