What should you do when facing the powerful necromancer who’s reanimated your long-dead corpse? Showing a bit of respect might be a start. Yet it doesn’t come naturally in Cryptmaster—available to wishlist on the Epic Games Store. One of the first things I ask of my undead overseer is to lick a rat. Then to headbutt a shield. And soon after, I see if he’ll chew up a map that’s been collecting dust in a secret chest for who knows how long.

In my defense, I didn’t know what the objects were at the time. The items scattered about the corridors of this monochromatic dungeon crawler must be collected in what amounts to a whacky game of 20 questions—the necromancer serving as quizmaster (and occasional rat licker) with the misplaced items of your group of undead adventurers as the prizes. Sniffing, crushing, feeling, and tickling mystery dungeon items is just part of this dark magician’s normal nine-to-five, which is emblematic of Cryptmaster’s surreal, droll, and subversive tone. 

Putting you in control of four undead adventurers to explore an underground cavern and fight the monsters that call it home, Cryptmaster may look like a callback to the dungeon crawlers of old, but it quickly reveals that it has less to do with wild sword swinging than considered keyboard thwacking. Virtually everything in the game is done by typing. Combat abilities are unlocked in a Wordle-like guessing game. Solving those 20 questions-style puzzles rewards you with extra letters to use as clues. And once you’ve successfully guessed an ability, you can unleash it by typing its name mid-combat: spelling out Jab, Boot, Jostle, and the like before the enemy gets a hit in first.

“The original bones of the game was a system for collecting words and reusing them in combat, a fun idea but not one which would probably have supported a full game,” says writer and co-creator Lee Williams. “However, once we started down that route, other word-based mechanics just attached themselves to it by a sort of process of accretion.”

The result is a surprisingly open-ended system that rewards offbeat player inputs. Your accompanying necromancer guide, the titular Cryptmaster, spits out voiced responses to whatever you type and rarely misses an opportunity to offer up a wry, smug comment. 

“We have a simple system that I sometimes compare to a coin sorter,” says Williams. Common words usually generate unique responses from the Cryptmaster. Other words are grouped into general categories, each with a relevant but less bespoke response. And in cases of total gobbledygook, you’re more likely to get a rather confused comment telling you to do better.

Not that you’d notice those underlying systems in the moment. When I tell the Cryptmaster to lick what turns out to be a rat, he reports that it “tastes furry and rather disagreeable.” Upon asking if my witch’s first spell is “Cat” (on some dubious idea that she takes a feline companion into battle), he wonders if I’m “just saying the names of animals?” And when I instruct him to crush the object he’s quizzing me about, I’m told the outside might give him some trouble but he could tear its inside with ease. A few more questions, and I figure out what he’s handling: a book.

“There are a few more smoke-and-mirrors tricks, such as having the Cryptmaster sometimes spell out an unfamiliar word or say a familiar one as part of his response,” Williams adds. “Overall, we’ve been really pleased with how it has worked out. Players understand that it’s a trick, but the effect is still very immersive.”

Combat, meanwhile, is a puzzle all of its own. After each character of your party—Joro the warrior, Syn the assassin, Maz the bard, and Nix the sea witch—takes an attack, they’ll enter a short cooldown period. In just the short demo I played, I was able to find basic combat synergies: Instruct Joro to Hit for some basic damage, before using Maz’s Yell ability to reset his cooldown, ready to strike again. Add in Syn’s Trap skill that can lay down spikes before combat even begins, Nix’s Zap spell capable of hitting enemies at a distance, and enemy shields that block you from typing certain letters (and therefore the skills that are spelled with them), and fights look set to spiral into strange tactical spelling bees.

Yet it all fits neatly together. In keeping with the spelling theme, the health of enemies and your party members is measured by the letters of their names—with each one knocked away as they take damage, like tiles flicked off the board in a game of Scrabble. Chests and boxes strewn about the place must be opened by typing their names. And the monochromatic art style is reminiscent of ink sketches you might find in an artist’s (or perhaps calligrapher’s) notebook.

“In theme and aesthetic, we drew a lot from the passions of our younger selves, things which are now kind of nostalgic: D&D, gamebooks, B-movies, TV shows like [surrealist children’s TV show] Knightmare, and board games like Atmosfear,” says Williams. “So it felt right that the art style would be something similarly retro. Paul [Hart, Cryptmaster’s other co-creator chiefly responsible for programming and art,] took inspiration from the ink and paper illustrations that you’d find in old D&D manuals and Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.”

Cryptmaster is planned for release later this year, though you may want to have a few run-throughs of The New York Times’ word games page until then. Spelling has rarely looked quite so chic, and 20 questions never so devious. Wishlist it now on the Epic Games Store.