Retrieve the sacred keyboard Excelibur from the Grid of Yendor and gain honour in this fast-paced typing roguelike. Get to the exit of each floor as fast as possible.

  • Choose between 3 difficulties: there's fun for everyone!
  • Type out enemies' names before they defeat you!
  • 5 elements which make enemies stronger, for that extra challenge.
  • Signposts and inscriptions to guide the new adventurer (to their deaths?!)
  • Scrunch your hands to fight bosses!
  • Destroy your wrists in less than 20 minutes!

The browser version is intended as a demo, please download for the best experience.

Controls

  • Keyboard keys - Typing
  • Shift+Enter/Up Arrow - Move up
  • Enter/Down Arrow - Move down
  • Shift+Tab/Left Arrow - Move left
  • Tab/Right Arrow - Move right
  • Escape - Pause

Credits

  • Coding, Art - me
  • BGM - Boss Battle Loop #3 by Sirkoto51 from freesound.org
  • SFX - various users on freesound.org: see in-game credits
  • Sense of humour - just me


Tips

  • Type the exit cell (yellow) to move onto the next floor.
  • Kill enemies without being hit to get wards.
  • Purple enemies are bosses which surround the exit on some floors.
  • Adjectives matter: bolditalic, and underlined enemies have adjectives that make them stronger/faster than normal.
  • Read the in-game help text: they have useful info you might not yet know

I write about the game's development here. Post your times in the comments.

StatusOn hold
PlatformsWindows, macOS, HTML5
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(5 total ratings)
AuthorDr.Hippo
GenreAdventure, Educational
Made withUnity, Audacity, Bfxr, GIMP
Tags2D, Dungeon Crawler, Minimalist, Perma Death, Procedural Generation, Roguelike, Singleplayer, Speedrun, Typing
Average sessionA few minutes
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard
LinksBlog, Soundtrack

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

grid-of-yendor-macos.zip 50 MB
Version 0.2.0
grid-of-yendor-win-x86_64.zip 40 MB
Version 0.2.0
Windows-x86_64-jam-version-OLD.zip 37 MB

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

Hello, it’s really fun i love it! It’s a brillant concept; I’ll keep an eye on thi game:-))

(+1)

This is actually really fun I played it for a couple of minutes and I really enjoyed it 

for a more in depth review I need to play it more but so far so good

(+1)

This game is so awesome! Hope you build up on it in the future as a full rougelite. Def playing this for hours

Hey, I just made an update which adds elemental attacks to enemies and navigation cells to guide you to the next level. Play again to experience all the new features!

(+1)

I watched AsWhalerGamer play and decided to come and try it out as well.  Really fun.  I think having to manually sort through the cells slowed down my typing, but it was certainly fun.  I really just rushed to the words that sent me to the next floor, as after running through one of the 16 floor modes it seemed like the thing to do.  Still, as someone who loves a good spreadsheet this was a fun game to play!


(+1)

That was pretty fun, and exactly what I needed to get used to my new keyboard

Thanks for the encouragement! The game's still in beta and I'm working on improving it, so if you want a better experience you can follow me to be notified of updates.

Yo for sure! If you need a hand in playtesting tell me, I'd be glad to help!

(+1)

Really good! (I just wish I was a better typer haha and commentating is HARD when you are xD) Keep up the amazing work!

(+1)

huge succubus yea thats what ive been waiting for that what its all about

and oh god it was so enjoyable and close i had like 30 characters left i think??? while i had 300 at the beginning of last level. the difficulty really spikes up i think. Other than that game being brilliant and i will definetely not delete it, one gameplay might feel a bit too long honestly, maybe there could be a shorter option. btw would love some difficulty and wpm or something on screen like this one below :) thanks for great game and fun

Thanks for commenting. I'll add more information to the win/death screens and improve their appearance. There are three difficulties btw, so switch to an easier one if you want a shorter game.

I actually barely made it out alive through the easiest one, skill issue probably

I've uploaded a new version which makes enemies slower in learner mode and added difficulty text to the end screen. Check it out!

(+1)

Great concept!

Most of what I want to say was pretty much nailed by horbror. The main problem is that you get to defeat enemies, heal, and move to other rooms by typing them... but that's pretty much it. As cool as that is, you may need to expand upon it. Once I realized I had caps lock on the whole time (lol), I got bored of the gameplay pretty quickly. Try to make something early on that the play can be hooked by... maybe an upgrade, a boss fight, a story throughout...?

Dude you HAVE to make this an educational typing game, schools would love this. 

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

To motivate players to play again and improve at typing, I'm thinking of some kind of persistent score system calculated from average WPM, accuracy, and completion time, along with a "journal" of past runs.

Achievements are also popular in roguelikes, but I'm not sure how to implement them efficiently yet.

(+1)

I tried out both the easy mode and the medium one and got smoked by both, I guess I am not a very good typer! 

Here is my feedback: 

- The presentation is clean and good, but I was not in love with the sfx. 

- The humor is spot on, just works. 

- Even though I sucked the core mechanics felt rewarding, though if you want to get players to continue to play several runs I think you might want to switch it up a bit from time to time. I am not sure how since its a extremely specific gameplay loop. One idea might be to add some sequences where you just buttonmash and instead of typing words it just counts the amount of letters in a limited time. I am not sure, could be fun. 

- Since its a typing game, at least for someone like me, that means that I am looking at the keyboard, that kind of got me thinking... If you want to add more narrative, or just some funny lines it would be good to do that with audio. I am guessing that many players will be focused on their keyboards just like me, in that case listening to something would be the proper way to convey more information, story or just jokes. Something like the stuff in "getting over it" perhaps? 

Which gets us to: this needs music. I could give you a couple of tracks I have made if you are interested. In my own current project the music I make is a weird blend of styles, but I have a lot of retrotracks laying around. No credit needed, unless you want to. 

This one is not at all appropriate for your game, but you can listen and see if you are interested in receiving some muzak. https://soundcloud.com/horbror/fishrites

Overall, I quite liked it, I think that if you are looking for a future market this could work well at schools. 

Hi, I've made an update which slows enemy attack speed in learner mode and has improved sound effects. You can try it again to see if you like it better.

I strongly recommend you to download the game and use headphones for the best sound quality.

Will do!

Will do!

(+1)

this is very fun, typing feels smooth, very intuitive mechanics. good work on this! maybe different types of items instead of just healing would be nice, maybe make wrong letters punish you more?

(+1)

The idea is interesting and not bad. It's easy in the first two modes but the biggest problem is the lack of variety in my opinion. You could put some twist along the way or things that reward you like, you write in a certain grid with long words and when you finish you get an extra protection against attacks. Something like that. Also, please add different options for resolutions, the experience will be more comfortable. I hope the games improve in future updates.

(+1)

Thanks for commenting and giving feedback. I already have an idea for improving enemy variety. The adjectives attached to enemies will modify their stats, instead of just being different words to type. For example, a "fast elf" will attack 20% faster than an "elf". The hard part is implementing it.

I also think the first two modes are easy but a lot of people found the first version too hard so I added them.

Yeah, there were UI issues in the downloadable builds which I couldn't sort out quickly, and I wanted to get the demo out today, so I made the resolution fixed at 1080p. I assumed most people will play in the browser where going fullscreen doesn't cause these issues.

If you want to keep track of development progress, you can follow me to get notifications when I update the game.

(+1)

Reach level 14. 

There does seem to be a delay where it doesn't register your keypress directly after taking damage, which will throw you off if you're in a grove.


Other than that, great concept. Really fun.

(1 edit)

Fixed that issue and addressed some others as well. The jam version is still available for download.

It sounds fun at first.. then you realize that you are forced to wait every time you take damage before you can type otherwise sometimes it doesn't take the letter you typed in

(1 edit) (+2)

There is a short delay after you switch cells, and sometimes typing too fast doesn't register. (which I'll fix in the next update) (Edit: fixed)

What do you mean by "you are forced to wait"? You should still be able to type during and after taking damage.

This game is a jam submission so it's a bit rushed. I'll update this with more convenient keybinds and address issues once the jam rating period ends. Thanks for the feedback. (Edit: updated)

Can't really describe directly, but I suppose it might be related to the too fast not registering thing. I'll let you know if I can identify the issue more directly


Best of luck though

(+2)

I gotta say, I hooked to this typing game. Good concept!