Great concept, long ways to go.
The word game itself has lots of problems. You might recognize this core mechanic from Wordscapes, which I've played a bunch. Compared to Wordscapes, there are some problems. I find it unexpected to include proper nouns like "Ben", or obscure words like "et". I am pretty sure that Wordscapes excludes all two-letter words, which is wise because they get tedious very quickly (I see a lots of "et's" in my future should I continue playing). Wordscapes also has a two-tiered dictionary where obscure words are just a bonus rather than required. I recommend adopting all of these changes.
The biggest difference, though, is that every time you get a word, it plays a long, bright, flashy attack animation, which covers the full screen and prevents you from doing anything else. This slows the pace of the game a lot, and I find it grating on the eyes due to the spinning motion. This is probably the main factor in why I haven't played more, because the early stages are very easy but still take a fair bit of time.
The UI is troubled, at least on desktop, where lots of stuff overlaps and can't be clearly seen, especially the blanks that tell you the expected words and their lengths, but also it's unclear what just about every button does, and menus are easy to get lost in. The sound design has a long ways to go; I ended up playing with sound off.
I really don't understand the capture mechanic at all. It just tells you the sequence to input? But then it just fails sometimes anyways? I also kept forgetting to capture at the end of the stage for a while.
So far as I've noticed, you don't have to engage with the RPG mechanics at all if you're good enough at the word game, which seems odd to me. I was excited for what I hoped would be "Puzzle Quest-like" progression and mixing and matching of tools, but I haven't had any reason to engage with it. There also doesn't seem to be a way to view what the creatures or ability buttons do, and collecting them doesn't appear to "add up" to anything like a zoo or diorama, or even unlocks that I can tell. Overall there's also significantly less RPG presence than I expected, which I suppose makes sense since each combat is simply one word puzzle, and completing it is the only win condition that makes sense. I don't expect everyone to want the same things as me, but I would probably make some major mechanical change such as increasing the letter count per puzzle, but not require full completion to win (using stats instead, perhaps), or even changing the letters up regularly so you have to keep adapting to new situations. I was even expecting a timer mechanic where the enemy would take a turn every so many seconds and attack you (since Wordscapes rewards you a lot for playing fast), but enemy actions only seem to happen when you make a bad input, and don't seem to cause any puzzle interference, just life damage.
Going into the game, I was really hoping for "Wordscapes + Puzzle Quest" and I didn't end up enjoying either aspect particularly well. At least there are no ads. I hope its continued development in Early Access can improve on the things that turned me away.
