DEADWORD
a survival word game
Ratings
Age
13+
Category
Word
Languages
English
Sat Jun 27 2020
Fixed typos. Minor performance improvements.
In Deadword, your vocabulary is your weapon. To move through a city infested with zombies, you must solve word puzzles by changing letters (e.g., COLD to CORD). Every word change represents an action, and you must manage your supplies and health while finding the shortest linguistic path to safety.
Dinsun Expert Review
Our Expert Score
Deadword is an incredibly clever hybrid of 'Word Ladders' and tactical survival. As a fan of both linguistics and post-apocalyptic settings, I found this to be one of the most refreshing word games in years. The central concept—that changing a letter in a word is a physical action that costs resources—is brilliant. It turns the English language into a strategic inventory you must manage carefully.
The minimalist, high-contrast art style perfectly conveys a sense of bleak, urban decay without needing high-fidelity 3D graphics. The puzzles are genuinely challenging, often requiring you to balance the shortest path to an exit against the need to detour for food or ammo. It turns the dictionary into a weapon, and the result is a tense, cerebral survival experience that is unlike anything else on the App Store.
Features
Innovative 'Word Ladder' combat
Atmospheric minimalist art style
Over 30 unique city sectors to explore
No timers—strategic, turn-based play
Tips & Walkthrough
Look at the target word and your current word. Sometimes taking a longer path (more word changes) is safer if it avoids tiles where zombies are clustered.
Gameplays
Certain words on the board represent items like 'meds' or 'food'. If you can transform your current word into one of these, you'll heal or gain energy.
Screenshot
Q&A
You can use limited 'Hints' or scavenged items to skip a letter change if you find yourself cornered.
Ratings & Reviews
Hidden gem!
Fri Aug 28 2020 KittenMoneyThis is the kind of weird genre combo I can get behind! Really unique concept and gameplay, that could maybe use a little more challenge (maybe a penalty/reward system for the amount of words you use?), but is still a five star game in my eyes based on creativity and execution alone. In story mode, it eventually gets more challenging after level 20, but getting there feels like an super engaging brain-trainer, and I think anyone who enjoys word games will appreciate how different it is. I could also see this game being a fun exercise for non-native English speakers! It really has a lot of potential, and I’m gonna unlock the rest to see what endless mode is all about. Another solid game, dev! Been playing Fire Ant Solitaire, and I enjoy that one too. I appreciate your creativity in genre mixing. Keep up the good work! Edit: Having trouble buying the expansion from the settings menu. When I click “buy”, it gets stuck at “processing”. The App Store has been acting weird all morning, so maybe it’s on Apple’s end. Excited to support this game, hope it gets fixed soon :)
Fun and Challenging!
Wed Jul 03 2024 Pierce PavusThis is a great game! I think there’s something really special here :) This was a nice way to wake up and get my brain engaged for the day. I enjoyed the addition of a timer in later levels - it felt atmospheric and added to the challenge of the game without feeling unfair or out of place. If I have one complaint, it’s that the Free Shipping upgrade makes the game feel too easy - I was able to spam hints without worry. Fantastic work! Really excited to see more from this dev :)
Fun word game until they slap a timer on it.
Tue Aug 09 2022 DragonDaiPlayed the game for a bit. Had a great time with it. Fun little word game. Interesting puzzles that see you trying to get from one word to another changing a single letter at a time while dodging specific words in between the start and end word. And then the devs thought it'd be a great idea to slap a (very short) timer on the puzzle. Letting the timer expire DRAMATICALLY ups the difficulty and will VERY quickly lead to a game over. What was a fun, interesting puzzle quickly became a frustrating and stressful race against the clock. I uninstalled shortly afterwards. Unfortunate. But if you're the sort that isn't phased by a timer and does well with words under pressure, then I can't recommend this game enough. That's just not me, sadly.
What.
Sat Apr 15 2023 DangerGazelleI’m not usually one to write reviews but this feels deserved. This is the most fun I’ve had with a random mobile game in a while. It’s also pretty challenging! It’s not insanely hard to beat though. There are ads but not so often that it takes away from what you’re doing. It’s not overbearing like most games are. The story is fun and even nostalgic at times. Overall, I’d give it seven stars if I could. I absolutely loved it. I’m gonna go start over now. Byeeeeeeeeee.
DONT RESTART LEVELS
Sun Jul 05 2020 Your Irrational HeroEDIT: Just finished the game. I like it. If you have problems with the issue stated, pressing the home button and Force-Closing the app is the same as Restart, but you keep items. It also helps with another thing ;€ Doing so removes any items you use for good. As well as your progress. You’ll basically restart the entire level with even less of a chance to pass. You’ll put yourself in a crutch until you end up in the hospital. Seems like an oversight that needs fixing since it doesn’t make sense to lose items that happened in a past run which the game has erased.
Needs work
Wed Jul 08 2020 stuntbushI literally loved this game until I got to the timed portions. I absolutely loathe games that put you on a timer. I don’t mind more rules, more enemies or more challenges in getting from A to B but don’t put a timer on me or I lose interest. It takes all the strategy out of it and becomes something else. I read another reviewer on an app site who had the same complaint. Unfortunately I read the review after I got sick of the timer and decided to go play a word game that isn’t about speed but about strategy.
Why? Just Why?
Mon Aug 09 2021 MaybeSaffronI played the game for a few minutes and I was popping off and then when I was trying to get the package that was lack and the zombie was sack and I was back, after I changed the b to an l and got the package, THE ZOMBIE CHANGED ITS S TO A L AND HIT ME... I just wanted to make a review to complain about how terrible of a mechanic that is and how the zombies shouldn’t be able to change into whatever word you are currently and should only change to words that are similar
Cool game. I like it.
Fri Jan 27 2023 NipNipNopeRandomly came across this cool little game, never heard of it before but it sounded interesting so I gave it a shot. Glad I did as it’s quite entertaining. An excellent example of how the AppStore needs to be improved. So many quality games you might never find.
