5 Letter Rogue

5 Letter Rogue is a roguelike word game. Kill enemies, collect the glyphs they drop, and use them cast 5-letter "spells".

ATTENTION JUDGES: I've made some minor fixes and UI improvements post-jam. See the full list at the bottom of this page.

Goal

Kill or befriend all enemies on each floor. Complete floor 10 to win! (Or jump into the abyss if you're feeling brave.)

Basic controls

  • Use arrows or shift+wasd to move.
    • You can move into an enemy to attack it
  • Type words to cast spells
    • Must be 5 letters
    • Each spell has a unique effect
    • Not all spells are unique
    • Click the ? button to view a full bestiary and spell book.

Credits

Programming and Design

Oatmeal Problem, follow him on https://oatmeal.gg or Bluesky

Source code available on GitHub

Music

Music by Brightbone, all rights reserved. Follow them on Bandcamp, YouTube, and Bluesky

Sound Effects

Created for 7DRL 2025

Post-jam changes:

  • v0.2 (March 17, 2025)
    • fix: "inspect mode" is on by default
  • v0.3 (April 21, 2025)
    • fix: "shoot" description has incorrect damage amount
    • fix: left sidebar cannot be scrolled without scrolling whole page
    • feat: make it clearer that word suggestions are clickable
    • feat: show status descriptions when hovering / inspecting
More information

Comments

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DFuxaPlays4 days ago

Always a pleasure to play an edutainment style of game!

Reply
Oatmeal Problem4 days ago (1 edit)

Thanks for playing, and big thanks for recording and sharing the video! There are few things more helpful than watching someone try to learn the game! A few notes:

  • there's definitely some low-hanging fruit for UI improvements, both quality-of-life and changes so the game can teach itself better
    • for now, I'm waiting for the 7DRL judging period to end before making significant changes
      • EDIT: I've released v0.3 with some minor changes; changelog at the bottom of the game description
    • thanks for sharing your suggestions; I'm taking notes :)
  • poison doesn't cause damage-over-time, it just prevents healing
    • this was so differentiate from bleed, but I think it's perhaps too counter-intuitive
    • btw, you can hover over the status "badges" to see their descriptions (I should make that clearer)
  • snipe/shoot is supposed to do 10 damage; I forgot to update the description
  • I  also want to have a chance between levels to heal, or possibly thank allies; simply ran out of time to implement that. Planned for the post-judging patch!
  • The suggested words has some quality-of-life features:
    • It only ever shows words you currently have the letters for
    • If you start typing, it filters the suggestions; eg you type "d" it only shows words that start with "d" and that you have the rest of the letters for
    • You can click any of the suggestions to "autocomplete" them
    • 100% not blaming you for missing these features; I need make the UI more intuitive!
Reply
georgefarfuridi36 days ago

I didn't have too much fun with the game. Something didn't work out for me, i can't tell what. Maybe casting spells wasn't fun. Maybe I liked to just go into the abyss, trying to skip past the floors and going into the enemies. I don't know.

Here's a video of me playing the game

Reply
Oatmeal Problem20 days ago

Thanks for playing and recording/posting a video, even though you're not a fan of the game. That's really helpful! I definitely see some opportunities to improve controls and explanations. Perhaps that would improve your enjoyment.

There are also deeper design issues I didn't have time to address. At this point I'm not sure if I'll continue working on this, but for now at least waiting until the 7DRL judging is complete.

Sorry for the late reply -- I missed the notification for this comment

Reply
spillz39 days ago

Hi Oatmeal. This was a fun entry that plays smoothly and feels complete. It's quite challenging and I don't think I made it past level 6. Will give it another go later.

An interesting variation on this idea that would lean into the word game feel by streamlining away the grid-based movement into a set of enemies holding known letters and all the player does is select a target and type spells.

Reply
spillz39 days ago

Also, one note that the game confusingly starts in select instead of movement mode.

Reply
Oatmeal Problem38 days ago

Thanks for reporting! That was unintentional and now fixed

Reply
Oatmeal Problem38 days ago

Thanks for giving it a try! I haven't personally beaten the game either haha (though I've made it to the final level 10)

Yeah, a gridless version could be interesting to explore. Perhaps 7DRL 2026 :) My worry would be coming up with abilities... I think for this game, the more abilities the better, so if you think of a reasonable 5 letter word and type it, it works (unlike currently). The grid provides another way that abilities can be different each other (range, radius) and opens up a whole class of abilities (movement).

Now that I've said that, perhaps a 1D version could work though? Eg the player and all creatures are positions in a line, instead of a grid. That could streamline things but still provide enough "design space" to make abilities varied and balanced

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