Letters & Liches: Array

LETTERS & LICHES — ARRAY

Choose your difficulty

Each run descends 7 depths.
Demo runs 3 depths. How deep can you go?

Letters & Liches — How to Play

Goal

Descend through 7 dungeon floors, slay monsters, grab loot, and defeat the bosses. After each boss falls, you have the chance to sneak out with your life — or push deeper for greater glory.

Movement

Click any adjacent highlighted room from your hero's position to move into it. You cannot move until your current encounter is resolved.

Combat

Select tiles to spell a word and press Strike! (or Enter). Each monster requires a minimum word length. Spelling the minimum kills in two hits; one letter longer kills in one. Bosses have higher HP and require more than two hits. Too-short words cost 1 HP per missing letter.

Hint

Costs 20 gold per letter. If a qualifying word exists in your tiles, the matching tiles glow — but using a hint cuts your strike XP by 90%. If no qualifying word exists, fresh tiles are dealt instead.

New Letters

Discard your letters and draw a fresh set, guaranteed to contain a valid word of the required minimum length. Disabled outside of encounters and at the merchant. Uses increase in deeper floors: 1 use on floors 1–3, 2 on floors 4–5, 3 on floor 6, and 4 on floor 7.

Potions

Starting at Depth 3, you can bank 1 bonus potion by buying HP at the merchant when already at full health. The cap increases by 1 with each descent — so 1 bankable at Depth 3, 2 at Depth 4, and so on up to 5 at Depth 7. Banked potions auto-fire when you take damage in combat.

Treasure

Spell any word to claim a loot chest. Bonus gold = tile score × word length. You may skip it. Hint penalties apply to bonus gold and XP (base gold is never penalized).

Merchant

❤️ +1 HP: 50 gold — heals 1 HP, or banks a bonus potion if already full
🔤 +1 Tile: 500 gold — adds a permanent letter tile (max 2 purchases)
🗺 Map: 200 gold — reveals all rooms on the current floor (one purchase per depth)

Scoring

Combat hit: tile-score × word-length XP
Monster slain: base XP + word bonus
Loot claimed: 50 base XP + word bonus (base gold varies 30–100)
Exit used: 100 base XP + word bonus
Boss slain: base XP varies by depth + word bonus
Floor cleared: +200 gold, +200 XP — visit every room (not all maps allow it)

♦ Casual mode awards half XP across all actions.

♦ Casual · ♦♦ Standard · ♦♦♦ Hard

All three modes share the same 7-depth dungeon. Casual starts with 10 tiles, awards half XP, and has no word timer — ideal for learning the ropes. Standard is the full experience: 8 starting tiles, full XP, no timer. Hard adds a per-strike countdown to non-boss fights where tiles reshuffle if you time out. Lose 1 HP if you run out of time on a 3 or 4-letter monster, and HP loss for tougher fights hit as if you spelled a 3-letter word. Strike fast for a quick-solve XP bonus (+1 XP per 5 seconds remaining). Timer limits: 3→20s · 4→40s · 5→60s · 6→90s · 7→2m · 8→3m · 9→4m. Bar turns yellow below 50%, red below 25%.

Monsters

Min	Monsters	Gold	XP
3	SpiderRat	10	15
4	GoblinSkeletonLich	30	40
5	TrollDamienMorgana	50	65
6	UnidentifiedUnidentifiedUnidentified	70	90
7	UnidentifiedUnidentified	90	115
8	Unidentified	110	140
9	Unidentified	130	165

Bosses — Depths 3–7

Min	Boss	Gold	XP
6	Crypt Warden	100	150
7	Unidentified	150	300
8	Unidentified	250	600
9	Unidentified	350	1,100
10	Unidentified	500	2,000

Defeating the boss at depths 3 and 4 earns a bonus letter tile.

Glossary

HP: Hit Points — game over at 0
Pots: Potions — restore 1 HP when consumed
XP: Experience Points — your score
Min: Minimum word length to deal damage
☠ (depth): Boss floor — defeat the boss to descend
RTFM: Read The Fine Manual — this screen

Dictionary

All word-checking happens on your device, so play works fully offline. Words are first validated against a small curated list of common words, then a larger in-game dictionary is checked if not found. Words the game doesn't already recognize — words only, nothing about you or your game — are reported back so the curated list and larger dictionary can be continuously improved.