Words for Evil Reviews

Words for Evil is like if Scrabble and a fantasy RPG had a baby, and that baby drank way too much coffee. It mostly does what it promises, and the graphics are nice enough to make you think you’re playing a retro classic… until you remember you're just trying to spell “cat” under pressure. The RPG elements? Well, let’s just say they’re as minimal as my gym attendance. You’ll find yourself battling enemies and leveling up, but don’t expect an epic quest or a deep narrative—it's more like a wordy scavenger hunt gone rogue. The gameplay is very repetitive, but if you fall into the game loop, be prepared to lose hours of your life that no one is giving you back. At some point, I just decided to throw in the towel and return to games with actual stories—like, you know, anything with a plot. In the end, the pixel art is delightful, but it’s not enough to save the day. So if you’re ready for a wordy adventure that might just turn your brain into scrambled eggs, dive in. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you!

In WORDS OF EVIL, the aim is to lead a party of up to 3 adventurers through various lands while defeating deadly creatures, finding treasure, and avoiding traps. Unlike most standard RPG games, however, here the arena is not a sprawling dungeon but a grid of 35 squares each representing a random letter of the alphabet! After selecting an initial party, the characters go on a "run" across the landscape where random encounters could lead to shrines for statistic improvement, treasure chests, vicious traps, equipment shops to buy new items, or monsters. These events are randomised so no two journeys will ever be the same! Meeting a monster invokes a battle to the death. Here the letter grid will appear. Enemies are "hit" by creating words from selected letter tiles with those adjacent to it - including diagonally - and the longer the word then the more damage that will be inflicted to the enemy health bar. Monsters hit back at certain periods, gradually reducing health from our characters, with stronger foes attacking much more frequently. Once words are created the tiles disappear and new ones take their place, ensuring there are always 35 letters in play. When an enemy is killed we receive gold and experience, then immediately travel onwards to the next encounter. Gold may be spent at any of the shops we find along the way while experience allows us to level up our characters once enough is gained. Sometimes we encounter traps and here we are presented with an anagram of several letter tiles in which to create a single word. Successfully using every letter shall disarm the trap but smaller words will result in health damage to our characters. Likewise, chests have a couple of tile rows and by combining the letters in sequence to spell a word will open it and distribute a reward. Both the trap and chest challenges are timed. Each character has 3 battle abilities which are unlocked by questing. These are Basic, Strong and Ultra, and come into play depending on how many tiles are used to form words. Ultra attacks obviously do massive amounts of damage to a monster while the others do considerably less. Various tiles are colour coded for additional bonuses, too. If a character is defeated in battle they are given a "last chance" of survival with a challenge by solving a 7 letter anagram. Doing so returns them to the fight with full health. Completing smaller words may increase half their health, but tiny words usually result in the character being killed, although the enemy will suffer a little damage as well. Fortunately fallen heroes are available for the next "run" with all their skills and experience level still intact. Therefore some grind is inevitable to produce veteran adventurers who will be able to take on the strongest creatures in the game. We are able to unlock 19 heroes, from sword masters and archers to the likes of snowmen and even Santa Claus! There are 84 different monsters to face throughout 7 lands of increasing difficulty. No matter which land we choose or monster we fight, though, each "run" follows the same basic formula. I quite enjoy WORDS OF EVIL as it offers a new approach to the standard RPG genre. It obviously helps if we like word games, too! There are sadly no Achievements but a total of 6 Trading Cards to collect. A slight downside is that there is no full screen mode available and thus the game is played within a window, ensuring the graphics are quite small (but still functionable) and this does not distract too much from the overall game. Indeed, it can be both fast and exciting within its own limited framework structure. Anybody wanting something a little different should certainly give it a try!

Uncomfortably tiny window on 4k monitors that can't be adjusted. No fullscreen mode either. This game was available from 2014. The developer had released another game in 2023, so there is no excuse as to why the issue with this title has not been resolved within those 9 years. I felt it necessary to post this as a warning as the game is still up for sale.

Great concept with poor execution - it's simply too repetitive.

Words for Evil is stylish, fun, and never gets old. I highly recommend it!

A great concept with certain fun for the word game wilful, though naturally quite repetitive.