Watchword gives the Balatro treatment to an anagram word game

Watchword is an anagram roguelike, pulling in some clear energy from Balatro as you play with words using rule-breaking synergies and combos. The game will have Native Linux and Steam Deck support, with a demo now available to try made with Godot.

I love how it's another game that takes a known genre of classics and twists it into something entirely new. The developer said how "A good vocabulary will certainly help, but it will mostly take careful planning and strategy to beat each trial" as you make crazy new words and try to fill up that score.

The demo worked perfectly for me on Kubuntu Linux (25.04). Check out the trailer below:

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Full game features:

• 120+ Unique book relics: No two powers are the same. Add infinite repeat letters to words with "The Good Book" or focus on using new words with "Thesaurus". Each book has a unique strength that combos well with other books.

• Hundreds of piece variations: Every letter in the alphabet + custom bigrams (Two-letter tiles like QU, CH, or EE). You can even find mysterious Symbol tiles like "!", "?" or "&" that have strange abilities.

• 100,000+ Possible Watchwords: Try to spell a special word to expand the size of your board to make room for more powerful words in future trials.

• 20+ Watchguards: Each watchguard has a unique strategy to make their trial more difficult. Watch your wallet against the Greedy watchguard and make sure you plan ahead for the Patient Watchguard.

• 30+ run upgrades: Permanently upgrade your draws, discards, hand size, and much more!

• Made-Up Words: Watchword is the only word game where you can make up words to fit your strategy. Find forbidden books that completely blow the dictionary wide open.

• Check your stats and shoot for new high scores: Go infinite and see your high scores go into the hundred of billions of points.

• Endless replayability: Watch minutes become hours as you try to fit just one more word into your board and beat just one more run.