In Leximan, you awake in a messy bedroom and your first thought is breakfast (relatable). But, before you can dig into some delicious croissants, you'll need to deal with the weird noise coming from your bathroom (kind of relatable?). Upon investigation, you find a strange goblin living in your toilet digging a tunnel system under your bathroom tiles (okay, the relatability might be wearing off a bit).
This hijinx is the norm in Leximan, a wordplay puzzle adventure. You play as the titular Leximan, a mischievous wizard attending a school named Academy Elementinia, and it's your job to wield the power of words to cast spells. Known as Leximancy, your skills allow you to create words to defeat enemies, move objects, and terrorise your schoolmates.
The main puzzle mechanic in Leximan is a bit like a battle system. Heavily influenced by Undertale and EarthBound, these battles aren't your typical turn-based RPG fights. Instead, you'll grab floating word fragments and drag them to the spellbox, rearranging them to create the correct word for the situation. Back to the toilet gremlin battle, creating the word 'CLEAN' sees the creature fleeing in terror.
You blunder around this strange school falling into all kinds of mischief. Words are your currency and the way you find new areas in this frenetic and bustling world. After the toilet goblin toilet incident, you can explore the school a little more. You come across a student whose sprite is flickering wildly. After using a spell, you can kind of widen him, which doesn't really count as helping as much as interfering. Leximan is the sort of wizard who can't help but make things worse, even when he's trying to make things easier. If you've ever watched or read The Worst Witch series, you'll understand the vibe.
The battle puzzles are often funny little solutions to strange problems. In a mini-boss battle at the end of the demo, you're dodging the attacks of a raging character called Elementine while thinking up words to counterattack, like how assembling the word 'WATER' stops you from being killed by fire attacks. But what ultimately takes down Elementine is calling them a 'NOOB', which makes them upset and run away. The humour is silly and sarcastic with British sensibilities, but there are also little pockets of wholesomeness. I stumbled upon a mirror whose only aim in battle is to get you to feel good about yourself, which I loved.
Along with the battles, there are other puzzles to consider as you explore the school. You can hit the enter key on your keyboard to type in any word you can think of. 'OPEN' shoves a magical bookcase aside, 'ENLARGE' makes you bigger, and 'DOG' summons a pet for a few seconds. It gave me warm, fuzzy memories of the text adventure games I played as a kid. The demo was limited in exploration, so I'm quite excited to get stuck into the full version just so I can enjoy playing around with words to get where I need to be.
You would be forgiven for thinking simple wordplay is a bit dry, but it's not. The puzzles are satisfying and fun to work out, and I quickly found myself getting into the mindset of the game itself, reaching for weird solutions and crossing my fingers as I watched the chaos unfold. There seems to be a way of thinking in Leximan, and it's often steeped in humour. If I had to compare it to something other than Undertale, I'd probably go for Nord & Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It, a 1987 text adventure game based on puns and wordplay. Once the solutions click, you start thinking in a completely different way, letting you try answers that are a little further out of the box.
Leximan is cheeky, self-aware, and buzzing with frantic, pulsing energy. There are people to talk to, objects to collect, and minigames to play. The demo is packed with action even the way Leximan moves is entertaining. He thumps around, barrelling through loose objects and sending them flying everywhere. You get the impression that Leximan is the provider of mischief and chaos, dropped into a world that is also teeming with frantic, mad nonsense. And it's just fun to be there. It's a real joy.
The Steam page for Leximan promises exploration, minigames, plenty of puzzles, and a whole cast of strange characters to interact with. It's a game that's rocketed straight to the top of my wishlist. I can't wait to while away some warm summer evenings when the full game releases this August.
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