Game: Leximan
Genre: Puzzle, RPG
System: Steam (Windows) (Steam Deck)
Developers | Publishers: Knights of Borria | Marvelous
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $14.99 | UK £14.59 | EU €14,99
Release Date: August 13th, 2024
A review code was provided; many thanks to Decibel PR.
It may have been Scribblenauts that unlocked a desire in gamers to play around with words for fantastic and silly effects. Baba Is You turned the concept of playable verbiage and the simple but complicated rules of syntax into a cunning, sometimes even incredibly difficult, puzzle game. Meanwhile, Kingdom of Loathing and its single-player descendants taught us how to love incredibly written wordplay mixed with a graphical style best described as Random Fourth Grader’s Sketchbook.
Leximan, from developers Knights of Borria, tries to stand on its own among this storied crew. With an art style complete with an optional CRT bendiness and a silly take on both puzzle games and the familiar wizarding school tropes, it’s given itself plenty of opportunities to succeed. Does it cast a spell on this reviewer? Abracadabra!
Leximan Takes Us To School
Your protagonist is a sad, soggy mess who turns up at the door of a wizarding school operated by a principal so proud of himself that he becomes entirely eccentric. Under your arm is what this master of elemental magics assumes is your grimoire, a magical book that contains spells and recipes unique to you. Well, he’s not wrong, exactly. It’s your lexicon, which is your first bit of wordplay, and has a subtle wordplay layer to it that’s going to run throughout the whole game.
A lexicon is another word for your individual vocabulary. It’s also used by linguists to refer, collectively, to the jargon of various technical fields, i.e. the medical lexicon or an engineering lexicon. But it’s not just that; it’s also, in some contexts, a synonym for a dictionary. Underneath your arm is the collection and the potential for all the knowledge in the world.
Unfortunately for you and your unwilling new school principal, you start the game at nine years old, so your collection is pretty slim at first. Nonetheless! It is a grimoire of a kind your new master has never encountered before! Confronted with this new style of magic and all its potential, he…
Honestly, your principal is a jerk. Worse, the study of magic has taken on a capitalistic fervour, and if your individual brand of magic isn’t marketable, you’re in for a rough time. Thus, we enter a world of sardonic, silly, and over-the-top intent.
Playing With Words With Leximan
After your sad wet child introduces himself (I altered my name slightly to Leximane because I kept thinking of Fortnite Twitch streamer Pokimane for some reason, and the tortured pun amused me), you’ll get your first tastes of what combat in this game will be like. Yes, there’s combat, and no, it’s not stressful at all. What you’ll be doing is sort of, but not quite… yeah, no, it’s not at all like Baba is You. And yet there’s a parallel: You’ll be grabbing word fragments out of the wriggling ether to slap them together and cast a spell.
It’ll be easy at first, with chunks like RE and FI and ILL and CH bopping around. Other times, you’ll see words come together in the chaos that don’t seem to fit the situation, but hey, try them out anyway. Like Scribblenauts, the devs thought of as much as possible, and you’ll come across hilarious, wonky results that will still push you forward. Or at least give you a good laugh before taking another try.
Leximan and the Rest of the Story
Wordplay isn’t the only thing you’ll do while controlling your verbose vizard, but it is doing the majority of the lifting. You’ll also be exploring and interacting with the world around you, rendered in a sketchy, chunky style that’s somewhere between Undertale and the Loathing games. Sometimes, you’ll even need to use the spells you’ve collected to open up new ways ahead by blasting doors open or chanting password spells.
Occasionally, your combat encounters will have a little action or puzzle to them beyond the wordplay. One early trial had my wizard dodging spells as we pressed forward towards our foe, and while we took it on the chin a few times, there was no real way to hit a game over. There are also mercy prompts that come up if you’re having a rough time, giving you a little extra wiggle room in a tough encounter.
Leximan wants you to have a good time, so frustrations are set aside in favor of being able to do the silliest stuff possible. A lot of it is silly, and an equal amount is pretty smart stuff, a little wink of intelligence hidden inside a plot that feels up front and playful. You don’t need to be an excessively wordy sort to excel at Leximan, but the more you know, the more it’ll help you have fun.
The Technical Joints of Leximan
Leximan is not exactly Farcry, and it’s going to run fine on whatever you install it on. Bonus, it’s controller-ready, making Steam Deck players instantly welcome. There’s very little that’s going to require true twitch reflexes, but it’s all moot because the game never clunks down. I ran into one glitch coming out of a sort of cutscene where my leximancer couldn’t interact with objects any longer, but restarting the game resolved the situation.
Save points are also plentiful enough that I haven’t lost any playtime of note, and since that point, there have been patches and updates that have resolved those very minor issues. Most importantly, for a game of this nature, I saw no grammatical problems or misspellings that could frustrate a player. The result is a smooth gameplay experience that looks like it could run on an Apple IIe hooked up to a handful of potatoes. Mmmm. Potatoes.
Conclusion
Leximan is an incredibly charming, slapstick take on puzzle games designed for players who can learn to love the world of words in all of its goofy potential. As clunky as it all seems, it’s a game with a lot more going on behind the scenes than you’d imagine, and its cleverness is never used to make you feel like you’re doing something wrong. Instead, joke answers and silliness can lead to ah-ha! moments, and the occasional groan if you know what sins puns commit upon society.
The gameplay is lighthearted and low on stress, making it a terrific wind-down puzzler for someone who doesn’t feel like reading the next chapter of their book just yet or has already beat the NYT crossword of the day. The game’s world is well thought out, and, for players tired of reclusive wizarding societies built on controversy, this one is gentle and clever and saves its barbs for big-ticket issues like individualism and capitalism without making it a preach piece.
On the whole, Leximan is a terrific summer surprise, a unique game that finds a niche and cozies itself into it with the warmth of a favorite afghan. I’m delighted to recommend this game with a whole heart, and I hope you’ll give it a chance, too.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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