{"id":2286,"edition":12,"categories":35,"features":0,"size":13289,"name":"Spell Spells","authors":[{"name":"Curtis Robinson","url":"https://curtastic.com","twitter":"curtastic","login":"curtastic","gh":1654160}],"description":"

This is a roguelike deckbuilder where you have to collect letters and then make the best word you can to defeat monsters. Like Slay the Spire, but with words!

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Story:\nYou are a young wizard 🧙‍♂️, just learning how to make spells. Your grandma 👵 has used her magic foresight to determine that an evil dragon 🐉 will arrive in 13 days to destroy our hometown. She gives you a book of letters so that you can learn to make spells. Until the dragon comes, you’ll need to go out every night to increase your skill by defeating monsters. Why don’t other help and why don’t the shopkeepers just give you everything free, if you’re going to save everyone’s lives? Because they don’t believe the dragon is real.

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Strategies:

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  1. Keep upgrading 1 letter, like a J. Get the Zipper Mouth 🤐 so that when you don’t get the J, just skip your turn. Remove lots of other letters. Get the 1st Place Medal 🥇 to 2x the first letter, since J is always the first letter.
    2. \n
  2. Long words. Get the Nerd Face 🤓 and Slot Machine 🎰 to 5x long words. Collect exclamation marks to make it easier to make long words. Also get 🆖 and try to add ING to words to make them long.
    3. \n
  3. Healing. Get the Syringe 💉 to damage enemies when you heal. Get the Stethoscope 🩺 and Bandage 🩹 to heal more. Collect letters that heal.
    4. \n
  4. Paperclips. Get the Linked Paperclips 🖇 and Filing Cabinet 🗄 to boost kept letters. Collect more letters with paperclips on them.
    5. \n
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Also play on curtastic.com and follow me on X @curtastic

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Credits:

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Code: Curtastic

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Game Design: Curtastic

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CSS art: Curtastic

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Victory Music: “Alta Trinita Beata” - Laudario di Cortona

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Game Over Music: “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond” - Unknown author

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Dictionary hosting: Thirdweb blockchain

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The word dictionary is stored on the Thirdweb blockchain (at ipfs://QmbL7RFBtKXr7KXEaAWA1sgLxHkUV2wtk2NEfNadTLibhF) I can add more English words if any are missing.

\n","source":"curtastic/SpellSpells","stars":0,"dc":"https://curtastic.com/spellspells","comments":[{"at":378816833,"author":"Andy Sommerville","login":"aksommerville","gh":1869768,"url":"http://aksommerville.com","text":"

Great production! I really had a blast playing this. Always knew that some day, man would find a way to combine Dragon Warrior and Scrabble :)

\n","games":["Economy of Motion"]},{"at":378889230,"author":"Cody Ebberson","login":"codyebberson","gh":749094,"url":"https://cody.ebberson.com","twitter":"codyebberson","text":"

Pretty polished experience! I like the dancing emoji effect. Clever twist on Scrabble.

\n","games":["Phantomicus"]},{"at":378926060,"author":"Cliff Earl","login":"Antix-Development","gh":17822130,"text":"

Crisp clean graphics.

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Who woulda thought spelling could be fun :D

\n","games":["Badluck Butter Chicken Goes To Outer Space","Badluck Butter Chicken Flies The Unfriendly Skies"]},{"at":378946465,"author":"Benjamin Boyd Austin","login":"bbaustin","gh":18755168,"text":"

Really fun game! Solid gameplay– I made it to level 9.

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Nice little details with celebration emoji animation, speaking the cast word, etc., too

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Just for some small suggestions:

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  1. In the level-up screen, I didn’t realize that the wand upgrades would show a description when clicked; I wasn’t buying them at first, because I wasn’t sure what they did
    2. \n
  2. Also in the level-up screen, I can’t see past the 4th (?) row of my bag of letters. I guess making the bag of letters scrollable would be cool?
    3. \n
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But overall really fun! I’ll definitely play some more later!

\n","games":["PicoBuddy"]},{"at":378959022,"author":"Zark Attack","login":"Noah-Zark-22","gh":181499250,"text":"

Unique, and surprisingly fun entry! My biggest complaint is with the main music track, but other than that, I really loved your refreshing game! I was able to make it to the 12th battle.

\n","games":["Primonumerophobia"]},{"at":378963355,"author":"Raptor Dev","login":"raptor0999","gh":74460924,"twitter":"Raptor_IndieDev","text":"

Very fun entry. I don’t normally like deck/card games but my friend convinced me to try it out.

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Lots of effort put into this one. Not sure how all of this fits into 13k, and it seems the dictionary is pulled externally unless you only use the honor system aka no checks in game.

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Really like the powerups and overall game loop. Took me a few rounds to realize the powerups stay once you buy them. I’m still a bit unclear on how a few things work so I may have to play once or twice more.

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I got to round 9 and got a run of bad letters with no vowels like twice in a row :(

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As far as audio, I didn’t see anyone else comment but I had an annoying beep at a regular interval until I muted everything. I thought at first there was some sort of timer I was missing.

\n","games":["Primonumerophobia"]},{"at":378976879,"author":"Ryan Tyler","login":"tyler6699","gh":50468,"url":"https://carelesslabs.co.uk","text":"

Gameplay was very good, nice word play going on with castings spell-ings! UI design was really good, fun to play.

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Nice music and FX on the emojis, which are all also used really well.

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Lots of nice features and upgrades available. Got a little lax on my spelling and got caught our cheating!

\n","games":["The Fear Factory"]},{"at":379056813,"author":"Jerome Lecomte","login":"herebefrogs","gh":1383818,"url":"herebefrogs.com","text":"

Interesting game. The difficulty increase is well dosed. The use of Emojis fits well within the general graphic style, and the taunting with speech synthesis a cute note.

\n","games":["SUP3RFR1GHT VR"]},{"at":379085230,"author":"Ben Fox","login":"BenjaminWFox","gh":9467046,"twitter":"benjaminwfox","text":"

It’s like wordle meets dragons, nicely done. I was disappointed that “sharted” was not a word 😬

\n","games":["SECTOR 13"]},{"typ":1,"at":379745427,"re":379085230,"author":"Curtis Robinson","login":"curtastic","gh":1654160,"url":"https://curtastic.com","twitter":"curtastic","text":"

Thanks! I actually thought about adding shart but I thought it was too slang like how hangry also isn’t in. But I should probably add them.

\n"},{"at":379186210,"author":"cykelkatalogen","login":"stefanforsberg","gh":358570,"text":"

Love it, very fun twist on scribble!

\n","games":["It adds up"]},{"at":379289114,"author":"kennyfully1988","login":"kennyfully1988","gh":181469182,"text":"

Goodness, the amount of work that was put into this was amazing! I can see myself recommending this to a couple of friends who are in to these kind of cool games! I have nothing but good things to think about this!

\n"},{"typ":1,"at":379745609,"re":379289114,"author":"Curtis Robinson","login":"curtastic","gh":1654160,"url":"https://curtastic.com","twitter":"curtastic","text":"

Aweseome, ya I spent all month on it without doing any jobs. I’m planning to make an app for it in November with a whole world map and stuff.

\n"},{"at":379323810,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"

A fun game. The speech was nice, as was the sound effects and background music.

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The emoji worked well for the graphics, and the dancing wizard was quite amusing

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Better suited to mobile given the portrait aspect ratio.

\n","games":["rollermaze"]},{"at":379391065,"author":"Stanisław Małolepszy","login":"stasm","gh":265818,"url":"https://piesku.com","twitter":"stas","text":"

It turns out Scrabble is very hard in English (for a non-native speaker). Thankfully, it didn’t really matter all that much thanks to the deck building mechanics that you designed: upgrading letters, trimming them out of the deck, and buying artifacts. It’s a lot of fun to build an “engine” to battle the opponents. I’ve not yet finished the game, but I’ll be coming back to it for sure.

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I really like how the game looks, too. The emojis work well but what really caught my attention were all the animations that explained what was going on. Great attention to detail and to the user experience! (As an author of a deckbuilder myself, I struggled with this aspect of the design in my game.)

\n","games":["Millennials"]},{"at":379409449,"author":"Richard Chung","login":"gregwoodsfrontier","gh":80141657,"text":"

A pretty neat spelling rogue-like game.\nThe game loop is pretty solid and I feel its potential too.\nThere are also a lot of upgrades and mechanics you fit in and I really like it.\nHaving a hint on the words will really help.

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Having some more audio effects and music would be nice.

\n","games":["Wands of Triskaidekai"]},{"at":379498441,"author":"Alexey Kalmakov","login":"rndD","gh":850302,"text":"

Scrabble roguelike!

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I played 2 times. My first started with bad items. But succeed on the second.

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My high score in Spell Spells: 🏆1756!\nBest word: ZOO! (🔥336)\nMy wand: 🅾💉🏁🤬🩺🩹📓

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Great production and idea. Very nice!

\n","games":["Data Warrior: 13kb limit"]},{"typ":1,"at":379745698,"re":379498441,"author":"Curtis Robinson","login":"curtastic","gh":1654160,"url":"https://curtastic.com","twitter":"curtastic","text":"

Ah strategy #3 I see, just keep healing. Thanks for tweeting it too!

\n"},{"at":379567294,"author":"Jonathan Vallet","login":"jonathan-vallet","gh":5329099,"text":"

Nice game, great idea to mix scrabble and rogue like!\nLoved the upgrades between rounds, it add a real strategic dimension to the game

\n","games":["13 Steps to Escape"]},{"at":380359907,"author":"Christoph Schansky","login":"DerBenniBanni","gh":5499976,"text":"

Powerup-scrabble-rouguelike. Cool idea!

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Nice UI, everything works as i supposed it would.

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nice game!

\n","games":["Aargh! Triskaideka attacks!"]},{"typ":2,"at":380452883,"author":"Ewa Mazur","login":"mypoint13k","gh":89944062,"url":"https://mypoint.pl","twitter":"mypoint13k","text":"

The playful mix of emojis and simple iconography gives Spell Spells a unique charm. The use of emojis for characters adds a casual, fun element that feels familiar and accessible to a broad audience. The interface is clean, which helps in focusing on the word-spelling gameplay. The task of battling a mosquito with words brings a clever twist that keeps players engaged, especially when combined with the lighthearted atmosphere.\nThe overall visual experience could benefit from more consistency in style. The combination of different visual elements like emojis, standard icons, and word tiles could be unified with more cohesive design choices. For example, introducing a common color palette or a matching art style for all elements would give the game a more polished feel. Additionally, animations could be added when casting spells or during interactions with enemies, to make the game feel more dynamic and rewarding.\nOverall, Spell Spells brings a fun and accessible experience, using familiar visual cues to create a comfortable and engaging environment. With some fine-tuning on the visual cohesion and additional animations, it has the potential to be even more immersive. The lighthearted tone and unique emoji-based design make it stand out, and it’s clear that a lot of creativity went into the concept. Keep up the great work!

\n"}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":81,"min":1,"score":2.53,"max":4.2},"innovation":{"rank":20,"min":1,"score":3.47,"max":4.47},"gameplay":{"rank":8,"min":1,"score":4,"max":4.29},"graphics":{"rank":72,"min":1,"score":3.3,"max":4.76},"audio":{"rank":50,"min":1,"score":3.1,"max":4.34},"controls":{"rank":13,"min":1,"score":3.77,"max":4.24},"primary":{"rank":28,"min":6,"score":20.17,"max":24.47},"label":"Overall"}}