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Magispells
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About the game
Magispells is a word game played on a wall of letter tiles. The tiles stand in eight columns, every other one shifted half a tile down, so each letter touches up to six neighbours. You spell by linking neighbouring tiles into a word of three to eight letters, and when you cast it the tiles burst, the columns drop and fresh letters fall in from the top.
Every letter has a value, rare letters count for more, and a word's score grows with its length, so long words with awkward letters pay best. Some tiles glow: they are charged and count four times their value. An exclamation mark tile sometimes appears too, and it can be added to the end of any word for extra points.
The catch is the par. For every new board the game works out the best word you could make and sets a par from it, which rises as you climb the levels. Cast a word below par and you lose one of your chances, and the tiles of the word you missed freeze, worth nothing until they are used up. Find the very best word on the board and you earn a chance back. Reach the score target to move on to the next level, where every chance you kept is worth a bonus; run out of chances and the game is over.
Playing it here
Magispells was made for TIC-80, a fantasy console: an imaginary 1980s-style computer with a 240 by 136 screen and 16 colours, for which independent developers write new games. It runs here in the official TIC-80 web player. Click Play and wait while the game unpacks its dictionary; then click once more, choose "New Game!" and start from Level 1.
There are fifteen levels, and once you have reached levels 4, 8 or 12 you can start a new game from there; after the last one, "Extended Play" keeps going. Your high scores and the levels you have reached are saved in this browser. The game is played entirely with the mouse or by touch, so it needs one of the two. Esc opens the TIC-80 menu.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Click / tap a tile | add it to the word (it must touch the last tile) |
| Click / tap the last tile again | cast the word |
| Click / tap an earlier tile | shorten the word back to that tile |
| Click / tap outside the grid | clear the word |
| Buttons beside the wizard | music, sound effects, next song, "I'm stumped!" (shows the best word, costs a chance), leave the game |
| Esc | TIC-80 menu |
A few things worth knowing
Look for the par first. The panel under the wizard shows your level, score, the points still needed, your chances and the par for the current board. A word just over par is safe; a short word under it costs a chance.
Charged letters are worth chasing. A glowing tile in a long word can double your score for that turn. The exclamation mark is easy points if it sits next to the end of a word you were going to make anyway.
Use "I'm stumped!" wisely. It shows you the best word on the board, but it still costs a chance. It is most useful when the board is full of frozen tiles and you cannot see a way out.
Credits and licence
Magispells was created by Grant Williams, who made the code, the graphics, the music and the sound effects. It is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or later. The cartridge holds the game's readable Lua source, and the game's folder of the author's repository, with the word list and the scripts that pack it, is hosted alongside the game. The word list is a modified version of the UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary, Copyright © J Ross Beresford 1993-1999, used under its licence. It runs here in the TIC-80 web player (MIT licence). The licence texts and the source code are linked from this page.