Among minor, user experience-related improvements, like showing a reminder if you forget to use teleport-swaps in Showdowns, the version 1.3 of Words of Yendor introduces a new variation to hangman puzzles, encountered at Suspicious Accidents.

Starting from the 4th settlements, instead of trying to guess just a single word, an almost randomly selected verse from a 19th century poem will have to be solved. But, be careful, in these puzzles a tier-1 letter (the most common letters in English words) can only be submitted as guess after making 2 successful guesses with a higher tier letter.

For example, in a 4th, 5th, or 6th settlement a Suspicious Accident might start like this:


Notice while you can see the word distributions, none of the letters are revealed at the start and you only have 3 opportunities for a miss before your health suffers. The purple lock icons indicate that tier-1 letters are not available at the moment, but you'll also get a reminder as tooltips.


Here, after successfully submitting H and L, a single opportunity to submit a tier-1 letter was unlocked, and the choice of E has revealed some useful hints.


Finally, the verse was successfully solved, and the poem's title and author were also shown.

Since there are more than 3200+ verses in the game's database, you'll encounter some inspiring, poignant, or thought-provoking lines, and in every case, the solution will reveal the poem's title and author.

I hope you'll enjoy this variation in these puzzles.

Cheers,
Sandor

This small update corrects the cause of a crash, happening at Ambush after making a daring escape using a Flashbang.

I'm happy to announce the release of version 1.2 of Words of Yendor.

This free, automatic update features:

• New encounter: "Hello, Dear Creature Compassion from unexpected, unassuming sources."
  
• New equipable: "Surveyor Goggle" Predicting scouting failure consequences for the entire settlement.
  
• Tactical scouting: Some tiles now provide extra effects to make scouting more interesting.
  
• Enhanced consistency:
  • Lighting a candle in a Shrine guarantees the removal of all curses. Previously, each curse was evaluated separately.
    
  • All dowsing-related equipables now explicitly report when they have been activated. Previously, some encounters silently applied these bonuses.
    
  • Rewards for Suspicious Accident are now calculated with reduced reliance on chance.
• UX improvement:
  • Added a button in Word Log that opens the Wiktionary web page for the selected word.
    
  • Scouted encounters are now indicated with directional arrows to make the heros location more prominent.
• Minor visual adjustments.
  
• Minor game balance-related adjustments.

I'm happy to announce the v1.2 version of Words of Yendor, scheduled to be released in February.

This free, automatic update features:

• New encounter: "Hello, Dear Creature Compassion from unexpected, unassuming sources."
  
• New equipable: "Surveyor Goggle" Predicting scouting failure consequences for the entire settlement.
  
• Tactical scouting: Some tiles now provide extra effects to make scouting more interesting.
  
• Enhanced consistency:
  • Lighting a candle in a Shrine guarantees the removal of all curses. Previously, each curse was evaluated separately.
    
  • All dowsing-related equipables now explicitly report when they have been activated. Previously, some encounters silently applied these bonuses.
    
  • Rewards for Suspicious Accident are now calculated with reduced reliance on chance.
• UX improvement:
  • Added a button in Word Log that opens the Wiktionary web page for the selected word.
    
  • Scouted encounters are now indicated with directional arrows to make the heros location more prominent.
• Minor visual adjustments.
  
• Minor game balance-related adjustments.

This small update corrects a rare bug that has caused a crash when an opponent was defeated in the very first turn using a consumable like Focused Strike, even before composing a word.

Another bug has been squished that allowed the unlimited accumulation of Experience and Clues points by exiting and reloading the game just after a successful resolution of a Suspicious Accident.

Behold, one more:

From now on, if the game crashes, a notification will appear on the Main Menu, letting the player decide if they wish to assist the correction of the problem by sending the archived game state file to me, the developer, as an email attachment. The notification will look like this:


Of course, sending bug reports is never obligatory, yet I believe this new error handling feature helps keeping Words of Yendor to remain a reliable source of entertainment and an enjoyable experience.

The v1.1 update implements game balance adjustments and generic improvements for the user experience.

• Showdowns are now (optionally) less cruel. As you know, in this puzzle, each letter swap costs some of your accumulated Experience and Clues points. Once any of these runs out, the price for each swap is the loss of 1 Health. Since this update, while your Health is below the half of its maximum, you'll also receive a teleport-swap charge to give you an extra chance to complete these puzzles.
  
• Scouting: An icon reminds you of the risk (or the lack of it) of failure in Scouting puzzles. This is the same icon you see in the top left corner of the encounter cards.
  
• Assassins: They are still quite deadly, but their defense has been reduced.
  
• Screensaves (shortcut: F11) filenames now contain the length of the Word along with the adventure seed; the screensaves can be found in the data directory, accessible from the Main Menu's top left corner.
  
• Various bug fixes and adjustments for minor visual glitches.
  

Some players have shared their love for Words of Yendor, but some found the Showdown puzzles too hard. Indeed, balancing a game is an art, as players sometimes seek a tough challenge, but sometimes they just want to relax.

I'm proudly announcing a solution: a new feature has been activated to make Showdowns more approachable. As you know, when a Showdown proves too tough and you run out of Experience and Clues points for swaps, the adventurer will have to pay 1 Health per swap instead. Thanks to the new feature, when your Health drops below half of its Maximum, you'll receive a teleport-swap charge as a compensation for each such Health loss. As a reminder, a teleport-swap allows you to swap any two letters on the board, so they don't have to be next to each other.

I'd appreciate your feedback on this game-altering patch before I publish the updated game for everyone.

To ensure this change aligns with your preferences, a beta branch have been created, so you can check out the revamped Showdown. You can now choose which version you wish to play on Steam: the original version or the beta version with the altered Showdown. You can switch between the versions at any time, but please note that saved games are version-specific.

To switch between versions, follow these steps:

• Open the Steam desktop application.
  
• Go to "Library."
  
• In the left sidebar, find "Words of Yendor" and right-click.
  
• Select "Properties."
  
• Choose "Betas" from the left sidebar.
  
• Select "beta - Testing the next version" from the "Beta Participation" dropdown.
  
• Steam will automatically download and switch to the v1.1 build.
  
• You can switch back to the main public version (v1.0) by selecting "None" in the "Beta Participation" dropdown.
  
• You can check the version number on the Credits screen.

This small update corrects a game crashing bug that has rarely occurred after solving a Showdown puzzle.

The crash has only happened if your Toolbelt was completely empty (so you have used, sold or dropped all your consumables), and a specific type of reward was offered in the Dark Chamber.

I had a game idea in 2016 about dueling with words against the computer.

After countless experiments and prototypes, in 2020 I started working on the final version of Words of Yendor.

And now it's available for everyone, so as a celebration of this accomplishment the game can be purchased with a 15% discount for a limited time.

Thanks to player suggestions, this update introduces a small but meaningful change that improves the gameplay experience for everyone.

Each encounter card has an icon in the top left corner that indicates what happens if scouting that encounter fails. Either there is no negative consequence, or the encounter card becomes inaccessible at that location, or, it might happen that the encounter automatically activates, which can be dangerous.

Until now, these icons were only visible for encounters that have already been scouted. But with this update, these icons are always visible:



So, it's no longer a gamble to decide if there is a serious risk to scouting, or the worst that can happen is that you don't get more Clues or maybe miss out on an extra encounter option. However, if you already have a revealed encounter that looks acceptable, and you are facing an unscouted encounter that is probably hard to scout and is indicated to be dangerous, you might just keep playing it safe.

Participating in Steam Next Fest, I'll be broadcasting a recorded playthrough of one of the adventures available in the demo version.

You'll discover that narrating a feature-rich and infinitely replayable game like Words of Yendor can be quite challenging, so I highly recommend checking out the demo for yourself.

Participating in Steam Next Fest, I'll be broadcasting a recorded playthrough of one of the adventures available in the demo version.

You'll discover that narrating a feature-rich and infinitely replayable game like Words of Yendor can be quite challenging, so I highly recommend checking out the demo for yourself.

Until now, the demo did not include Showdowns, the special word puzzle that awaits you after defeating the Master Villain of the current settlement. Showdowns are where you'll uncover the next piece of the Grand Puzzle, the next Lesser Word of Yendor that brings you closer to solving the mystery of the adventure.

By popular demand, the demo has been extended, and now you can experience the excitement of Showdowns too. However, please note that in the demo the adventure will still conclude after completing the 2nd settlement.

Remember, Showdowns can range from very challenging to relatively easy, especially the first one when you haven't yet discovered any Lesser Words. But that's the essence of roguelike-style procedural generation, and therein lies the beauty: the thrill of the challenge and the immense satisfaction when you emerge victorious!

It has been mentioned before, but it is important to emphasize: each adventure in Words of Yendor is tailor-made to grant a personal reward, when you complete the full story -- and there are infinite amount of stories in the game.

Do, check out the updated demo, and make sure to have Words of Yendor on your wishlist, so you can get a notification once the full game becomes available.

Due to bureaucratic challenges, the release date had to be delayed by a little over a week.

Words of Yendor will be unleashed on November 1, 2023, to haunt the world of the living and reside rent-free in your minds, eternally. Because you will return to it, again and again

As Halloween, the mystical time of the year approaches, when the boundary between the living and the dead becomes ethereal, our quest for answers intensifies.

In a moment of revelation, the Televisiograph unveils a profound secret: Prepare yourself, for the enigmatic realm of Words of Yendor shall be unveiled on October 20th, 2023.

Before this update -- which includes both the demo and the full version -- Words of Yendor has recognized about 250 000 words. Some of these were only accepted from the player, since the puzzles and the opponents only use words appropriate for the steamgoth setting.

With today's update I have added about 100 000 additional words to the game's dictionary. But it can still happen that you want to use a word, that you know to be valid, only having to see that the game doesn't recognize it. An outrage, I agree!

The truth is, Words of Yendor has always had an editor meant to be used by you, the player, to register words, exactly for this purpose. It was (and is) accessible from the Main Menu, by moving the mouse to the top-right corner of the screen.

Since today's update this semi-secret button has a visual reminder (along with its sibling that opens the game's data directory for you to access your screenshots, custom word list file, high scores list, settings and the saved game state -- this latter one only for scientific purposes, and definitely not for making a copy of it, in case that the Assassin proves to be too strong), so hopefully more of you'll be able to extend the game's dictionary to your likings.

Though this feature is not a new one, thanks to your feedback I have been able to find a better way to announce its existence. If there's anything you think Words of Yendor could be improved by, do not hesitate to let its humble and grateful developer know, maybe here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2156830/discussions/