Cursed Words: The Word Game That Isn't

Word games have a ceiling problem. Boggle, Scrabble and their many digital descendants reward one thing above all: the size of the player’s vocabulary. Whoever knows more words wins, and strategy does little to close that gap. Cursed Words: The Word Game That Isn’t, from developer Buried Things and publisher Forklift Interactive, attacks that ceiling directly. It bolts a roguelike deckbuilding structure onto a letter grid, then lets the rules of language fall apart.

The premise opens on familiar ground. Each encounter deals a grid of letter tiles, typically square, and the player links neighboring letters into words to score points against a rising target. That is Boggle, and the game makes no secret of it. The departure comes fast. Tiles start carrying numbers, chess pieces and poker-hand properties, and the big scores come from exploiting those layers, not from finding a nine-letter word. The subtitle is accurate: spelling gets the player through the door, and systems knowledge decides the run.

The positioning is obvious and deliberate. The comparison to Balatro is unavoidable, and the structure follows the roguelike deckbuilder template:

• Stamps collected over a run
• Sticker upgrades
• consumable Tiles carried into each fight
• a roster of Characters that shape a run from the start

What Buried Things contributes is the ruleset underneath. Word puzzles suit a combo engine well, because letters are already modular pieces waiting for modifiers.

The game released on Steam on April 2, 2026, for $14.99. It is single-player and English-only.

That is a narrow brief, and the design has to carry it. The open question is how much friction the systems create for players who arrive for the words and stay for the math.

• Boggle-style letter grid: Encounters deal a grid of letter tiles, typically square. The player links adjacent letters into words to clear escalating score targets.
• Rule-breaking tile properties: Tiles can carry numbers, chess pieces and poker-hand properties. This moves the big scores away from word length and toward exploiting those systems.
• Stamps and Stickers: A pool of stickers and stamps drives the combo engine. Stamps are collected across a run, and Stickers apply upgrades.
• Consumable Tiles: Tiles brought into each encounter add a tactical layer on top of the long-term build.
• Characters: Each has its own playstyle, which shapes how a run develops from the first encounter.
• Structured runs: A run has several stages, each with encounters and a boss, drawn from a boss roster.
• Challenges, Crowns and Quests: A set of challenges, harder Challenge Crown tiers and rule-altering Quests extend the game beyond the base run.
• Steam Achievements and Cloud saves: Standard Steam integration covers progress tracking and save sync.

The Loop: Spelling as the Tutorial

The central design decision in Cursed Words is treating ordinary word-finding as the floor, not the goal. Early encounters ask for little beyond what Boggle asks: trace a path through adjacent letters, form a valid word, bank the points. Rising score targets then do the real work.

A square grid limits how long and how plentiful natural words can be, so raw vocabulary hits a wall. To keep pace, the player has to engage with the stranger systems. That is a clean way to teach a roguelike. The difficulty curve makes the case for the build layer, so no tutorial pop-up has to.

The familiar opening lowers onboarding friction for anyone who has played a word game, and the strangeness arrives in increments.

Breaking Language for Points

The numbers, chess pieces and poker-hand properties are where the title earns its subtitle. Each imports logic from a different kind of game, and together they decouple score from vocabulary. A player with an average lexicon and a sharp eye for synergy can outscore a walking dictionary. Word games usually distribute skill the other way around.

We consider this the game’s central idea. It widens the audience without flattening the challenge, because the skill being tested shifts from recall to planning.

The risk is legibility. Several foreign rulesets layered onto a letter grid is a lot of state to track, and the number systems are poorly explained. In a combo-driven roguelike that costs more than it would elsewhere. The genre’s pleasure comes from understanding why a build works and then pushing it further. When the arithmetic behind a big score stays opaque, discovery tips into guesswork.

Build Craft: Stamps, Stickers and Tiles

The build layer works across long, mid and short horizons:

• Stamps accumulate over a run.
• Stickers apply upgrades.
• Consumable Tiles come into each fight as tactical resources.

The separation is sound. It gives the player long-term investments, mid-term modifications and short-term answers to a bad grid, so no single encounter feels predetermined by the build.

With a large pool of stickers and stamps, breadth is not a concern. The builds are deep, and the volume supports that. The question with any pool this large is how often a given run offers the pieces a strategy needs. That leads to a common structural complaint.

Run Structure, Characters and Luck

A standard run spans several stages, each with encounters and a boss. That is a tight arc, short enough to invite another attempt and long enough for a build to mature. Each run draws from a boss roster, so repeat runs should not settle into a fixed sequence of obstacles.

The Characters are the main lever for replay variety, and they are designed to play distinctly. Several problems recur:

• Luck dependence. Some characters and runs feel too dependent on draws, which suggests certain playstyles need specific pieces more than others do. Variance is part of the genre’s contract. A character that only functions when the right Stamps arrive, though, turns a strategy game into a slot machine for that run.
• Fixed unlock order. Characters unlock in a set sequence, which removes player agency over progression. A preferred playstyle can sit behind less appealing ones.
• Unclear character rules. Character rules are also weakly explained, compounding the number-system problem.

The Long Tail

Beyond the base run sit a set of challenges, harder Challenge Crowns and rule-altering Quests. Unlocks, challenges and secrets give reasons to keep returning.

This is the right endgame for this game. Quests and Challenges change the rules instead of inflating the numbers, which applies the game’s whole thesis to its own structure.

The Dictionary Problem

Every word game depends on its referee. The dictionary is inconsistent, and here that is a sharper flaw than it sounds. A roguelike with escalating targets punishes wasted moves. When a word the player expects to land fails, it costs more than a moment’s irritation. The game bends language for points on purpose; it cannot afford to bend it by accident.

The art, UI and music are polished. The UI deserves particular credit given the problem it has to solve. A single tile may carry a letter, a number, a chess piece and a poker-hand property at once, with Stickers layered on top. Keeping that readable on a square grid is a real information-design challenge, and the presentation handles it on the surface.

The weakness is explanation, not display. The complaints about number systems and character rules point to a UI that shows state well but explains causation poorly. Stronger in-context explanation of how numbers and character rules feed the score would address a consistent criticism.

On performance, a tile-grid puzzler of this kind should place modest demands on PC hardware. The bigger design risk is progress loss: in a run-based game, one incident can erase a run or an unlock. Cloud saves guard against losing a machine, but they are no fix for progress the game itself loses.

Cursed Words ships on Steam, so the design targets mouse and keyboard. That is a natural fit for tracing paths through a letter grid.

The limitations sit at the edges of that setup. Controller support is absent, and Steam Deck and touchscreen play are not the target. That is a missed opportunity. A session-based puzzler built on a grid of tiles is close to an ideal handheld or touch game, and handhelds suit the genre well. Anyone planning to play away from a desk should treat that as a deciding factor.

The Steam release includes Achievements and Cloud saves, both useful in a game built on long-term unlocks. The game is English-only. For a word game that is structural rather than a localization oversight, because the dictionary is the ruleset. Non-native English speakers should weigh it, since vocabulary still forms the foundation the stranger systems build on.

The subtitle is a promise, and Buried Things keeps it. By letting numbers, chess pieces and poker hands override the logic of spelling, Cursed Words solves a long-standing problem with word games: the better plan wins, not the biggest vocabulary. The Stamp and Sticker layer gives that plan room to grow across a run and a long tail of Challenges and Quests. The design is strong enough to recommend to the right player, though not strong enough to overlook its gaps.

The flaws are real, and most of them are about communication. A combo game that doesn’t explain its arithmetic chips at the trust the genre depends on. So does a word game whose dictionary misfires, and so do characters whose fortunes swing on luck. Missing controller support and the risk of progress loss narrow its reach further.

We rate it as good, with reservations. We recommend it to anyone at a keyboard who wants a word puzzle that rewards planning. Clearer explanations and a more reliable dictionary would push it higher.