If Letters Had Pants, Would They Wear Them Like This? 👖
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Find words in a grid of letters. Get the fanciest (and most combo-friendly) pants for your letters. Unearth objects lost to time. And build the best museum the world has ever seen.
Make words that let you make words
Find words in a randomized grid of letters. The used letters will leave empty spaces, which the other letters can bridge, allowing for words that weren't possible before, over larger and larger areas.
Your score depends on both the length of the word, and the size of the area it spans. Make longer words over bigger areas to score more points and reach the level's goal before the timer runs out!
But it's also a roguelite?
If you manage to complete the level, you will be presented with 3 pairs of pants for 3 different letters. Pants give unique bonuses to letters, a letter can be worth more, or maybe it multiplies the whole word’s value, or maybe it gives you bombs or does other things!
And there's a museum involved??
As you dig through the letters, you also dig through the dirt. Beneath the earth you will find objects lost to time. (and to their owners) Uncover these sometimes-precious items, sell them, and expand your museum, then place the items in the museum and unlock new gameplay modifiers as the museum’s collection completes!
Plays entirely with the mouse. An average run may last 15 to 30 minutes.
You may play with the English, French, or Spanish dictionary.
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This game was partially funded on Patreon by people like you!
Our 3€-per-month Patreon subscription gives you our games as they come out, starting with the last game that came out when you subscribe. At this time, that means this game!
If you have the means, subscribing for 5€ per month makes your name appear in the credits of the games that come out while you are subscribed, and gives you the OST of the games on Bandcamp. For 10€ per month, you also get access to a Discord channel where we frequently post news, articles and other resources we find interesting or helpful.
The games are given out as Itch keys and Steam keys to be redeemed on our website. The games initially release on Itch, and then come to Steam a bit later. When the game releases on a platform, the corresponding key appears. You can cancel your subscription at anytime and it won't revoke your game keys.
This game is currently an Itch exclusive. But it will come out on Steam eventually. If you feel so inclined, wishlisting If Letters Had Pants there would be very helpful to us!
Buying the game here on Itch, or getting it through our Patreon subscription, will get you a Steam key when it releases there.
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Discord
If you'd like you can come to our Discord to share your progress and compare longest words and best combos!
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, you can request a press key using this form! We've also 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$!
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- Follow our Bluesky!
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Changelog:
Quickpatch v1.2c: (19/05/2025)
- Fixed the museum always showing "100% complete".
Quickpatch v1.2b: (17/05/2025)
- Fixed a crash on starting a new run after going beyond level 1.
- Fixed a crash with the Cursed Pants.
- Fixed a crash on going too far in the museum with the keyboard.
- Going backwards in the museum now slides the exhibits to the right.
Patch v1.2: (16/05/2025)
- Added the Streamer favour, giving you time to look at chat.
- Added the Prowess favour, for the experienced word finder.
- Added 3 new pants.
- Reworked and broke the Water Pants into two other new pants.
- Added some 2000 words to the game's English dictionary.
- Consonent and vowel multipliers no longer multipy each other.
- Reworked the price modifications of all the favours to be more generous overall.
- Reworked the score goal progression.
- Mushroom now take one more word to grow.
- Enunciation triggers now cost 1 second off the timer per effect mimed.
- Added a completion indicator at the top of the museum plan.
- You can now navigate the museum with the left and right keys.
- Finding objects during scoring now takes less time and uses the scoring time acceleration.
- Now communicating visually that clicking during scoring accelerates the scoring animation.
- Values going up now also accelerates as successive pants trigger.
- A click started during the scoring animation will no longer suddenly become valid when that animation is done.
- Making another word is now allowed earlier after a previous one.
- Reworked the way pants are shown on gameover when there are over 12.
- You can now keep on playing if you get to the point where no more pants are available for your run.
- Now correctly pausing the timer when the goal has been reached.
- Limited the depth you can dig to 32 layers below the last cleared layer to avoid visual glitches.
- Added some helpful tips to the black screen after the Punkcake intro, while the rest of the game loads.
- Fixed the scrolling of the objects getting stuck on the gameover screen.
- Fixed the 'new' icon always showing on all objects when entering the museum.
- Fixed a crash on using boosted Cursed Pants.
- Fixed weird behaviour when using two '&' at once.
- Fixed a bug where the favour unlock animation would flash all the buttons on that menu.
Patch v1.1: (13/05/2025)
- Added 5 new objects.
- Made the mushrooms a little less powerful and unupgradable.
- The museum now displays its existing possessions before its inexistant ones.
- Now showing a little icon next to objects that were recently added to the museum.
- Fixed an issue where a collected object would fail to appear on the gameover screen, and then crash the game when you clicked "Sell All".
- Fixed a bug where the Sell All button money amount did not match what was actually left to sell.
- Fixed the list of items in the museum duplicating itself every time you went into the museum.
Quickpatch v1.0b: 12/05/2025
- Fixed a random crash on selling things at the gameover.
- Fixed inconsistency between Hatter Pants description and Hatter Pants effect.
- Objects you have just sent to the museum should now appear properly in the museum right away.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $6 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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Uhh, I dug into the underworld or something.
I started getting weird terrain geometry after reaching level 29 and it all went downhill (huehue) from there. I dug through the bedrock (black layer) to reach THE LIGHT (white layer), all the while the rest of the terrain was having a really bad day.
By the way, mushrooms are absolutely busted. I played for 3-4 hours straight that run and I wanted to lose so I could stop, but the shrooms wouldn't let me.
game crashed! i think maybe it was an issue of trying to capture two worms at once? shame really, was getting pretty far with that run!
heres another if its too small to read:
Rather fun but also rather difficult. I have trouble making words longer than 4 letters long. The saving grace for me is the size mechanic, if you clear out the middle of the board you can make short words over it for more points.
In other news, my game just crashed by digging up an item at the same time the timer ended and trying to click and speed it up. On a good run too.
Yo I've been loving this game. I have noticed though there are some words that don't seem to be in the game? For example, using the English dictionary the word 'rawr' wont let me score it?
edit: I came back to say its so embarassing that internet slang has infected me so; rawr is not a proper english word. Nevermind, 10/10 no notes games perfect keep it up hahaha
Hello, my new game was released today, try it now!
https://sullydev.itch.io/code-zin-esper-arena
Is it possible for to end up with an impossible board? (IE, no more moves can be made) I'm curious if the game can automatically detect that or not, as far as I can tell it can't tell if a board is impossible or not, but maybe I'm just missing an obvious word
In the midst of developing a similar game, nonetheless I love the style and concept of your game!
I am a big fan, i buy all of your games. Honestly, King With A Shotgun is such an underrated game.
Hi. I just want to know how your game safe from File sharing, like no one can share game they buy to others? If you set that I need some some advice!
Having a lot of fun with the game and I absolutely adore it! I'm just commenting to share a crash-bug I encountered on a playthrough :)
If Letters Had Pants error
ERR [string "code/game.lua"]:864: attempt to perform arithmetic on global 'i' (a nil value)
Stack traceback:
[string "code/game.lua"]:150: in function <[string "code/game.lua"]:148>
[string "code/game.lua"]:5354: in function 'upd_timers'
[string "code/game.lua"]:1366: in function 'foo'
[string "code/game.lua"]:864: in function 'foo'
Hi! Thanks for the kind words and for the report! This was fixed in the quickpatch that went up on Saturday. You can download the new version and move your save folder from the previous version to this new one. :) (or use the Itch app, it will update the game automatically and it should preserve your save!)
Hi! Just started playing and I have some questions:
- When I open the museum, it says that it is 100% completed, but it is empty. I also found 2 treasures and the game said I had 0 spots available, then I found another treasure and I could save it to the museum. Very confusing imho.
- A lot of unusual 2 or 3 letter words are accepted, maybe acronyms that I do not know (what is EL?), is this normal? Moreover, finding normal words seems very hard.
Thanks!
Edit: the more I play the better I get. Good game! Do you plan on adding more vocabularies? None of the three available ones are my native language.
Ahh the 100% complete on the museum is due to a mistake in the code, thanks for alerting us to it. I just uploaded a very quick patch for it.
For the museum spots, if you look to the bottom-right corner on the gameover screen, you will see how much money you need to unlock the next spot in the museum. This all happens automatically as you sell objects. As soon as you reach the price of the next spot, it is unlocked and you can use it to keep an object, from the run that just ended or from a next one!
The game uses a dictionnary similar to that of online Scrabble for example. So yes quite a few unusual short words are allowed. Extremely few acronyms are actually allowed, mostly it's words that are specific to a region or even a time's dialect. Feel free to Google confusing words with "meaning" to get their definition if you're curious. In any case, you can use those shorter words to clear the way for longer words. Since letter selection can bridge gaps in the grid, this actually the best way to make bigger words over bigger areas, which is what scores the most points.
I hope this helps!
This is a brilliant game, well done!
Unfortunately, after playing through the game 2 times, checking the museum, and starting a new game after toggling some of the new starting options on and off, I got this error:
If Letters Had Pants error
ERR [string "code/ground.lua"]:1572: attempt to index a nil value
Stack traceback:
[string "code/game.lua"]:213: in function <[string "code/game.lua"]:197>
[string "code/game.lua"]:321: in function 'drw_level'
[string "code/game.lua"]:3097: in function 'drw_grid'
[string "code/ground.lua"]:1572: in function 'clear_dig'
This was on Win10, most recent version as of May 16th. You've got a great thing here, and I hope this helps make it better!
Thanks for the kind words and for the crash report!
This is fixed in the quickpatch that just went up!
Awesome game, love it! Will probably spend next months playing it instead of Balatro!
After downloading recent version I've got an error when reaching the end of the museum:
```
ERR [string "code/museum.lua"]:102: attempt to index a nil value
Stack traceback:
[string "code/game.lua"]:181: in function <[string "code/game.lua"]:148> [string "code/museum.lua"]:460: in function 'upd_museum' [string "code/museum.lua"]:233: in function 'upd_sidebar' [string "code/museum.lua"]:102: in function 'sel_slot'
```
Hope it helps!
Also got this error, when starting a game with prowess modifier:
```
ERR [string "code/ground.lua"]:1572: attempt to index a nil value
Stack traceback:
[string "code/game.lua"]:213: in function <[string "code/game.lua"]:197>
[string "code/game.lua"]:321: in function 'drw_level'
[string "code/game.lua"]:3097: in function 'drw_grid'
[string "code/ground.lua"]:1572: in function 'clear_dig'
```
Thanks for the love and for the bug reports! Both of these are fixed in the new quickpatch that just went up!
Awesome, thanks for the quick fix! Looking forward to new juicy pixel games!
Deleting comments will definitely help this game get better.
4 sumone woo kant spel wel, itwaz a blast!
I was a little slow from the jump understanding the area mechanic, but afterwards I was churning out dirty words like nobody's business. The soundtrack was very nice and there were some bops that notably simulated my cranium with word crafting juice when I needed it the most. Excited to work on completing my museum!
If you're curious about gameplay, here's my playthrough:
Hey Michael, I’ve loved seeing you play this game your reactions are gold 😂 I’m working on a unique 3d tower defense game called Grandmother Defence. it’s a third person but with hidden objects mechanics. Would love to see your take on it! It’s up on itch.io here https://ahmednaboot.itch.io/grandmother-defence
goo
I love it! I'd still like the option for a mode without a timer though - maybe reduce sell prices by 80% while it's active, but give us the option. At later levels the challenge is to get to the point total without running out of letters anyway.
Another possible mode could enable backwards spelling - so if you start dragging right-to-left or bottom-to-top, the letter order is reversed, giving more freedom and possibilities to find words - for example if you have "STNAP", dragging from the P to the S will count as "PANTS".
A small thing that annoyed me is that when you make a word, you can't start dragging the next one while the animation and scoring is going on, you have to wait, and when it ends, if your mouse button is down, it starts the selection immediately, which has screwed me over a couple of times by making a shorter word than I wanted to, because I started dragging earlier.
Also a few words without vowels like "TV", "UV" aren't in the dictionary, and I think they should. Once you run out of vowels, it gets tough.
And the museum slots are very expensive. Either make their price fixed (non-increasing), or lower it drastically, so you can at least get a good amount of slots early. Currently it is too grindy.
Here is my best run so far:
On macos 15.4.1, it works fine with trackpad, but with mouse (magic mouse), there's a .5s delay when clicking.
Have yet to play the game, but the style reminds me so much of older retro pc games! I like it!
OMG why doesn't this have a nudity warning! All those pant-less letters!
😳
very good