The pyromancer roars, fiery explosions engulfing the destroyed tower. Her scorching elementals lumber towards you, arms outstretched and fingers writhing with curling licks of flame. You put on your robe and wizard hat, lick your thumb, and frantically paw through the pages of your Lexicon. Fumbling, you spit out an incantation: WATER. Moments later, you stand defiant against a drenched pyromancer and hissing clouds of steam. Smirking, you twist your wizard hat so it faces backwards. Nice.

Leximan is a quirky indie adventure about the power of language. It’s full of silly hat goblins and magical mishaps, and beneath its chaotically lo-fi presentation, it tells an unexpectedly heartwarming tale. With some killer writing, a unique word-based magic system, and a diverse swathe of minigames, this magical little title is a delightful way to spend a weekend.

You play as the titular Leximan, an apprentice wizard at the prestigious Academy Elementinia. Unfortunately, you’re not very good at magic, depending on the language-based power of your rather unreliable Lexicon. Your spells tend to cause disastrous side effects like generating chaotic clones or summoning powerful demons. For this reason, you’re banished to the Academy’s basement with the rest of the failed pupils, forced to eke out a meagre existence in the dark. One fateful night, the Academy is attacked by a powerful sorcerer, and it’s up to you and your basement-dwelling pals to channel your unconventional branches of magic and save the day.

While Leximan may not be skilled with traditional magic like his fellow wizards at the Academy, his powerful Lexicon allows him to utilise the power of word fragments to alter reality in surprising ways. This comes to a head during the game’s many “encounters”, which use the setting of a typical RPG turn-based battle system, but contain almost none of the expected mechanics. Encounters rarely focus on actual combat, eschewing the usual hit point back-and-forth in favour of verbose problem-solving using the power of the Lexicon.

In each encounter, fragments of words float about the screen. Arranging them in specific ways allows Leximan to cast the corresponding spell, with its effects and narrative consequences then described onscreen. For example, when brewing a potion during an encounter, you could combine letters to add some refreshing LEMONADE, or you could lob a GRENADE into the cauldron. It’s a neat way of adding some tactile interaction to a “combat” system that would otherwise see you simply choosing actions from a menu.

Outside of encounters, you’ll also be able to open the Lexicon while travelling through the overworld and type in a custom spell or “Invocation” at any time. There are a few Invocations that you’ll unlock that cause consistent results, such as conjuring fire to destroy barriers, shrinking in size to fit through tunnels, or summoning a deeply forbidden duck to make yourself giggle. Actual uses for these powers only come up occasionally, but there are just enough secrets scattered about to make it fun to test out possible Invocation effects each time you see a suspicious summoning circle or seemingly locked door.

It’s fitting that the concept for Leximan came about from a group of mates (developers Knights of Borria) playing tabletop RPGs. It’s personal, silly, tonnes of fun, and shows a concrete sense of follow-through on each one of its “what if we…?” ideas. You can just picture the ridiculous conversations that led to each of the game’s unique encounters, and that sense of joy never ebbs through a roughly ten-hour playthrough. Leximan is a delightful way to spend a weekend subduing pyromancers, brewing enchanted flat whites, and booping fierce Rat Kings.