The dictionary is the deck
No card pool to memorise. You already know a hundred thousand plays, and the game reads what your words mean, not just which letters they spend.
A word roguelike from the world of Lexomancy · In development
Spellunker
The dark down there only opens for words. Bring good ones.
About the game
A rack of letters. A handful of plays. A wall of fog that wants a bigger number than you have got.
You are a Lexomancer, and down here language is the only tool that still works. Every chamber is a hex cavern sealed by a Ward: a score you must reach before your last placement lands. Thread a word across the stone and the fog peels back around it. Sometimes it shows you a vein of multiplier tiles. Sometimes a spring of mana. Sometimes a hole you will have to bridge with a longer word than you meant to spell. The preview is always honest. What is still under the fog is the gamble.
Break the Ward and you descend, and that is where the real game begins. Take the words you actually played, arrange them into a phrase, and the Forge listens to what that phrase means and hands you an Axiom: a standing rule that bends the whole run toward the way you like to spell. A long-word maximalist? Sesquipedalian pays for every ten-dollar word. Terse and lethal? Terse Wit. Willing to swear off the letter E and get rich for the vow? Silence of E is waiting for you.
Every Depth ends at a Guardian, and every Guardian rewrites the room. Every Depth wants a bigger number than the last. An engine that stops growing dies on the second floor. Yours will not. Probably.
One run
How a descent goes
A run is a stack of rooms, and every room asks the same four things of you.
Excavate
Spell words into the fog. Every placement lights the tiles around it and shows you what the room was hiding.
Break the Ward
Stack base and multiplier until the number on the door is smaller than yours.
Forge
Turn the words you played into an Axiom. Enchant a letter. Rest, and sharpen what you already own.
Descend
Deeper chambers, bigger Wards, and a Guardian waiting at the bottom of every floor.
The Ward does not care how clever you are. It cares how big your number is.
Carved above the first door
Features
What makes it sing
Fog is the loot
Every placement reveals more of the room. Previews are always exact. What is still buried is the gamble, and the gamble is the game.
Axioms forged from what you said
Your run's rules are written in your own vocabulary. Sesquipedalian, Terse Wit, Crescendo, Silence of E. Each one a different way to make the dark pay.
Enchant your alphabet
Gild your vowels. Char your consonants. Watch the mark spread across every tile of that letter, every room, for the rest of the run.
Guardians rewrite the room
Vowel tax. Heavy fog. An echoing dark that punishes repetition. The last chamber on every floor plays by different rules.
One sitting, all decisions
A run fits in an evening. A room is a few minutes of committing to a word and living with what it uncovers.
Media
Gallery
Captures land here as the game firms up. These are the four we're shooting first.
A room, half excavatedNot yet captured
The Ward breaksNot yet captured
The ForgeNot yet captured
A Guardian's roomNot yet captured
Specs
System requirements
Minimum
- OS
- Windows 10, macOS 12 or Ubuntu 20.04, 64-bit
- Processor
- Dual core 2.0 GHz
- Memory
- 4 GB RAM
- Graphics
- DX10 compatible or equivalent
- Storage
- 2 GB available
Recommended
- OS
- Windows 11, macOS 14 or Ubuntu 22.04, 64-bit
- Processor
- Quad core 3.0 GHz
- Memory
- 8 GB RAM
- Graphics
- DX11 compatible or equivalent
- Storage
- 2 GB available
Estimated while the game is in development, and subject to change. Windows first; Mac and Linux are planned.
The Ward is waiting
There's no wishlist yet. The press kit has everything we can share about the descent so far, and the world page has the rest.