Alphabetto's

Alphabetto's is a roguelite deckbuilder in which you play letter-cards against characters from classic works of literature. Your goal is to be the first to get rid of every card in your hand. There is one shared deck for everyone at the table, so any card you add to your collection can help you or a rival.

Play your cards

You can chain cards using two rules: play cards of the same colour in alphabetical order, or play the same letter in different colours. Letters have different effects in each colour, and you can extend chains with wildcards, Greek letters, Cyrillics and character cards. The last card in a chain determines which rule takes effect, so choosing how to close a chain shapes the outcome.

Every card belongs to a family, including breath, body, mystery, emphasis and the nameless ones. The cards played most often push their family towards dominance in the ecosystem, and how you interact with the ecosystem triggers different climates. Six dynamic climates—Resonance, Saturation, Overload, Silence, Eco and Pure Chaos—change the table according to the ecosystem's state.

The deck also has a temperature. Chaos raises it, while eco lowers it; when the table reaches Pure Chaos, the temperature doubles on its own. At white heat, the Chaos Singularity makes cards mutate inside the deck. Global events can also change a run: The Infection poisons the deck, The Fracture breaks cards when the deck is replenished, and The Ecosystem Collapse devours the deck in corruption.

Shape the shared deck

At key moments, you choose a path on the map: face rivals, visit shops, use lecterns to upgrade cards, or find loose pages where you choose a card to add. A global draft also lets you pick a card for the ecosystem, which everyone inherits. Any card you add can therefore end up in a rival's hand.

At The Index, you can buy consumables that heat the table and speed up the climates, or cool it down and stabilise the start of the next round. You can also sign, fuse, graduate and mutate cards; each slot in the deck grid is a build decision.

When you win a night, the game presents the card you played most for you to sign by hand. It returns to the shared deck with your mark, which remains across runs. Whenever a rival plays your signed card against you, they pay you fifty ink. Strong cards may be used more often, bringing in more royalties.

Literature and bosses

The library draws on 25 works: Alice, Dracula, Hamlet, Frankenstein, Don Quixote, Lazarillo de Tormes, The Odyssey, One Thousand and One Nights, Journey to the West, Beowulf, Carmilla, Candide, Fuenteovejuna, The Monk, Robinson Crusoe, Faust, La Celestina, The Three Musketeers, King Solomon's Mines, Gulliver's Travels, The Wizard of Oz, The Jungle Book, Ramayana and Les Misérables. They appear as soundtracks, bosses, character cards and relics, across seven sections that unlock as you advance.

The works are revealed line by line through play. Victories unlock real lines from the original texts, written through your hands of cards; after each night, you can read what you have restored in the library catalogue. The game also has an original soundtrack of 68 pieces, ranging from soft jazz in the reading room to gothic music in the forbidden section.

There are 25 unique bosses, each with special mechanics and a distinct personality. One erases vowels, another forbids a colour, another ties your plays to the family dominating the ecosystem, and another copies your archetype and turns it against you. You must work out which rule has changed and why, rather than relying on brute force.

Story and endings

The story emerges through notes, fragments and ambiguous events, leaving you to decide what you think you have seen. The clock in the entrance hall remains fixed, and sometimes notes appear in the margins between games that you do not remember writing. The game has multiple endings: reaching the first is difficult, and finding the last changes what you thought the game was.