Steno Arcade

About

Steno Arcade is a single player action game. It was developed by For All To Play and was released on March 30, 2016. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

Steno Arcade is a suite of arcade games designed to teach and drill steno fundamentals in an immersive, addictive, responsive, and interactive way.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

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79%Audience ScoreBased on 130 reviews

music22 positive mentions

graphics3 negative mentions

The game is a fun and engaging way to practice and improve stenography skills, especially for those with a steno keyboard.
Includes a unique typing rhythm gameplay blending karaoke-style lyric typing with music, motivating practice through challenge and music.
Supports addition of custom charts and songs via an intuitive tool, allowing personalized content and community-created expansions.

Extremely difficult for normal keyboard users, even easy levels are very challenging, making it inaccessible to most casual players.
Lacks beginner-friendly learning modes or practice features; the pacing is too fast with little to no delay for typing words along with songs.
Limited content and game modes currently available; few included songs with limited variety and the game is perceived as unfinished or abandoned.

music
74 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
30%
66%
4%
The music in this game features a limited but generally enjoyable selection, with some tracks praised for their quality and challenge, though many find even the easiest songs difficult on a standard keyboard. A notable strength is the ability to add custom charts using community tools, offering potential for expansion beyond the small official library. Players appreciate the concept of typing along to music but desire more song variety, adjustable speeds, and easier difficulty options to better accommodate a wider range of skills.
- “The tool called Wavelyric is intuitive and easy to learn, so I highly recommend it to anyone who is tired of the included songs and wants to chart their own.”
- “The community also provided a nice tool to let you create your own song templates, so there's potential for a lot of community-made content.”
- “Awesome music as well!”
- “However, it is not fleshed out and the library of songs is not very big.”
- “6 songs is not enough; also the highest difficulty is absolutely insane and you'd really have to be superhuman to do it.”
- “The songs are too hard... easier songs were pretty good or the songs in difficult lengths... (very slow/slow/normal, ...)”
gameplay
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
57%
The gameplay is described as a unique blend of beatmania and karaoke, offering an experimental and educational rhythm experience. While it is praised for its music and concept, some players note the difficulty spikes and suggest improvements to mechanics, especially regarding sentence timing. Overall, it provides a functional and enjoyable free play experience, though it may have pacing issues during easier levels.
- “Steno arcade is an experimental synth arcade game that is very good but goes from easy to extremely hard very fast. You can't replay the music too much because the easy levels have huge pauses during gameplay. This idea is great, and probably this game is my favorite educative game so far. There is no game over screen, making it essentially a typing learning simulator.”
- “The gameplay is sort of like a mix of playing Beatmania and singing karaoke.”
- “The game has nice gameplay.”
graphics
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
29%
28%
43%
The graphics received mixed feedback, with some criticizing the pixel art as distracting or poorly executed, while others appreciated the retro style and found the visuals cute and fitting for the game. Overall, opinions on the graphics range from unfavorable to fondly nostalgic.
- “Although a bit hard, especially for non-English games, quite a fun game with beautiful soundtracks and cute visuals.”
- “The soundtrack is great, the graphics are nice too as they're retro.”
- “This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics.”
- “It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter.”
- “Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded despite the bad graphics, not because of them.”
story
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
67%
33%
The game lacks a substantial story, with users suggesting that those interested in narrative should look to titles like Epistory instead.
- “☐ story?”
stability
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The stability of the software is generally reliable, though users may encounter some minor bugs, especially when converting dictionaries from other steno translation programs. Overall, it performs solidly with only occasional instability issues.
replayability
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Replayability is limited for players using a normal keyboard, as higher difficulty levels become frustrating; however, this challenge can motivate players to explore alternative input methods like stenotyping.
humor
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game is praised for its strong humor, providing plenty of laughs and making it highly recommended for entertaining YouTube content.
optimization
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game performs well overall but shows room for improvement in optimization to enhance smoothness and efficiency.