If you like swords, sorcery, and spelling, have we got a game for you.
Word Realms is a Western RPG from the crazed minds that brought us Kingdom of Loathing. The player can be either a powerful warrior or a sweet wizard working to stop Lord Nightmare from coming back into power and taking over the world. Really high expectations, considering that the player wakes up in a bush.
Fairly basic story, right? However, combat is not based on just stringing together attacks but also how good the player is at creating words from his tile set. Basically, it's Scrabble the RPG. The word's score, combined with a multiplier based on the difference between the player's attack and opponent's defense, is the amount of damage he deals to his opponent, with skills allowing for even more damage, buffs, and debuffs. Warriors generally have higher Attack and Defense stats and more health than Wizards; Wizards have more powerful and more varied skills.
This game provides examples of:
- Always Night: Due to the planet being tide locked, the part on which the game takes place is always at night.
- And the Adventure Continues: The Good Ending ends with the player heading off for Paramount City.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In the Bad and Nightmare endings, the player fails to protect the town and either is emotionally broken or commits suicide.
- Big Bad: Lord Nightmare
- Brainwashed and Crazy: This happens to the player if Lord Nightmare manages to defeat the player in his castle.
- Collapsing Lair: Discussed but ultimately averted. The player's character expects this to happen when Lord Nightmare is beaten. They beat a hasty retreat anyway, just in case.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Lord Nightmare can kill the player with a single hit in both the Technician's Nightmare and the final battle. His only weakness is that he's so overly confident that he won't attack until the third or fourth round.
- Dark Secret: Beardsley has one. There's an achievement for figuring it out. Turns out, he's a vampire, on the run from the werewolves that control his former home.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Wizards can easily do more damage than warriors due to their larger tile set, more gear and skills that boost tile scores, and they gain a powerful defensive ability. But, due to their much shorter timer, it's more difficult to come up with words that take advantage of this larger tile set, and they start with fewer hit points and lower defense, making it more difficult to survive in the early game. (Note, however, that the timer disadvantage can be turned off in the options. There's no penalty for doing so)
- Death Is Cheap: If an opponent defeats the player they can immediately try again with the only loss being any consumables used during the fight.
- Detonation Moon: In the back story, the moon was destroyed, causing the planet to become tide locked, with one side permanently facing the sun.
- Dumb Muscle: About 92% of the Subjunctors are like this. Most can't even count to 11 while wearing pants.
- Good Morning, Crono: The player begins the game by waking up in a bush trying to remember what happened the previous night.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Lord Nightmare in the Technician's nightmare. If the player somehow does manage to win, they receive a message from the developers stating their amazement, then asking the player to report how they did it.
- Lord Nightmare is also one of these at his castle. Or at least, that's how it seems at first...
- Item Farming: Generally has to be done to get the good crafting ingredients.
- Karma Meter: depending on the player's interactions with the NPCs the player can be considered good, neutral, or a jackass. It affects the way others talk to you and changes the endings slightly.
- Multiple Endings: There are three main endings, each with three variations at the end based on the player's Karma Meter and what happens during the end game:
- The Good Ending: If the player manages to defeat Lord Nightmare while in his castle, the elder thanks them, gives them the key to the city and the entire town celebrates.
- The Bad Ending: If the player gets defeated by Lord Nightmare, then runs away from the nightmare versions of the townsfolk and just defeats Lord Nightmare in the clock tower, the player discovers he actually only blew up the clock tower. However, the Scribe's daughter angrily banishes them.
- The Nightmare Ending: The same as the bad, except the player kills the nightmare townsfolk, resulting in the brutal murders of most of the actual townsfolk (which gets shown). Characters with high karma are so horrified at this that they commit suicide. It ends with THE END being displayed, with the player's corpse hanging from the tree from the opening. Also, this is the most likely ending for people to get the first time through.
- One-Hit Kill: Lord Nightmare will instantly win the battle with him if he attacks. Thankfully, he stops to taunt you a few times first.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: When the moon blew up, it became extremely difficult for them because they don't regularly transform anymore. They can still transform by ingesting dust that has settled from the fallout.
- Puzzle Boss: In a fair fight, Lord Nightmare is a Hopeless Boss Fight. To beat him, the player must complete the dreams collected from three of the bosses then weaken him in the Technician's nightmare using the new skills unlocked. If this is done well enough, the player will have a small chance of being able to do enough damage to kill Lord Nightmare.
- Shows Damage: Armor (or bone) cracks and bruises appear on enemies as a fight goes on.
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Spiritual Successor: While it didn't sell well enough for a true sequel (or any of the planned expansions) to be produced or released, the game has been retooled with new graphics, slightly different gameplay mechanics, and presumably a new story into an educational game for iOS called MasterSwords
. Both games even have "Words are your weapons" as their tagline. - The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Entering "SWORDFISH", even temporarily, as the name of a new character unlocks debug mode, where you can instantly win fights and give yourself any item or spell. (Giving yourself enemy spells usually doesn't work out too well)
- What Did I Do Last Night?: The player wakes up in a bush with an extra beer and a pair of shoes he doesn't remember getting.
