About This Demo

Draw 7 letters. Each one is printed on a stock, and the stock is the rule. Spell a word. Deal damage, hang a status, or block what is coming down the street.

Killing a demon only frees the coat. Learn its true name, spell the letters that stick, and banish the thing wearing it.

This demo is the first Neighborhood: the Ink Quarter. Build a deck out of the alphabet and spell death to a city that stopped reading.

I wrapped the fight in art deco and filled the room with foxtrot, jazz, tango, torch songs and every maqam I could get my hands on. Then I called it a day.

Your Deck Is the Alphabet



There are no cards with abilities. There is only you and your letters. Spell words, awaken spells, print your letters on paper stocks, and bring the pain to the demons who made humanity their illiterate, morally bankrupt slaves. (Y'know, the usual.)

A City That Stopped Reading



Humans lost "The Word", and the demons moved in, shut the presses and stayed. Every run is a new day and the same day: the streets of the Ink Quarter are laid out differently each time. Take the risky road or the safe one, I don't judge. But for your own sake, stop at the Printhouse or the Speakeasy on your way to the boss of the neighborhood.

Learn Its True Name



Killing a demon only frees the body it wore. It walks off and finds another. Every demon hides a true name. Spell words that share its letters, see which ones stick, then whisper it (or shout it, let it all out) to banish the demon back to wherever it came from.

Paper Decides What a Letter Does



Every letter is printed on a stock, and the stock changes what the letter does. Iron letters make block instead of damage. Most stocks are worth the Ink. A few are Devilish, and they ask for more than that... (A wishlist, a purchase, a like, maybe some ink.)

A love letter to every word game and deckbuilder that came before, a manifesto for what is to come, and hopefully a lesson (good or bad, I don't mind) for those who come after.

The demo comes with:

• Two Lettercasters, the Compositor and the Etymologist, each with their own way to spell and to deal damage.
  
• The first Neighborhood: the Ink Quarter.
  
• 130 Lexicon spell effects to find, awaken and carry into a fight.
  
• 23 paper stocks that change how your letters behave, for better or for worse.
  
• 43 events that can help or harm you. (Developer's note: mostly harm.)
  
• Nearly 200,000 legal words.
  
• Descension 1, once you clear the Ink Quarter.
  
• My deep gratitude.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Spell Death is a game about a city that stopped reading, and it was made with AI tools. Here is exactly where.

Mine, not AI:
- The design, the systems and the balance. 10+ years of making games and 30 years of building decks.
- The dictionary: a human-made list of about 196,000 words.
- Your words. Nothing is generated while you play: no suggestions, no autocomplete, and there never will be.

AI-assisted:
- Illustrations: made with image models, then picked, retouched and composed by hand.
- Music: made with an AI music tool, directed by me.
- Sound effects: most are synthesised from code; a few come from the same music tool.
- Code and some text: drafted with an AI assistant, then edited and tested by me.

The line I hold, for me and for the game: a tool is fine, a proxy is not. The machine can draw a street. It doesn't get to do your reading, your thinking or your spelling.