How to Play

Enemies advance toward you with a word floating overhead. Type that word – your first keystroke locks the nearest enemy whose word starts with that letter, and each correct letter burns away in ember. Finish the word and the blow lands. There are no other controls: no clicking, no dodging, no items to trigger. Press Escape to release your current target and pick another.

A wrong letter makes the word bleed: your streak dies and your hands are locked out for a fraction of a second while the enemies keep walking. Longer words hit harder – a nine-letter word deals more than twice the damage of a four-letter one – so choosing which word to type is a real decision, not just reflex.

Every word finished without a typo builds Momentum, multiplying your damage up to 2.5×. One typo resets it to nothing – the whole skill of the game lives in that tension. Meanwhile Focus slows every enemy while you're mid-word, so skilled players chain words back-to-back and keep the whole field crawling. Flawless words can also crit for double damage.

An enemy that touches you lands its hit and dissipates – watch your HP bar, not just the words. Tougher enemies (skeletons, ghouls, brutes) survive a single word and draw a fresh one; their HP bar shows how much is left. Run out of HP anywhere and the run is over. Permadeath, always.

A run is three acts, each a branching map of a dozen floors: battles, elites carrying two-word phrases, shops, campfires, treasure caches, and shrines that challenge you to transcribe a passage against a burning candle. Kills pay gold and XP; level-ups offer a choice of permanent stats; relics change the rules of typing itself. Act 1 is the Crypt. Act 2, the Drowned Athenaeum, favors long literary words and blots out letters with ink. Act 3, the Lexivore's Maw, stacks mutations on every battle. Each act ends in a boss that will make you regret your accuracy.

Four classes change the contract: the Scribe is balanced; the Berserker hits 40% harder but typos cut him; the Duelist faces only two foes at a time, faster; the Plague Doctor poisons with every letter typed but lands softer finishing blows. Dying is never wasted: every run banks Ink, spent between runs on classes, boons, and starting relics. See the full compendium for every class, enemy, and relic.

Once per day, the whole world gets the same dungeon: same map, same enemies, same shops. One attempt, standardized loadout, ranked on the daily leaderboard. Every submitted run is verified by replaying your actual keystrokes on the server – scores can't be forged, only typed.