Words of Yendor

Great game if you like word games like Scrabble, Bogle, Hangman, etc. without the pressure of a time limit. The later levels get quite difficult.

A Unique Fusion of RPG and Word Puzzles - A Must-Try Adventure! This is an absolute gem that seamlessly combines the thrill of RPG elements with the intellectual challenge of word puzzles, creating a gaming experience unlike any other I have seen before. This innovative fusion of genres brings a refreshing twist to the gaming landscape, and raising quickly to the list of indie games that keeps me around in PC gaming :) The gameplay revolves around engaging word challenges where players must construct X letter words from a set of letters or face hangman-style trials. This unique approach adds a layer of strategy and linguistic skill to traditional RPG mechanics. The battles are not just about brute strength, but also about mental agility, making each encounter a satisfying blend of wit and strategy. One of the standout features of "Word of Yendor" is the way victories reward players with perks, gold, and access to new locations. The progression system is intricately tied to the player's mastery of word puzzles, creating a sense of accomplishment with every successful battle. The game effectively incentivizes players to improve their word-building skills, making it a delightful journey of both character growth and linguistic prowess. The visuals and sound design complement the game's theme perfectly, creating an immersive world where players can explore diverse locations and encounter unique opponents. The attention to detail in the graphics adds to the overall charm of the game, making it visually appealing and engaging. Highly recommended for those seeking a fusion of puzzle-solving, exploration, and character progression in a single, cohesive package.

TLDR: If you like words games, I highly recommend the game. It's well done and fun. Words of Yendor - is a dungeon crawler with word games. The emphasis is on words, even though there are slay-the-spire-esque mechanics like visiting events, healing, shops, equipping artifacts, using consumables etc. However, the way it's all done is very unique. You begin with character creation: there are plenty of visual options for avatar, which is a nice touch. Then you choose one of several presets, which would allocate you a certain amount of consumables and artifacts, as well as define your starting dueling and scouting stats. Actually, even prior to that, you choose the length of a run (from 3 to 12) You go through a "dungeon" with several paths to choose, however only the first one is known, the other 1 or 2 are hidden and in order to find out the nature of these encounters, you need to scout them first. This is the first mini-game which consists of a collection of letters thrown into a grid and you need to construct a word by connecting letters horizontally or vertically. AI does that too (usually it's word is covered), then the word is revealed and if your scores higher, you succeed in scouting as well as receive some minor rewards. Then you have a classic hangman game. You get these from encounters and technically can complete a run without ever visiting one. The cool part is that it entails not only guessing singular words, but sometimes also whole parts of known poems and literary works. Nice! Another common type of encounter is a duel. There you are given letters to form words: the "harder" the letter, the higher is your score. Then you both deal damage to each other depending on the score. This was the most fun part of the game for me: you are basically constrained only by your vocabulary and coming up with the longest and strongest word is so enjoyable :) The whole run is segregated into different parts (towns), with a duel at the end of each one. Once you win the duel, you proceed to a showdown. Mystery words are written in a grid and the letters are moved around so you can't figure out right away what the words are. Each letter is colored depending on whether it's right where it should be, is in the right row OR column, or neither of those. You swap two letters at a time to arrange all the letters in proper spots, the limitations being the amount of experience and clues you have (which you get for winning scouting, duels or from encounters). Once those are depleted, you start losing health. Then - to the next town, with another duel at the end and another showdown, however the words you guessed in previous showdowns are already known, with a couple more added on top. Rinse and repeat, until you find all the words at showdown events - and this is the length of the run you choose at the start: from 3 words to 12. Might sound convoluted, but you get the grasp of things pretty quickly. However, this is not all: the game is very flavorful for "just" a word game: each encounter is accompanied with a short story, describing the happenings. And that is not all, I won't reveal everything but trust me: the developer has put quite some work in world building and this enhanced the experience quite a bit. Personally, I just love word games, but good flavor goes a long way. Despite that, it's not THAT deep and after a few runs I stopped reading most of things simply because I've already read all there is to it. One of the mechanics of the game is Bierce words: a predetermined list of words, which scores in duels are doubled. You don't know these words at the beginning and discovering new ones was a fun experience. These words are not random: they are separated into two lists according to their flavor and using any of these words in combat increases your allegiance score with one of two fractions, which might give you benefits in special events. However, the downside is that then you are being chased by an assassin: a hard duel, where an opponent will bombard you with strong words (sometimes bierce ones too). The game is filled with these little mechanics and interactions - enjoyed it a lot. From technical standpoint I had no complaints, which was a very pleasant surprise. Looking through reviews of various tabletop and word games on steam I frequently found that oftentimes the final product was very rough: things not working, interface being unintuitive, bugs etc. Don't know what it is about these types of games, that leads to such result. Maybe my sample was biased and I'm completely off on that. Well, Words of Yendor was a very smooth experience. Encountered zero bugs, the graphics is soft and pleasing to the eye, the music is appropriate and unobtrusive. Never was softlocked: all the puzzles were solvable. The only minor point is I think the artifacts in inventory should be graphically represented as icons, probably somewhere on top of screen similar to slay the spire. Even though you don't often carry many, I often forget which ones I have and for that you need to select your inventory and then click in the dropdown menu of a specific artifact, because of course you forget what they do at the beginning. You do have consumables visually represented as various gadgets, potions and such on the left of the screen and I think this helps with gameplay a lot: simply having that info in front of your eyes. This might be unnecessary, because artifacts do not carry as big of a role as in other dungeon crawlers, but still. As a full-achievements enjoyer, getting all achievements was natural and didn't take too much extra time on top of main gameplay. Completing each run length from 3 to 12 took about 20 hours. The other 5 I spent chasing the remaining few achievements and even though some of them include rng, due to the amount of places during a run where you can roll for them being relatively high, I didn't feel any frustration in getting those. The 100% process was organic and also made me play a bit more, which is nice since I enjoyed the game quite a lot. Also, I didn't know how to get the last three achievements, so I asked in the forums and the dev has provided a very detailed response, which helped me substantially: got two of the three right away during my first run after the response=) Words of Yendor is very well done for what it aims to do and I would certainly recommend it to any fan of word games. I certainly look forward to other games from the developer. Thank you and good luck ;)

What a lovely game. I mean, Victorian word game roguelike? Yes please. First off, it's very well-designed, in all ways. Visually, it looks exactly like it's supposed to, and it always feels very smooth and polished. The character customization is way more sophisticated than I was expecting, and there's also a randomize feature if you don't care about customizing your character. The gameplay is also fantastic. There are several different types of word games depending on the encounter type, with equipabales or consumables that can give you advantages. Obviously, there's an element of luck just in terms of what words and letters you're getting, and some encounters are unavoidable (so if you get an unavoidable assassin, it's generally either use a flashbang or RIP). But that's just part of the challenge. On your first playthrough, the game might feel a little overwhelming. There are so many mechanics being thrown at you, and it takes a playthrough or two to get used to it, but the game becomes pretty intuitive after that. Showdowns feel impossible at first but are actually pretty manageable once you get the hang of them. After you beat all the different word lengths, you can try to get the remaining achievements, which are surprisingly difficult. Mob Justice is nearly impossible to get without deliberate effort. But anyway, the game is fun, so I enjoyed playing it many, many times.

This is effortlessly one of the strangest games I have played. There is lore to the game and some story elements, but nothing is clear, from the player character's motivation to the way the fictional world works (including why and how some words have powers). The procedural storytelling doesn't offer much of a coherent narrative, either. There are lots of items, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself but can be confusing, and lots of instructions that are too long to read and difficult to follow. That said, I do think it's an enjoyable game -- just unnecessarily convoluted and lacking in terms of narrative. Reframing Monopoly as a turn-based battle works well, as do most of the other mini-games (e.g., a version of Hangman). The only part I don't enjoy at all is the Wordle-esque puzzle that follows after each boss fight: you are solving multiple words at once, can only move the letters by swapping them around, and lose 1 HP each turn. This is just too punishing! I wish the developer would either make the letters swappable between any two points (it's tedious otherwise) or not penalize the player each turn. To sum up, if you're looking for a word game that isn't _just_ a word game, this can be it. Tentatively recommended.

The game exceeded my expectations with its ingenious combination of word puzzles and rogue-like elements, set in a nicely crafted steampunk universe. The game's difficulty is tuned to offer a satisfying challenge, and the ability to add your own words to the dictionary is a nice touch as well. It's an engaging and rewarding experience for anyone looking for a word game that goes beyond the ordinary.

You investigate a mystery and, to make progress, you solve puzzles and make choices, like getting equipment, healing your wounds, stealing from museums or getting frightened by ghosts. Duels are pretty fun, and if you like Wordle, you won't have much trouble figuring out what to do at the end of each city you visit. Replayability is also great.

I want to like this, because I love word games and puzzle games and roguelite games. But I didn't. It's hard to put my finger on why. The word game part felt pretty basic and unsatisfying--the words are very basic words and it doesn't really feel like playing with words and more like navigating a kind of uninspiring puzzle where the tiles are letters. Maybe trying to jam all these aspects together is a bit ambitious. I'd like to see this idea developed, but as of now I will have to not recommend (sorry!) just based on my experience of it. I don't really have any suggestions to make it better. I wonder if the basic concept is flawed. I know this isn't terribly helpful. And this is a small indie developer so I know this review matters. I appreciate the thought and craftsmanship that went into the game. I wish I didn't have to make a binary decision here, but if I were recommending it to myself, knowing how I felt about playing it, I would have to tell myself to skip it. Note: if you are interested in this game TRY THE DEMO. If I had tried it, I would have known it didn't click for me and would not have bought the game. I think a lot of people might like it, though, and the demo will show you what it's like. If you like the elements here, give the demo a try. Like I said, it's not badly made, it just didn't click as fun for me. For the dev: while doing the final puzzle of a round, finding a word of yendor, I found a bug: if you spell a word right, but it's not in the "correct" horizontal position, it will not register as correct. This seemed arbitrary and unfair.