Utterance

Utterance is a Lovecraftian Western roguelite deckbuilder where you forge words into weapons, build devastating combos, and sacrifice your sanity to survive.

Beneath the frontier, the coal miners dug too deep. They broke open the threshold to an eldritch realm of monsters, ones that did not invade with steel, lead, or flame, but with words—a calamity that came to be known as the Utterance.

Fight as the last of the Word-Slingers, one who has harnessed the realm’s power for themself, and venture through the cursed frontier. Battle the monsters in your way by building words from a deck of letter cards. Each word you speak deals damage, triggers card effects, exploits enemy weaknesses, and shapes the direction of your run. Winning isn’t about knowing the longest word, but choosing the right word at the right moment.

Before you can start your run, you must swear your Creed. Balance out buffs and debuffs of your choosing to shape how you fight.

Will you play it safe on the brink of madness, able to block every turn at the cost of your sanity? Keep something up your sleeve, drawing cards even when your deck runs dry, at the price of a curse? Or will you descend into utter madness, choosing to fight through every debuff you can endure?

The choice is yours.

Start each run with a simple deck of letters. Then, shape it into something stranger.

Add new letters, and remove weak ones. Forge letters together into stronger cards like TH, ER, or ING. Upgrade your cards, and give them powerful effects like block, duplicate, and draw.

Discover cards that bend the rules of your hand. Ouroboros lets one letter serve as both the beginning and end of a word. Doppelganger copies the letter before it, while Silent adds power without changing what you’ve spelled.

Use Crossroads to connect two words through a shared letter, or play Trailblazer, which returns to your hand once as the final letter of the word you just played. Combine these effects with forged letters and upgrades to build around powerful interactions—and find new ways to exploit enemy weaknesses.

Throughout your run, you will come face to face with various monsters, from corrupted townsfolk to twisted creatures, to eldritch abominations beyond comprehension. Each will change how you play.

Some poison your sanity. Some mute letters. Some steal cards from your deck, and others punish specific word patterns. No matter what crawls out of the dark to face you, you must be prepared.

Luckily, every monster has its weak spot.

From 3-letter words to words ending in S, to forged cards or words with exactly one vowel, each enemy you face will have a weakness that you must find and exploit. An enemy’s health bar is guarded by seals, and by adapting your deck and planning strategic attacks to hit these weaknesses, you can shatter right through these seals to bring them down.

Breaking a seal earns card rewards, turning an enemy’s weakness into an opportunity to strengthen your deck. Plan your attacks around the seals you can shatter and the cards that work together.

In this world, you not only have your health to worry about, but your sanity. And sometimes, it’s a worthy price.

Whenever you don’t want a card in your hand, or wish you had something else, Azathoth is there, happy to assist. Offer a card to receive a temporary replacement in your hand, without permanently removing the sacrificed card from your deck.

Each sacrifice pushes you closer to madness. As your sanity slips, penalties take hold during the fight. Your sanity resets after each battle, but until then, you must decide how much of your mind you’re willing to trade for a better hand.

On your journey, you will come to wield not just your own frontier speech, but Eldritch words from beyond the threshold.

Defeat bosses to earn powerful Eldritch cards. These words offer new tools for your deck, giving you more ways to fight the horrors waiting deeper in the frontier.

Plot your course across the corrupted land. Will you choose to take the shadowed street, or the barren road? Will you dare to enter the cursed saloon, the ruined chapel, or even the abandoned mine?

The frontier is yours to delve and discover as you wish. Whether those choices end in discovery or peril are left entirely up to chance in a world that’s different every time you enter.

So chart your path wisely, Word-Slinger. Fight the corruption, strengthen your deck, and brace your sanity for the horrors that await you.

Use your words wisely - they may be your last.