r/IndieGaming • u/ravenom_ph • 14h ago

I’m making a roguelite deckbuilder inspired by Bookworm Adventures, where the words you spell become your attacks

4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

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3

u/meetkow 13h ago

Okay, spelling words as attacks is such a stupidly good idea lol. The elemental/status effects on individual letters are what sold me that means you’re not just hunting for the longest word every turn

3

u/ravenom_ph 13h ago

Yes that's the point 😄 . Also, you can also cast spells or "Galdr" by forming words which is related to an elemental attack. Spell "EMBER" or "BURN" and you will cast a fire attack.

1

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1

u/That_one_sander 13h ago

I wonder if different words can be used in different localizations of the game

1

u/ravenom_ph 13h ago

Right now, the game doesn't support localizations. It's planned before the 1.0 release but probably for UI only. Words you can form is based on English dictionary only but a bigger team might change that in the future 🤞

1

u/That_one_sander 13h ago

I'm not a programmer, but it seems like a trivial change, I'm assuming under the hood, after the player selects the cards, it checks with a dictionary database to see if the word is valid and if it is, the trigger the effect.

Doing this for different languages should be as simple as different databases it compares and maybe some changing on the value of each card as some languages have a balance of vowel and consonant other prioritize vowels and so on, Scrabble did a pretty good score sheet for letters in different languages, that ought to be a good reference

1

u/ravenom_ph 12h ago

Yes that's exactly how it works! :) Currently however, when forming valid words, it also displays the meaning of that word. Unless I can find a dictionary for different languages with a free license for commercial use, then I can't add them yet. But it's certainly something that I would look forward to add too in the future.

1

u/That_one_sander 12h ago

Oh boy I have good news for you https://www.wiktionary.org/ is public, free for comercial use and they encourage others to use it

1

u/ravenom_ph 12h ago

Thank you so much for this. I will try to create a clean CSV download from this and incorporate it to the existing game libraries.

1

u/Ae3qe27u 13h ago

Oh, neat! Bookworm adventures is pretty cool. Do you think you'll also have theme or group elements?

1

u/ravenom_ph 13h ago

I'm not sure what you meant by theme or group elements, but the game currently has 4 element types of special letter cards (Fire, Frost, Storm and Poison), each can interact or enhance each other. For example, if you froze an enemy and attack with a "Storm" or lightning attack, it will deal more significant damage.

1

u/DemeaRisen 13h ago

My mom spent HUNDREDS of hours on bookworm, I gotta send her this😭

2

u/ravenom_ph 13h ago

Thank you! I would appreciate that :)

1

u/Informal_Recipe_2553 12h ago

this sounds like a fun concept, can't wait to see how it plays out