We all know the pain of finally getting some time to play games, and then staring at our Steam library not really in the mood for anything. Lately, there’s a game I always think “I could play that” about: Tomb of the Bloodletter, a dungeon-crawling typing game that came out back in February.
Tomb of the Bloodletter shares a general concept with 2024’s Cryptmaster, in that you fight enemies by typing words. But in Bloodletter, levels aren’t spaces but a series of encounters, which you choose at the beginning of each stage by typing a word of a certain length. In each battle, you and an enemy trade blows until one of you dies.
There’s a keyboard at the bottom of your screen, and the letters on it can be assigned certain powers. Some do damage; others damage you to build up your “fury,” which makes your attacks more powerful; others can heal you; some weaken an enemy’s attacks or take points off their shields. Some of these powers only work if a letter comes at a certain point in your word, or if a word contains a particular series of letters. It’s often as much of a puzzle to think of a word that uses your available powers as it is to then try to optimize your strategy. How many “E”s can I fit in here? Do I know any words that contain a Z and a K? If I spend these letters’ powers on this turn, does that mess me up for future turns?
Despite having played hours of Bloodletter, I’ve never gotten very far. Enemies are tough, and each has unique abilities you have to play around. Some of them spray ink that makes some of your letters useless, while others can insert a “spy” into your letters that you have to play before it damages you. One can light letters on fire, damaging you if you use the letter but also spreading the fire to other letters if you don’t. There’s a degree of randomness here, and in the broader game itself, that can also hurt you: Sometimes all the most useful letters are inaccessible, or sometimes my powers fall on a bunch of letters that rarely appear together in words. I often find myself in doomed wars of attrition with an enemy, both of us slowly damaging each other and then healing, until one of us just squeaks through.
There’s a bit of a meta-game in terms of playable characters you unlock and their unique abilities–so far I’ve only unlocked the starting Adventurer and the second character, the Heretic, who can reroll your letters’ powers at the cost of health but also heals herself for the first damage you do on a turn. You also upgrade your character as you play a run based on the letters you pick to form each stage’s map, with rooms that can heal you or give you more powers on your keyboard.
I love the way Bloodletter always has you thinking about both vocabulary and video game strategy, and the way the words you reach for change each round based on how your powers fall. I have to meet each turn as it comes, meaning even if I’ve faced a certain enemy dozens of times before, the situation still feels brand new. This can be frustrating at times–like I said, I’ve never made much progress in the game, despite having about 12 hours in it at this point–but I never mind it much when I lose. Each restart just means getting to do the core, enjoyable thing of the game again: wracking my brain for big, ridiculous words that can knock out an enemy before it takes me down.
Tomb of the Bloodletter’s cartoonish art style also helps offset any frustration; it’s hard to be mad at dying to a goofy, helmeted guy on an invisible bike or a crudely-drawn bat. The roguelike structure means I can dip into it without making a big commitment, making it an easy go-to when I’m overwhelmed by my Steam library. It t helps me wake up my brain before playing other stuff, when it doesn’t end up taking up my whole night instead.
