Words Can Kill

Good concept, but very poor implementation. Balance is terrible, and there are simply too many enemy actions that are unable to be mitigated, reducing the strategy element tremendously. This could be a great game, if the designer(s) would have implemented mechanics for each enemy action.

Brutally difficult. And not in a fun way. This is basically you ramming your head against a wall, countless times, only for RNG to finally give you a run. The designers but WAY to much emphasis on random chance for this to feel fun or challenging or.. good.

If you are the sort that likes your difficulty coming from pure RNG, no strategy, no skill, no nothing, just pure RNG, then go ahead. If not, stay far away from this title.

This is a fun little word game for the low asking price. If you are into Scrabble or other word games, pick this one up. It functions well and is easy to learn.

The artwork is charming and no two games are the same.
Thumbs up for this little title. This is coming from a fan of Scrabble.

Went up against an enemy in the desert that had a barrier of power 9 and infinite defence, there was no indication of how to break the barrier, I tried :
throwing tiles away
dealing more than 9 damage
setting more than 9 defence
nothing worked.

However devs are quick to react and the game was fun.

A fun little roguelite with a unique twist.

This feels like a typical roguelite. Fight through three acts, each with a boss at the end. Choose a path through the act, fight, rest, buy equipment and upgrade.
The twist is that you attack and block by making words out of letter tiles (like Scrabble). The longer the word (and the more valuable the letters) the bigger the attack or block.
You also have equipment that helps in different ways. For example, a sword does more damage if you create a word 4 letters or longer on attack. Or a shield might let you draw a tile if you make a 3 letter word to block.

There are a wide variety of enemies, with different quirks.

It's fun and makes a nice change of pace, especially for the low price.

That said it's not in the top tier of this kind of game. Only three heroes - and actually only the Brute offers a really different style of play. There's a decent amount of equipment, but not really enough to make runs feel truly unique.

A lot of fun, but lacks staying power.

A unique Roguelike Deckbuilder with some cute humor. I've barely started playing it and I already feel like I got my money's worth out of it. Definitely recommend it.

My only gripe is that I forgot how to wipe the weapon and shield letters (drop a piece into the battlefield) and I lost an entire run because I got locked down. Maybe it's on me for not trying to search online to remind myself, but it would be nice if there were some sort of reminder that you can do it--especially if the player goes multiple turns with pieces clogging their weapon/shield and not attacking/defending. I dragged pieces everywhere but the battlefield and clicked on everything to no avail.

Basically Slay the Spire + Scrabble. I don't really like the aesthetics but the mechanics are super solid. You can choose to put any word into attack or block so you don't get stuck with a bunch of block when the enemy isn't going to attack, or vice versa. And unlike most word games I've seen, it's not about finding the longest word you can, more often than not a bunch of three letter words is a better choice. Which is good because I don't feel like I have to be ridiculously good at scrabble to play well. (Also there's a mode where the game just tells you all available words, which the game assures me is not cheating. Still not doing it.) Had a lot of fun with the game so far!

And holy carp I am baad at sepelling.

So much fun! You don't need to know how to spell anything, (especially with "Ignorance" equipment). This game is all strategy with a little luck. Game-play uses the mouse only, the entire time. For real, this game is awesome.

Don't let the mid-2000's flash game aesthetics deter you, this game has a great amount of depth and strategy behind it's cartoon facade. While maybe not as deep as other games in the rogue-like genre, the mashup of word game and RPG blends incredibly well. Each stage of your adventure allots you plenty of options to add, remove, and upgrade letters in your deck, as well as buy and sell equipment to aid you in your quest. All in all, not a bad way to spend a few dollars and hours. I can absolutely see myself sinking much, much more time into this game.

For fans of: Turn-based RPGs, deck builders, and human encyclopedias
Skip if: You're looking for fast paced, heart racing combat and/or the highest fidelity graphics to test your latest rig.

This is the first time I've seen this combination. And I really liked this game. You need to come up with words and at the same time! Good animation, many different monsters and this one is very interesting and addictive. Event your brain and inspection!!! Recommend! :)

it's just not as polished as it should be. the mechanics are clunky and not straight forward. not to mention that (if you are a Scrabble aficionado such as myself), the dictionary is lacking a LOT of acceptable words. a good effort for sure, but doesn't live up to its concept.

This is a really cute cross between a word game and a deck builder, but (at least in "gifted" mode) it doesn't rely on you having a large vocabulary or guessing what the computer dictionary contains so it's really more of a logic puzzle. Frustrating at times, but overall a good game for when I don't want to get too deep in something complicated.

This game blends all the fun parts of of card games, scrabble and chess. I've run through the first level about 10 times now and I'm still working on my strategy. I've played an aggressive game and a defensive game and both have their pros and cons. It's very well balance and I'm enjoying it immensely!

- DIFFICULTY -

🔲 Not difficulty based
🔲 Easy
🔲 Normal
☑️ Hard
🔲 Insanity
🔲 Varying

- GRAPHICS -

🔲 Pixels
🔲 Bad
☑️ Graphics don't matter in this game
☑️ Good
🔲 Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece

- MUSIC -

🔲 Bad
☑️ Music
🔲 Good
🔲 Beautiful

- STORY -

🔲 This game has no story
🔲 Very mind numbing
☑️ Available if people want it
🔲 Well written
🔲 Epic story

- PRICE -

🔲 N/A
🔲 Underpriced
☑️ Perfect price
🔲 Could be cheaper
🔲 Overpriced
🔲 Stupidly priced

- REQUIREMENTS -

🔲 You can run it on a calculator
☑️ Mid Spec
🔲 High end
🔲 Top of the Range

- LENGTH -

🔲 Very short (0 - 3 hours)
🔲 Short (3 - 15 hours)
🔲 Average (15 - 50 hours)
🔲 Long (50 - 90 hours)
🔲 Extremely long (90 - 110 hours)
☑️ Continuous

- FUN -

🔲 Dead
🔲 Hard to enjoy
☑️ Repetitive
☑️ Actually pretty amusing
🔲 Ride of your life

- REPLAYABILITY -

🔲 None
🔲 Only for achievements
🔲 If you wait a few months
🔲 Definitely
☑️ Infinitely replayable

- WORTH BUYING -

🔲 No
🔲 Wait for sale
☑️ Yes
🔲 Free

⭕ - Conclusion -:
Words can Kill is an awesome game which uses words to attack enemies in cool combat levels. There is a wide selection of equipment which help you and allow you to do certain things or gain benefits from the words you use. There is also a good range of difficulty for people who want the words given to them or who want them hidden. The overall gameplay does get repetitive however, it is really good fun when you start collecting the items you want and you sort your deck of tiles out to be ideal.

It's a neat idea and CAN be fun sometimes, but there are some very unfair things that feel far more brutal than stuff in Slay the Spire and similar roguelikes. There are enemies that can reduce the value of your tiles to literally 0, and keep doing so repeatedly. Whilst I haven't had it happen yet, I'm sure they could effectively reduce your entire deck to 0, guaranteeing a game over. Similarly, there are enemies who will straight up DELETE tiles from your deck over the course of the battle. Again, once you run out, game over. Then we have a final boss who just disables your shield whenever he feels like it, making you take completely unblockable damage and once again guaranteeing a game over if you came in with low health to start with. Player strategu, skill and deck builds don't matter when you're not allowed to actually play your tiles or do anything to prevent what's coming. Meanwhile the enemies can have effects like requiring you to hit them once before you can actually damage them, but by that point you've wasted most of your tiles and can't block what they're doing to you. Whilst I'm sure 'pro' players could find ways around this, it's extremely unforgiving to casuals, even on the 'Gifted' ("easiest") difficulty. In general, there's just far too much "reduce the players options to pretty much nothing" moments in the game compared to other roguelikes. Whenever these moments occur, it seriously leaves a very bad vibe, as the loss doesn't feel down to my poor choices or bad luck like in Slay the Spire, but instead because the game just 'decided I lost'. So as it stands, I can't recommend it unless you are able to and would have fun getting around these particular issues. If these weren't so prevalent, I would recommend the game for sure. It's no masterpiece but it's a fun little time for a reasonable price. After one to many runs like this, however, I don't see me playing it very often from now on.

Overall a much more fantastic game than as thought.
I was purchasing it only because it offered a super great deal just like a steel
BUT I have to comment something good here as an English-as-second-language player
there is a default simplified mode available for boosting yourself in the game that show all the potential words you could spell with your letters in hand, making it attracts you well at the very beginning of the game XD
Yet I would like to gently advise the game designer to create a mode showing the dictionary meanings of each word that we are spelling, as it could be a perfect add-on for us English learners
And I've got a new idea for the weapon design: hiding some of the vocabularies and additional damages could be dealt if those hidden ones are spelled

Definitely not balanced. Enemies will stick into a loop of 2 to 3 actions and repeat until you either kill them or give up just to end the cycle (Jester, frost mages, etc). Is there fun here? Yes, but the lack of foresight and balance completely outweighs it.

i`m very good at most word games but i haven`t been able to get past the first boss in this yet. i suppose a better dictionary would help. for me, there`s been a lot of repetition of words and options. it`s enjoyable for the price. but you might get frustrated if you expect to finish it without running into some kind of wall.

After finishing the first brother's campaign and saving the princess, I feel this game has given me all it got's. There were times where I felt really frustrated with it, but overall it's pretty solid, unique deck-tactic game. And cheap to boot.

I played only on Doomed mode so the game was pretty hard from start to finish, especially 'cause english isn't my native language. But in the end, I think Gifted mode would've been too easy (for me), so I reaped what I sowed. It did give a feeling of accomplishment when I managed to clutch a win in the brink of death. There was plenty of items and enemy types to go around to make every run unique.

While card games are always RNG based, I do feel there was just a tad too much of it, like; the starting letters, the letter drops, the enemies, the item drops, what items appear in shops: EVERYTHING is based on RNG. Makes it pretty hard to plan ahead. In my last run, I only won because I got the Vampiric Sword from shop to keep me healed and I had a deck which worked well with it.

I can appreciate the effort to expand the game with the characters of Brute and Keymaster, but I myself couldn't bother to finish a single run with either one. Their mechanics, I felt, were too detached from the spirit of the game. Playing with Scout is where all the fun was.

The fight mechanics were good and fine, with only one substantial gripe: enemies disarming your shield. No way to prevent it (other than Skullcrasher, which I never used), no way to have block carry over. So it's just "I'm gonna deal damage to you now, and you're gonna stand there and take it." Since most humanoid enemies do this and health is so essential, this was plenty frustrating.

Overall, I give this game 7/10. It can challenges your brains as much as your patience.

The game is very minimal and bare-bones, and I haven't enjoyed it thus far. While the concept is great, I can't help but think that things were left on the cutting room floor.

Some mechanics are just too punishing (e.g. flooding the deck with empty tiles and 0-cost tiles) while others are barely a nuisance (most curses). The enemies you get are often more frustrating than difficult, particularly the ones hard-coded to summon an ally ad nauseam.

One staple of all roguelikes with choose-a-path mechanics is the "event", which is to say a random non-fight, non-shop encounter. This game doesn't have that.

The lack of real choice in pathing (take the shorter path and you're shooting yourself in the foot) often creates situations where you are unable to win, regardless of how fluent you are

A lot of QoL improvements could be made, including:
- Faster animations
- Better drag-and-drop accuracy
- Move unlocked tiles on their respective boards
- Fix the hitbox for the "clean board" mechanic
- A "show upgrade" button to see what the tiles in your deck can turn into
- Confirm tile deletion
- More balanced starting decks
- QU appearing instead of Q
- Gambler hat lite as a default ability (redraw once per combat for free)

Some additions to make the game more enjoyable and replayable:
- Events
- More paths, all of around the same length
- Status immunity items (perhaps a 4th slot for a trinket?)
- Consumables (e.g. potions, smoke bombs)

It's a decent enough game. 6/10, which is enough for a positive review.

People in the reviews are comparing it to Slay the Spire, which isn't fair. StS is the king of this genre. It's one of the best out there, and to say it isn't as good as StS is asking too much.

The reviews are right that the game lacks some balance and some polish. Also, if you're an experienced word gamer, you'll find the word list to be extremely limited (though there are options to add words, but I'm afraid that would break game balance, so I didn't touch it).

All that said, it's enjoyable enough for the price, and I'm happy to have purchased it.

If you like word games and roguelikes, this is a pretty good effort at combining the two. It's good simple fun.

I will say, though, that if I didn't like word games, I don't think I'd be on board with the game in Blessed Mode. This is apparently 'how it's meant to be played' - the devs are rather insistent about this when you first load the game up. But without the process of finding words yourself and slotting them in, I don't think there's a lot of fun to be had. I played my third or fourth run in Blessed Mode and was bored halfway through Act 1, so I quit and went back to Cursed.

But finding a 7/8/9 letter word that you've been looking to build for the whole run at a crucial moment? That's the dopamine hit I was looking for. If you crave that too, you'll find it here.

Some minor issues:

- UI is very clunky (how on earth is there no way to type your word in? In 2022, in a word game, on PC?)
- Dictionary is... weird, and very small compared to other word games. There's a neat 'add word' function for particularly egregious omissions, if you have the self-control.
- Some of the items are punitive to try and make work - I think for balance reasons. But when you have a banger of a word that you then realise has too many vowels for the item you have... that feels bad.

Also there's a lot of whining about RNG in some of these reviews, which is par for the course in any roguelike (STS reviews are similar, and that's the genre's best game by some distance, lol). I've not found any of the starting decks of letters unplayable, and you can remove awkward tiles at forges. There's definitely some variance, but that's roguelikes for you.

Unbalance, enemy are 3 step upon you. You don't know what letter benefit in the future upon taking it. Risk the take, but may end up with useless effort..due to the enemy intend.

To compare with others roguelike game, this is just a scrap-able tryhard.

I say yes simply for because concept+presentation+execution=worthy.

It's actually quite frustrating and the QOL is highly lacking.

My main gripe is that there aren't basic "library" functions. Ok, maybe 'dictionary'. So many things that are "words" are such nonsense to my plebien american ways. I'd rather just have an option of a dictionary I choose, one of many nationally recognized, for my words. Some "words" in here are so absurd I just rage quit out of the audacity.

Anyway, it's cheap. They're words. If you like words.. it's worth a few hours. I *will not* buy the devs any effin' coffee, but they may have some mushrooms.

A nice and fresh deckbuilder. The decisions regarding your pool of letters are interesting, and which pieces of equipment you will use. The battles are varied, sometimes you need to focus on defense, sometimes offense, sometimes you need to set your plays up ahead of time.

The interface >is< clunky, but usable.

The library is fairly painfully small for a wordgame player. There is some benefit to a small library though, it is easier to get a more uniform difficulty to the game. I am used to wordgames just being trivial to someone who has played a reasonable amount of scrabble... but it almost has to be that way since players who have a vocabulary which is perfectly good but not built around games won't have fun with it otherwise. I should mention that the default - and encouraged mode of play is one in which they show all available words, which might make this less relevant. I played the mode where words were not listed because that is part of the activity I like with these games - doing the anagramming. The first character was pretty easy, the second made me work. I am still looking forward to playing the third.

I want to like this game, but I can't in the current state.

The good:

I love the idea of a scrabble deck builder. The tile modifiers are all pretty good. The equipment differences allow for plenty of different build types (many small words, one big word, redraw-heavy, etc) and therefore a fair amount of repay value.

The bad:

The word list is terrible. I know that I can go in and make my own custom dictionary, but I don't think that I should need to do that for a bunch of three letter words.

The interface is awful at explaining what you can and can't do. Tiles change color if they are locked on the board, but there are plenty of actions that block you from undoing their placement. This is a huge problem combined with the previous complaint; if you use the character that uses two-character tiles, as you might split a tile expecting a word to exist and not be able to undo the split when the game decides that your word doesn't exist.

There are definitely some balance issues as well, as you can absolutely get stuck with an unplayable deck at the beginning and requiring the blacksmith to eat your early money instead of getting a helmet or body armor. This isn't the biggest gripe, and I would assume that the starting decks will get some love as more games are played.

Overall:

It's got plenty of potential and I will keep my eye on updates.

If the dev reads this:
- Allow us to back out any move until the point that the player attacks or defends. A hard stop after a tile split is incredibly frustrating.
- Make the "board clear" mechanic more obvious. Throwing a tile onto the battlefield is wonky. Maybe make a place to insert a tile like the game already has for curses and whatnot.

Its fine, but the problems it does have are so bad that i just can't recommend this game. sometimes you start with tiles so bad that you can't possibly win. also often times even with the "easy mode" where it just gives you all possible words, winning is still near impossible. lastly, the difficulty scaling is way off, by the end of the game if i use all tiles to make a 6-8 letter word on defense it will give me about 15 block but the enemies are dealing 25+ damage a turn.

To put it in other words, the tile rng is 95% of the difficulty of the game and the difficulty ramps up way faster than you can get better gear.

As a roguelike deck builder, Words Can Kill has a lot of games to draw ideas from. The StS inspiration works well here in a unique fashion. I actually feel like I have more agency in this game and less run-ending circumstances. There’s a good mix of enemies and equipment synergies that can be devastatingly powerful.

For the most part, it’s a very well-done and balanced game…once you understand the ground rules. Those can be found in his post in the Steam Discussions - General Game Advice. Once I started putting words down one turn ahead of strong attacks, I could wait and get 2+ words that next round and easily get through to the end with good equipment. (I’d advise the dev to put this in a Tips section in the game menu). It’s actually a bit easy with the first character.

I’ve never had any issues with my starting deck - you’ll expand your deck with more tiles and you can delete that Q or Z pretty easily. Picking up some 2-letter tiles usually enhances your deck quite a bit. The developer has allowed players to add words to the limited dictionary which is a nice touch. The dictionary works well for the game balance, and I find the number of British slang words hilarious!

A few things I’d like to see include: more onmouseover tooltips, enemy names, and better UI with regards to the actions you can take, such as the unintuitive board clear.

Scrabble, but more, how you use your words and where you put things are also very important. So replayable!!

I have been a huge fan of Bookworm Adventures back in the day and I've been waiting for a good spiritual Successor to come along. This is close but it has not had a good polish yet. It feels like I'm playing an Early Access game but I do not see the tag. I would recommend you pass on this if there is no future development planned. I will update this review in the future if there are any updates that change the overall feel.

I've been looking forward to this game for months! I tried the demo and have been playing on the harder settings since I bought the game. The harder settings are a fun challenge. 10/10, it's the roguelite Scrabble game that's been missing in my life. Can't wait to see how they continue to develop the game!

Much better after the latest update, you can now add words to the dictionary that weren't allowed before and the difficulty level slightly reduced, although I still feel level 2 with the first character is still too difficult in path of the cursed mode.

Very good game, addictive.

If you like Slay the Spire, words games, roguelike and use your brain, then yeah pick it up.

I saw a review for this game and I'm a sucker for roguelikes and love puzzle and word games, so it was a bit of a no-brainer to pick it up.

While there are definitely pieces of this game that don't feel polished (art and animations), it's hard to write a bad review. I haven't run cross any bugs, the tutorial gives you a good breakdown of how the structure works, and the decisions you make are meaningful towards you future decisions. The art and animations may not feel polished to me, but they are complete and I think a re-skin in the future would be a fun, but not necessary, addition.

The structure means you are choosing from existing words rather than coming up with them, which was a bit of a surprise BUT I actually like the way this ends up being a management game instead of vocabulary game at the easiest level, which makes it very kid friendly. At the more challenging levels, those words are removed, so it becomes more of a mix. I love that the difficulty changes are so clear and accessible for all levels, and the overall accessibility of fonts used seem very forgiving. Features that could be added would be a colourblind modes, more font options, turning on/off animations for those who are more sensitive to movements.

I'm excited to keep playing and see what new gear I can get and upgrade! I think this offers a lot of variety to the game, and is easily expanded upon for future patches if the devs want to continue adding to it. There is so much being done well that it really feels like a game you can just dive into and play, and take your time getting good at.

At less than 10$ CAD on release, the price point is so fair to its player base. I hope a lot more people find and enjoy this game :)

5 user reviews right now is bloody criminal.

I do content design work for a decent lil' RLDB called Vault of the Void, and I'm immediately captivated by the level of control and planning this enables on top of just being super fun to play with a friend watching as you get all the fun of word games. With some very minor exceptions, this aspires to that same level of rewarding skillful planning above all else that I love. The skill cap on this game is ludicruous with how much control it gives you to engage in long-term planning across turns and redraws.

The ability to prep or keep tiles across turns, redraw infinitely (well, for health), and also the limitations (can't hold back a tile during mass redraws, can't re-order stuff prepped in attack/defense slots) lead to a really clean intertwining of the word-gamey-ness and actually just being a pretty nuanced and tightly designed RLDB.

And I'd be remiss to say it can't just be amusing. I finished off a Jester boss who scrambles your letters with DENY and then JOY. Come on, that's great.

This game definitely has its minor (albeit easily fixable) issues - you can't peek under popovers on the map to double check the upcoming route if you forgot if you have another shop upcoming you might wanna save money for, the inability to re-order letters directly slotted and having to undo -> replace instead ofj ust drag around if you accidentally realize you put something wrong...

But those still pale in comparison to the surprisingly convenient stuff in the game. It just lets you fiat declare "no, this is a legit word" if you want - my girlfriend and I were annoyed at not being allowed "stygian" or "amine" (but animes works, and is really strong too, imagine that) so you can just... open the menu and insist it's a word, and the game just says "please use responsibly and don't break balance." That's the kind of tabletop-house-rules convenience we can only dream of most of the time.

Play this. Don't DENY JOY.

This game saved my life.

I am 36.

My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and adopted our son together. They are now both 4 years old.

When we were going through our separation, I found myself lost and miserable. I was self destructive. I got so mad one day from everything spiraling out of my control that I punched some concrete in a moment of overwhelming emotion. That caused me to break my 5th metacarpal in my right hand... my working hand... my games hand.. the hand that I held and carried my children to bed with.. The hand I desperately needed to make sure I could continue to provide.

After learning of the severity of my self-inflicted damage, I was borderline suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man with no history of depression or anxiety. I have never had fits of rage, or been one to break down and cry, but I was in a low spot that just really buried me from being able to see the light on the other side.

Having nothing better to do, I searched for a game I could play, ONE HANDED while I recovered. I somehow stumbled upon this game and read some of the reviews. I decided that it had to be worth a shot... I must admit, I didn't beat the game, or play nearly as long as some of you. In fact, I may have only played this game a day or two.. With that being said, after doing so, I had a new found joy and hope for life. I was able to put behind me the pain and suffering that had been cast over me. I was able to experience other peoples joy and happiness. I was able to see the fruits of my "labor". I relaxed for 5 ♥♥♥♥ing minutes to this music long enough to realize that I was going to be okay.

After coming to that realization, I turned the game off, and I went back to work. It hurt my hand like hell but I was motivated. I stopped feeling so damn sorry for myself, and I became the father I needed to be in that moment, not the weak boy I was behaving as.

Today, I am close friend with my kids mother. We don't fight, or argue, or say hurtful things to each other. We are parents, and friends.

I now have 3 kids. My third child is, wait for it, ALSO 4 YEARS OLD. The woman I am with was going through a very similar situation at the time of my own separation, and we just stumbled in to each others life unexpectedly. We have been in a relationship for a year now, and are very happy together.

Moral of the story, you never know what life holds in store for you, and if I would have given up when all the odds were stacked against me, I wouldn't be where I am today. This silly little game helped me realize that.

Thank you.

This is great and creative!

It needs a popular streamer to review it.

My only request is to make it easier to edit the dictionary, probably by altering a text file.

Gotta be honest - I just don't have much fun with this. Every "random" starting deck has like 2-3 letters that are stupidly unusable in the early game, V, Q, Z, K, etc. Not enough common consonants at all.

But I think the problem might be in letter point distribution. If I need to protect against 5-9 damage per turn, while ALSO doing at least some damage to the foe, the letters just DO NOT have enough point power.

Balance is bad.

I've played a lot of anagramming words games, and unfortunately this one is near the bottom of the list. There are a lot of glaring issues: the wordlist is a lot smaller than it ought to be, especially given this game's primary gameplay is spelling. But it's combined with the controls being obtuse and the art unbefitting of a finished product. The gameplay idea (combining deckbuilding with spelling) is neat and I do think it can work well, but the way it was executed leaves a lot to be desired. Being good at anagramming and understanding how to use uncommon letters is supposed to be the way to get yourself out of tricky situations and to balance out the randomness while also rewarding the use of more difficult letters. Removing only some two- and three-letter words feels cheap, cheaper than just not allowing them altogether. Bookworm Adventures being the undisputed king of spelling video games means that comparisons to it are inevitable, and this feels less refined and less interested in catering to the skilled speller.

Unrelatedly, having the option to have the game anagram for you on by default seems very strange to me. Why play a spelling game with de-emphasized spelling?

Saw Aliensrock play this on YouTube and have to say it's a blast!

It's like Bookworm, but more in-depth with a bunch of fun mechanics that work very well together.

Good roguelike. Well crafted and fun. Very much worth the money. I'm not thrilled about the limited dictionary, but I can understand from a gameplay perspective why it was shortened.

One thing I want to say, though: if you plan to include Q's and Z's in the opening bag, it's a pretty big handicap when they're drawn. I can understand why you wouldn't want to include "QI" and "ZA" in your dictionary, but it doesn't seem right that you're excluding lots of basic Z and Q words like "QUAG" and "ZITI". It basically forces a trip to the blacksmith.

Good game overall though!

The deck building is clunky, you can get stuck with horrible letters. And i keep running into this situation where a tile is added to my attack board (which is usually something i can avoid, but not always) and then its just game over i just have to hit next next next until I die, there is literally nothing I can do when "FZ" is on my attack board, just game over. I love the idea, of the game, fix the deck builder, let us build our own decks, or get random options we can choose from at the beginning, and fix it to where there's at least a chance to recover from some situations "discard entire hand and both boards" I lose a turn but at least i can recover, I'm sure you can come up with something better, Love the idea, needs some fine tuning, feels more like an early release. I look forward to the update, and if it improves thumbs up from me.

Decided to give this games demo a shot, was pleasantly surprised, so I picked it up. While it is a rather basic spelling/deck building game it is a great time killer for a relaxing day off and worth the asking price of about $8. Good stuff!