Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Sep 30, 2022

  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!
• gamedeal user

  Oct 1, 2022

  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 :)
• gamedeal user

  Oct 1, 2022

  If Bookworm Adventures was a deckbuilder.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 2, 2022

  Scrabble the Spire, nuff said <3 10/10
• gamedeal user

  Oct 2, 2022

  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.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 6, 2022

  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.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 8, 2022

  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.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 8, 2022

  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?
• gamedeal user

  Oct 10, 2022

  Wife approved
• gamedeal user

  Oct 11, 2022

  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!