Anagrail

Anagrail is a daily word run. One rack of letters, one target to beat, and a rule most word games get backwards: rare words score far more than long ones. Ten tiles and five plays to reach the first target. Find a word, play it, read what it means. Clear the target, and the next stage raises it, and the rack and the plays thin out as you climb. The run ends the first time you miss. How far you get depends on vocabulary, not reflexes. WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT IT Rarity beats length. A four-letter word almost nobody uses will out-score an obvious eight-letter one, and the game shows you how every score was built so that you can see why. Hunting long words is the losing strategy here. Every word has a meaning. 50,542 words, each one with a definition, shown the moment you play it. Definitions are never locked and never sold. You read it and carry on. A collection that remembers. Every word you play is kept. Meet it again later, and it moves from Found to Learned. That is the whole of the learning loop: no flashcards, no streak to defend, and it never once quizzes you. FOUR WAYS TO PLAY Daily, the same rack as everyone else in the world, once a day. Casual, a fresh rack whenever you want one, as often as you like. Burn, a survival run where the clock shrinks every stage. Ration, a survival run where your plays shrink every stage. Every mode runs on either the Standard clock or the Unhurried one. Unhurried sits on the first screen rather than in a settings menu, and it keeps its own scores. THERE IS A SHOP, AND THIS IS EVERYTHING IN IT Spare tiles, oil for the lantern, and a hint that shows you a word's shape. None of it is needed to finish a run, and none of it can be spent on a run that is scored against other people. No word, no definition and no accessibility setting is ever behind it. MADE TO BE READABLE Set throughout in Atkinson Hyperlegible, the typeface the Braille Institute designed for readers with low vision. VoiceOver on every screen, including the letter and the value of each tile. AA contrast, and colour is never the only thing carrying meaning. Dynamic Type and Reduced Motion both respected. Touch targets sized for the smallest supported iPhone. AND WHAT IS NOT IN IT No ads, and there never will be any. No subscription. No account and no sign-in. There is nowhere to sign in to. Fully playable offline, from the first run to the last. Anagrail is made by Veratus Games, a one-person studio in the United Kingdom, and it is the kind of word game its author wanted for a commute: short, quiet, and worth something afterwards.