Horizons: The End Of Words 🌌
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
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Explore outer space by making words.
You are dealt a handful of letters and must make words on an empty grid. Letters replenish with oxygen after you use them, and so you have to make new words, to find new oxygen. The grid might not be empty anymore but don't fret, it is as boundless as the universe itself. Oxygen on the other hand...
In Mission mode, set your own difficulty with 28 unique modifiers and try to beat the game by mining up resources.
In Journey mode, set out to explore the galaxy. Stop at various space stations to acquire and upgrade items to help you along on your wordy journey. Stretch your web of words as far as possible and discover as many planets as you can.
Plays entirely with the mouse. A run may last for a couple of hours. Features a 3-slots save system.
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Horizons: The End Of Words was originally made in 96 hours by Benjamin Soulé for the GMTK Game Jam 2024.
We continued developing it over the following months to make it a full premium game that we could be happy with. This new version is our first game of 2025!
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Discord
If you'd like you can come to our Discord to talk about the game and compare galaxies!
It's also a great place to talk with us and get news for this and our next projects!
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Are you press or a content creator?
If you're a streamer, youtuber, or press and you'd like to cover the game, we've uploaded a few assets you might find useful, including screenshots and thumbnail material! Find them here!
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About PUNKCAKE
As PUNKCAKE Délicieux we make a new game every month, which you can get by subscribing to our Patreon for 3€/month or buy separately on Itch io for 6$!
- Join our Discord!
- Follow our Bluesky!
- Subscribe to our Youtube!
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Changelog:
Patch v1.01:
- [BUGFIX] Fixed a bug where you can draw letters with zero oxygen if you have letter vision above 0
- [BUGFIX] Ghost structures under planets are now properly removed, used to cause crashes when such a structure's mission was completed
- [BUGFIX] Selecting more than 2 letters with Sappho won't freeze the game anymore
- [BUGFIX] Now showing the proper text instead of empty_cryo
- [BUGFIX] Changed the default window size for when fullscreen is disabled
- [BUGFIX] Screen zoom is now dynamic, depending on the window size
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $6 USD. Your purchase comes with a Steam key. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Comments
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This really needs some more definition for the letters. That's not a U???
Your game was an incredible inspiration for our one <3
We took your concept and put a narrative into it, I hope you'll like our adaptation: Star Word
Not too happy with my experience... I was hoping to see some instructions on what you're supposed to be doing but I had none, and for my first play I tried ZEN, but it was not accepted, and I can't find if there's an option to swap tiles, so I just quit the game. Why not follow an edition of one of the Scrabble dictionaries?
It's a nice touch to support multiple languages though and I enjoy the idea of a solo Scrabble video game, but because of the above issues I don't really see myself playing it again unless they're addressed in an update.
Tough but fair!
Currently having a lot of fun with this one. It ticks all the boxes for what a good word puzzle video game ought to be.
I wish there were more languages for the vocabulary
Very cool game but the pixel font is an awful choice for a game built entirely around letters. V, U, W are so hard to guess until you've made the word you think you're making and then it's invalid...
I've played scrabble with my family for about 7 years now, my mother played professionally as a child and she is very hard to beat. I love this game so much already. I've played for about 2 hours now in one game, 328 is my score rn but I'm still going. the game can be a but slow and clicking on the tiles can be a bit hard but some of it could be me, I'm more of a console player. I am enjoying the game a lot none the less. Love this game! Hopefully this is good practice to beat my mom XD
10/10
Excellent experience. Some issues though.
- When I run out of letters (0 on the upper left) I look locked, with no options. Was expecting a game over. Am I doing something wrong ? No special power could help me.
- Sometimes on my Macbook M1, the game can be VEEEEERY SLOW, with crazy lag. I have already experienced this with other games of yours. A known issue of Sugar ?
Thanks for the game anyway ! It's excellent !
Playing on Windows and I also got the crazy lag. Every action, even moving the camera, froze the game for a full second. My case must be extreme considering we would not be the only ones talking about this if it happened to everyone. I wonder what I could do to work around this cause this game is phenomenal otherwise.
I appreciate the availability for French as well =)
Please tag the file as a windows executable so that the Itch launcher can find it. Thanks!
Done! Thanks for reminding us!!
I've never been a scrabble/bananagrams/crosswords/etc. aficionado but I've enjoyed them from time to time, and this feels like the best incarnation of that style of game I've ever played! Love the strategic choices, yet chill feel of it.
Aside from my other comments made separately, I noticed it was missing a "fail" condition when the letters are exhausted. It allowed going back to the main menu, of course, but I kind of expected a game end screen of some sort that would boot me back to the menu. A minor issue for an otherwise polished and excellent game though!
The option to type the letters is interesting, but I'd be curious if others are using it? I found it much easier to use the mouse, and misclicking to show the cursor was a little distracting. Maybe there could be an option to disable it in future?
Might be nice to show a visual (chart? tooltip?) with the point values somewhere, though after playing for a short time it becomes obvious. Ditto on the quill to unlock abilities -- I wasn't clear at first where the quill was hovering, but then realized it was a "surround" sort of unlock. Maybe all that's best left up to discovery through play, but it's also the sort of arcade style thing that could be on an attract mode screen.
Glad to see another quality Punkcake game though! The inventiveness, simplicity/purity (not sure what to call it), and polish of even your game jam games is amazing. And your handling of Patreon and pausing of charges regarding releases is so player focused and fair as to almost be criminal (to yourselves)! :)
Looks and feels great, but as Jon pointed out - this typeface... I remember how I loved pixel fonts 20 years ago, but readibility, especially if they are not in words, but as individual letters makes it bit too hard.
100% agree on the font -- I love the game, but this is the first Punkcake game that made me feel it... needs more pixels. The pixelated look is great for most games, but for legibility it hurts. (Is that an R or an A?)
Barring a font change, maybe sorting options could help, because if vowels and consonants were grouped together, it might help with some of the hard to decipher letters.
This game is amazing. I've been playing for 30+ minutes and already look forward to my next run.
The gameplay reminds me a bit of Bananagrams but a LOT more interesting because of the abilities, goals, and placement bonuses. You're constantly weighing tradeoffs in where you want to place your next word - go for more tiles or go for more completion progress? Or maybe search for more abilities?
My only minor complaint is that the pico-8 font can be a bit hard to read at times but you do get used to it.
If you plan to develop this further, a "shuffle hand" button might be nice to help with brainstorming. Also, a "remove all placed tiles" button incase you realized your word attempt was invalid (maybe right click can work for this). Overall, a really solid entry!
Regarding "shuffle hand", another consideration would be a "sort" button which could sort the letters grouping vowels and consonants together, or alphabetically. (Maybe I've played too much Balatro and have its sorting options in mind, ha!)