Ink 0

Satchel

empty

The Wordsmithy

Forge words from the letters in your satchel. Each new word joins your Wordhoard.

The Bench

click letters above to build a word

Collection

WASD/↑↓←→ move Space attack
H go to your bench E use bench O decorate Esc close

Import backup

The Stall

Spend the ink you earn by spelling nouns.

You have 0 ink

Bigger Satchel

Carry +1 letter

Bind a Fable Page

Recover the next fable

Seed Rack

Garden seeds for this season

Restore the Chapter

Bestiary

Every creature you've defeated or captured. Keep hunting one to reveal more about it.

Fish Phoneme

Every sound you've fished up. Cast at any pond and type a sound's spelling to add it.

Feats

Collecting verbs levels you up. Each category rewards you as its word count climbs.

Equipment

The Garden Braille crossword farm

Each bed is a 2×3 Braille cell. Buy this season's seeds at the Stall, then sow one seed per dot to form a letter — that placement is the Braille drill. A bed matures overnight, then yields once a day all season. Grown beds that spell a word across a row / down a column pay extra.

The Pig Pens Pigpen cipher · DEV

Fishing reel up sounds

The Herald's Bench blazon a shield · DEV

Blazon is the centuries-old language for describing coats of arms — a real, tightly-constrained grammar. Here you write a valid blazon from words on the right; it's drawn as a shield (to emblazon), and equipping it grants passive bonuses read from what's on it.

A blazon is read in a fixed order, describing the shield from the background up:

Field — the background colour. It can be split by a division: party per pale (a vertical split) or per fess (horizontal), giving two tinctures.
Ordinary (optional) — a bold geometric band: chief (top strip), fess (middle bar), pale (vertical bar), bend (diagonal), chevron (∧), or bordure (border).
Charge group (optional) — the emblems on top: a number (a / two / three), a charge (lion, eagle, tower, cross…), an optional attitude (its pose, e.g. rampant), and its own tincture.

Tinctures come in three kinds: metals (Or = gold, Argent = silver), colours (Gules, Azure, Sable, Vert, Purpure), and furs (Ermine, Vair).

⚖ The rule of tincture — heraldry's one hard agreement rule: never place a metal on a metal or a colour on a colour (poor contrast). Furs are neutral and break no rule. The exception is counterchanged: on a divided field an element can flip the two field tinctures across the line — legal even where it'd otherwise clash. The Herald flags any violation, and you can't equip an illegal blazon.

e.g. “Party per pale Azure and Or, a chevron counterchanged, three mullets Or.”

How your shield's powers are read

Every part of the blazon is also a power. Equip a shield and these become passive buffs.

Metal = polarity (which way the shield leans):
Or (Strike / sun) → offense (+attack) · Argent (Ward / moon) → defense (+guard).

Colour = element (a themed buff). The elements sit in a counter-cycle (fire → vine → stone → storm → water → fire; each beats the next — lore for now, kept for a future duel):
Gules · fire → attack Vert · vine → reach Sable · stone → guard Purpure · storm → haste Azure · water → hearts.

Attitude = tempo (an intensity + speed slider): rampant/salient (fast) lean aggressive — more attack & swing speed; couchant/guardant (slow) lean defensive — more guard. Higher tempo always = more haste.

Word order: colour on the charge = figure (burst, +attack); colour as the field = ground (sustained, +guard).

Charge = role (its main stat, scaled by the number a/two/three):
🦁 Lion → damage (attack) 🦅 Eagle → vision & range (reach) 🏰 Tower → bulwark (guard) ✝ Cross → vitality (hearts)
★ Mullet → far reach ☾ Crescent → nightward (guard) 🌹 Rose → vitality (hearts) 🕊 Martlet → swift (haste).

The Bench shows the live element · polarity · tempo of whatever you're building, above the passive stats.

Pick a verb you've collected:

Bookshelf

The Curator

The Apothecary flask rack

Every adjective brews a potion on its dumbbell. Collect more synonyms to grow a flask (more uses); find the attribute noun for a bonus. Drink self-buffs from the HUD (1/2/3).

Already collected

New letter unlocked!

It now roams the wild — one is waiting for you near home. Go catch it!

Controls

Use the on-screen buttons — the joystick (bottom-left) to move, ATK (bottom-right) to attack, and the utility buttons alongside it.

WASD / ↑ ↓ ← →Move SpaceAttack EUse what you're near: shop, the house (enter the Wordhoard), the Wordsmithy, Mad Libris ODecorate the Wordhoard (or tap 🖼️): Tab/Shift+Tab pick a piece, Space place BOpen the bestiary (or tap the 🐾 button) COpen your Feats (verb milestones — or tap ✦) GOpen your Equipment — equip & craft gear (or tap 🎒) POpen the Apothecary — your potion flasks & how they grow (or tap ⚗️) ShiftSlide — a quick forward lunge (once unlocked; tap SLIDE) 1 / 2 / 3Drink a Size / Speed / Reveal potion (or tap its HUD button) ?Show or hide this panel EscClose any panel

Ink & potions. Spelling words pays off by part of speech:

Spell a noun → earn ink (your currency, shown top-left). Spend it at the Stall on the home screen (walk up and press E, or tap SHOP) to grow your satchel.
Spell an adjective → brew a potion that matches its meaning. Each adjective sits on a “dumbbell” — an attribute (speed, size, light) with two opposite ends: a self-buff you drink and an antonym that (soon) debuffs every beast on screen. So swift→Speed, big→Size, bright→Reveal; their opposites slow/small/dark brew the debuff potions. Potions stack in the HUD.

Flasks (the Apothecary — P / ⚗️). Each potion has a flask whose size = how many uses it holds. Collect more synonyms of a pole to grow its flask; spell the attribute noun (speed/size/light) for a bonus. A full flask can’t brew more until you drink one.

Drink a self-buff potion with 1/2/3 or by tapping its HUD button — each lasts 25 seconds:

Size (from big) — grow bigger, with longer attack reach.
Speed (from swift) — move faster.
Reveal (from bright) — the minimap shows the whole map and which screens still have letters.

Rewards repeat: re-spelling a word spends its letters again and pays again.

Word of the Day. Each day the Wordsmithy shows a bonus word — always built from letters you've unlocked, so you can always collect what you need. Spell it once for a big ink bonus.

Mad Libris. The lectern right of the Wordsmithy. You start with one fable; recover the rest one at a time — beasts rarely drop a page, or bind the next one at the Stall with materials beasts drop. Restore a story by filling each blank with a collected word that matches the needed part of speech (noun/verb/adjective/adverb). Matching the original word earns bonus ink. A word can be used in a chapter only once, ever — so keep learning new ones. Finish every recovered chapter to add the book to your Wordhoard.

Creatures & the bestiary (B). Out in the field you'll meet more than inklings — pests, cubes, and hazards that drop book-binding materials (paper, glue, thread, wax, leather…). Beat one and its loot drops on the ground — walk over it to collect (the Magnet feat later makes drops drift to you) — but grab it before The Kindle scorches it. Cheese heals a heart. The bestiary logs every creature you've beaten and reveals more (stats, drops, lore) the more of that creature you defeat.

Feats (C). Collecting verbs levels you up along word-count milestones per category (1, then every few — bigger categories space rewards out further). Rewards interleave passive boosts and abilities: Motion → move speed + Slide; Competition → attack + Finisher/Combo; Perception → Divine (a daily letter peek in the library) + Treasure Sense (drops glint); Possession → satchel space + Magnet; Body → max hearts + Second Wind (recover a heart when you stay out of combat). More verb categories arrive later.

INKLINGS

A WORD-COLLECTING ADVENTURE

press any key · or click

tap to begin