Tomb of the Bloodletter

TLDR: It's a good game! I highly recommend it. It is capable of being repetitive, but overall is a unique, fun take on the word-making genre of games, and I have a lot of belief in it POSITIVES: I think that Tomb of the Bloodletter is an interesting take on the spelling genre, different than most word games. Rather than trying to make the best word from the small number of letters you were dealt, the player always has access to ALL the letters on the keyboard (save for a few enemy debuffs). You could spell the exact same word over and over if you'd like. HOWEVER, the caveat to that is that your ability to defend, attack, and heal are all tied to different letters. You could spell "Assassinate," but if you don't have spells on "A" or "S" or any of the other letters, it doesn't matter. The number of letters that contain spells, the abilities within the game, is determined by your "Knowledge" stat. This can be raised and lowered throughout the game. 26 Knowledge? Spells on every letter. 5 Knowledge? Spells on five letters. Once a letter with a spell is used within a word, that spell disappears, and a new spell is applied to a different letter. The long and short of it is that the length or complexity of the word doesn't matter: All that matters is the letters the word contains. It's a very refreshing take, sometimes incentivizing the use of smaller words, against the natural instinct to use the biggest word you can think of. Every round, you get to choose a new spell, as well as a disadvantage you will have the next battle. Some of these spells will do self-damage. Self-damage, oddly enough, is not always bad. Every time you damage yourself, your Fury Meter rises, which increases the base damages of the spells in that battle. Think Razor Blade from The Binding of Isaac, except activations are purely dependent on your ability to think of words. It took me a while to get used to this. My brain always tells me that having less health is bad. But a build that focuses on fury can quickly become very powerful. I didn't like this system when I first started, but I now recognize that it is a potentially very powerful tool, if handled correctly. I like the system of self damage. While it can simply discourage the use of some letters in your words, it also introduces a fascinating resource management aspect to the game. There are a good amount of playable characters, and they each have their own unique playstyle that can add a fun amount of challenge to a run. These gimmicks force you to approach the game in entirely different ways, challenging the mind, NEGATIVES: Of course, not all aspects of a game can be good. Tomb of the Bloodletter is no exception to that rule. Whilst there are unique enemies that each have their own quirks and patterns, the patterns aren't particularly complex. They'll have unique gimmicks, applying unique debuffs or requiring the player to kill them in a specific way. However, there is a fairly low enemy variety in the game, and several enemies can feel quite similar to one another. The enemy variety isn't low enough to make the game feel completely samey, but it definitely hurts how many runs you can play in any one sitting. It makes it a game you want to pick up and put down intermittently, rather than sit down and grind. The spells are much the same as the enemies. The game is fun, the letters you'll have to use are randomized, but the spells you use... there are only so many, and you'll wind up with a fair few in the course of a run. The spells, much like the enemies, don't make the game blasé and unbearable. They just can feel repetitive at times. Finally, the debuffs... this is a bit of a nitpick. I just wish that in the cases where you can't play a word, such as impotence, the game would remind you as to WHY you cannot play that word. Even if the debuff icon just shook or flashed or something. This is an incredibly small nitpick, it doesn't change how I'd rate the game, but it'd be nice QOL…

While this game, turns out, wasn't for me, I can't in good faith call it bad. It's fun! It's fun and perhaps even a good exercise in spelling. If you like or think you'd like typing games, and don't mind rogue-likes, then I think you'd really enjoy this one.

This is a really fun game and I want to recommend it to my friends to buy, but after 5 hours of playtime, the game won't open. I have no other programs running, I've uninstalled/reinstalled, cleared my caches and verified the game files to no avail. I hope I'll be able to continue playing this.