Bad proof of concept
If you're going to make a game centered around typing speed then you need to include punctuation and paragraph breaks. You can't simply remove a fundamental part of typing and then expect people to be able to type at full speed.
Reviews for "The Essay"
An interesting concept.
The fact that punctuation is "typed" automatically is a little jarring, especially since the spaces before or after any punctuation is NOT automatically counted. I imagine if a person played it long enough, this might not be an issue.
But if the idea behind the whole thing is to type what you see accurately as quickly as possible (and it is), then automatically counting punctuation but omitting spaces seems just plain inconvenient.
Does that make any sense? I'd love to see another version of this where everything you'd have to type in a real essay acted as a barrier to your progress.
Too slow
It's too slow. It is a somewhat decent pace for the most part, but it should go faster if you are catching up to it, then return to normal once it has gotten ahead some more. It isn't too hard to catch up to it, then when you do, it doesn't count the keystrokes.
Should probably also add some penalty for making errors, such as it jumping ahead some more.
i like it but...
i do not know if it is just me but sometimes i think im typing faster than the program can keep up. i feel like i have to slow down so it can read my letters when i type them in. im not barging, but it is a minor problem playing this game
Needs a little tweak
But the programming needed to be a little more solid.
At a certain pace the system itself simply wouldn't keep up with me, dropping one of my keystrokes or a space during a moment of latency. It's very hard to take this seriously considering what a heavy toll such factors play on the game's core premise and the experience overall.