New release: Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey

I’ve just received word that there’s an RPG / word game hybrid out by the name of Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey. Developed by two-man indie studio Bacon Bandit Games, Letter Quest has been out for a few months now, but it only just released on Steam, so we’ll count this as a new release.

Letter Quest seeks to do for RPGs what The Typing of the Dead did for on-rails first person shooters; which is to say, it wants you to kill things by stringing together letters. The premise:

Help the adorable grim reapers Grimm and Rose defeat monsters, ghosts, evil bunnies and more using the power of words!

Letter Quest is a turn-based RPG where players attack monsters by spelling words. But be careful since the monsters fight back by creating different letter tiles such as poison, plague, stone, and whirlwind, or steal your health, heal themselves, use critical attacks, and much, much more!

So, uh, y’know–not super heavy on plot, this one. As far as the mechanics go, it’s basically PopCap’s Bookworm Adventures with RPG elements stacked on top, as you can see in the game’s trailer:

The features list, as contained in the email I was sent, reads as follows:

– 40 stages, with 4 unique ways to play each one
– Five separate areas, each with unique art and music tracks
– Tons of upgrades, books, potions, special items and weapons to help you on your journey
– Over 30 monsters to fight
– Boss monsters with unique abilities
– 70 quests to complete
– 52 Steam achievements, 24 leader-boards, Steam Cloud support and Steam trading cards
– Up to 100 (!) or more (!!) hours of play tim

(I don’t know who Tim is, but I’m sure he won’t mind being played.)

Letter Quest Grimm’s Journey is available for Windows and Mac for $7.99 on Steam (where it currently benefits from a new release discount) and the Humble store. You can also snag it for Android and for iOS, where the game is free…but filled with in-app purchases.