Kami Typing! Keyboard Ninja

Kami Typing turns typing practice into a game. Type as fast and as accurately as you can, and the app names the rank that matches your speed — sixty-six of them, starting from a shrine-maiden hopeful and climbing through the Japanese pantheon and far beyond.

Free to play, built for both flick input and hardware keyboards.

■ Three ways to play

Daily practice Pick a topic and type ten prompts. At the end you get your speed (WPM), accuracy, mistake count and your rank. Every character you got wrong is collected into Miss Review so you can drill just those. Choose "same set again" to retype the exact ten prompts and see your improvement directly.

Kotodama ritual Focused drills that target one kind of finger movement at a time. Paths are split by flick direction — tap, left, up, right and down — and continue into voiced and contracted sounds, long jumps between keys, back-and-forth patterns, numbers and symbols, and a final all-round challenge. Kotodama earned through practice unlocks each new path. You will quickly see for yourself which movements you are good at and which ones slow you down.

Live ranking A timed leaderboard with a fresh set of prompts every five days. Everyone types exactly the same ten prompts, so luck plays no part. Flick input and keyboard input are ranked separately, so your input method never puts you at a disadvantage. You get five attempts per period, and your best run is the one that counts.

■ Eight topic sets, with more to download

Japanese words / Japanese sentences / rare kanji / proverbs / haiku / English / Chinese / Korean

Your vocabulary grows while your fingers do. Rare kanji and proverbs stick simply because you keep typing them, and the English, Chinese and Korean sets let you practise a language at the same time. More topic packs can be downloaded free from inside the app, and new ones keep arriving.

■ Built to keep you going

- Combo effects that build with each correct answer (switch them off if you prefer things calm) - Miss Review, which collects only the characters you got wrong - Kotodama earned through practice, personal bests and combos, spent on drills and topic packs - A graph of your history, so you can see at a glance whether you are improving

■ Make it yours

Switch to a Mincho typeface, show or hide the shrine maiden, toggle sound effects, key clicks and mistake vibration, choose your background music, hide the reading to raise the difficulty, and change the app language between Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese. If you get stuck, the settings screen includes how to play, tips for typing faster, a guide to repeating the same character, and a Q&A.

■ Who it is for

- Anyone who wants faster, more accurate flick input on a phone - People who find typing on a smartphone frustrating - Anyone looking for one small skill to improve in spare moments - Players who simply want to compete on speed - Learners who want to pick up rare kanji, proverbs, English, Chinese or Korean along the way

■ Requirements

Android 6.0 and above. Works with virtually any device and with Bluetooth keyboards — flick input and hardware keyboards are both supported.

The app is free and ad-supported. A one-time "remove ads" purchase turns off full-screen ads for good, and a separate "support development" option is there for anyone who wants to back the developer.

Credits Illustration: Kon Sound effects: Maou Damashii http://maoudamashii.jokersounds.com/