Leximan is a charming indie romp where you grab words out of the air to solve problems—like helping Dave, who has been on fire for 27 minutes

pcgamer.com:

It's often said that the pen is mightier than the sword—now, that's an assertion usually made by people who haven't been stabbed before, but in the world of Leximan, a charming little indie pseudo-RPG about smashing words together scribblenauts-style, it's a cosmic truth.

Penned by Knights of Borria, an indie developer three people strong, Leximan clearly borrows from the same grimoire as games like Undertale—in that its RPG stylings are mostly a vehicle for funny jokes and kitschy minigames.

In it, you play Leximan—an orphan wizard holding the Lexicon (you know, like words): A book that spouts word fragments you need to piece together to solve problems. Problems such as, but not limited to:

This mechanic is, in the hour I spent fiddling about with it, mostly a vehicle for charming little gags. To cool down a potion, I invoked the word «borean» and proceeded to teleport both a pine tree and a confused viking from the icy north into the pot—meanwhile, an irate viking had the wind knocked out of their sails when I cast «boing» and proceeded to bounce with wizardly gusto.

Alas, unlike a game like Undertale, Leximan doesn't quite do enough with its battle system to keep it from being more than a game of loose word association—and while the absolute hooliganry you get up to is cute, it gets a little rote. Imagine Undertale's befriending systems without the bullet hell interludes, and you've got a good idea of Leximan already.

Luckily there's some other neat stuff going on—when you're exploring the Academy Elementia, you can type overworld spells at the drop of a wizard's hat to dig up secrets. The game also makes an effort to break up its somewhat samey battles by introducing minigames—for example, after entering «The Suspiciously Large Room», I found myself thrown into a Vampire Survivors send-up, fending off a bunch of flames with myself, my potion-making ally, an orbital Dave and a ghost dog.

I'm not sure Leximan's the next big indie hit—but it's a playful enough