Ashword: Word Roguelike

Spell a word and it strikes. Verbs swing a sword, adjectives fly as arrows, nouns hit as the Word, and longer words hit harder.

The province lies sealed behind a cordon. A plague of ash eats words, and people who lose their words lose their faces: they turn into creatures and forget their own names. You are Vershen, and your weapon is the word.

HOW A FIGHT WORKS • Spell a word on the keyboard and it strikes. Longer words hit harder. • Start with the gold key. Green keys are the creature's weakness, red keys are its guard, and the orange key is a crit. • Nouns strike as the Word, verbs as a sword, adjectives as an arrow. Every creature has its own temper: one shrugs off the sword, another fears the arrow, a third asks riddles. • Creatures hit back after every strike, and your health carries through the whole run.

THE RUN • Every run is new: versts of road, district guardians, crossroads, and a district lord at the end. • Runes and scrolls from the loot change the rules of battle, so each run builds its own set. • After a win you choose whether to go deeper or carry your wax back to camp. If you die, the wax stays on the verst where you fell.

THE CAMP • Rebuild the camp at the cordon: the Healer's Hut, the Bead House, the Bindery and the Readers' Scriptorium. • Lead lost souls out of the province. They settle in the camp and help on your next run. • Defeat a creature three times and its freed soul walks beside you through the first verst of a run.

IN THE GAME • Three districts, nine places, and more than thirty creatures and people who lost their faces. • The Raven teaches the basics in a couple of fights. • Four run modes, from Gentle to Deadly. • English and Russian, each with its own dictionary. Plays offline, with no sign-up and no purchases.