HieroglyphStudio vs Hexvellum

HieroglyphStudio. It appears in hieroglyphic signs inside a cartouche — the oval that Egyptian scribes drew around a royal name so that it could not be erased. Choose what it is made of: matte gold on basalt, sunk relief cut into limestone, ink on papyrus, gold inlaid in lapis, glazed faience, or raised relief lit from one side. Export it at 2048 pixels, keep it, or send it to someone. WHAT IS INSIDE • A cartouche maker that writes any name, typed in Latin or Cyrillic letters, sign by sign as you type. • 177 signs, each with its Gardiner code, its phonetic value, and one thing worth knowing about it — which way it faces, what it depicts, why it was chosen for that sound. • 28 gods and 22 amulets. Every god's name is written out in signs on the card, with the reading beside it, and the short myth is drawn from real material: the Pyramid Texts, the Book of the Dead, the Shabaka Stone, Plutarch, Herodotus. • Flashcards and a ten-question quiz, asked both directions — sign to meaning, and meaning back to sign. • 151 facts about ancient Egypt, one at a time, as a reward for finishing something. They arrive on a papyrus scroll that unrolls, and each carries a real source: a named papyrus, a classical author with a chapter, or an honest statement of where the evidence actually comes from. They are about bread and dentistry and pay disputes as often as they are about gods. FREE, IN FULL There is nothing to buy. No subscription, no locked signs, no watermark on what you export, no advertising. Everything described above is there the first time you open it. NOTHING LEAVES YOUR PHONE The app makes no network requests of any kind. It has no accounts, no analytics and no tracking. There is no server for anything to be sent to, which is why the privacy label reads "Data Not Collected" rather than a list of assurances. ON ACCURACY The signs are a phonetic approximation, in the tradition of the name cartouches carved in the Greco-Roman period — not an Egyptological transcription, which the language does not really allow for a modern name. Where that matters, the app says so. What is exact is the writing itself. Every sign is a real character from the Unicode Egyptian Hieroglyphs block at its correct Gardiner code, and the mapping from code to character is generated from the Unicode character database rather than typed by hand. DESIGNED TO BE LOOKED AT Papyrus, limestone and basalt, drawn rather than photographed. Screens named after the rooms they stand in: the Scribe's Chamber, the Hall of Signs, the House of Life — after the per-ankh, the schools attached to the temples where scribes were actually taught. Requires iOS 17. iPhone, portrait.

Hexvellum is a cartographer's table for fantasy tabletop games. Draw your world by hand on a glowing sea chart and run the whole session from the same board. Sketch three kinds of maps on one canvas. Ink overland regions with coastlines, contours, roads and rivers, then lay a hex travel grid and measure a journey by pace and terrain. Build gridded battlemaps at real scale, drop tokens for monsters and party members, and clear the room with a soft reveal as the players advance. Draw dungeons room by room and keep them hidden until the party surveys them. Everything is drawn by your hand. Pick a pen, a straight-line wall, a room, a terrain fill or an eraser, choose your ink, and undo or redo as you go. Add points of interest for settlements, dungeons, shops and dangers, and link them to encounters, quests and characters. The reference table travels with your maps. Browse a full bestiary, spell list, items and a rules glossary, then add a creature straight onto the battlemap as a token. Keep character and NPC sheets with abilities, skills, spells and gear. Assemble an encounter and watch the difficulty against your party, then start initiative with the exact creatures already loaded. Track rounds, hit points and conditions, log quests and objectives, keep tagged session notes with a photo, and roll dice with advantage, disadvantage and history. Add a portrait to a character, NPC or note with the camera or your photo library. Export a full backup of your campaign whenever you like and bring it back on another device. Hexvellum keeps your table on one living, hand-drawn chart.