So when you go to a “store” (or market, bazaar, trader, etc), it’ll be like a real store – you’ll have a range of objects to buy (“pizza”, “milk”, “bread”, and so on) – but to actually buy them you need “money” or some equivalent.

If you visit the “bank”, they will buy valuable objects (such as “ore” or a “diamond”) for money; alternatively you can try breaking into the “vault”.

Expect more Wordsmith updates in May; I’ll finally be getting some free time to work on it.

At the time being, the game world isnt persistant, which causes most of the road blocks. If it werent, theres several solutions for letters.

Create a BANK to store letters currently held to accrue “interest”. This would allow you to get additional letters that you’ve already been able to obtain. Also – upon death, you wouldnt lose these.

Create a MARKET or perhaps a STORE to allow selling or trading of letters to obtain new or more rare ones. A simple point value could be assigned to each letter similar to scrabble.

Whatever happens, I’m definitely looking forward to more.

The next obvious solution is just a new world; I tried making a new level where you start from scratch with a different set of objects available… but it’s actually surprisingly hard to make a fresh start like that. The “rat”, “reed” and “skeleton” you get at the start look fairly random, but it actually took me a long time to come up with those objects as starting words. I’m sure it’s possible to make a new world that works; I just haven’t found the right configuration. Still, it’s going to be really really hard to make, say, 10 levels where you start from scratch this way.

And yes, in terms of increased difficulty, I’ve been thinking along the lines you suggest; for example, adding a “taboo” mode where the most obvious words are forbidden. Still thinking…