Ruling the world with words can be tricky. Here are some answers to common questions. If you don't see your question here, please reach out to us at help@onyxkeychain.com.
You're in luck! We have a "What's the deal" page that should give you a good overview of what we're up to.
Tap on tiles to make the highest-scoring word you can. You can move side to side and diagonally. The letter that will replace a highlighted tile shows in the bottom right corner. Keep an eye out for tiles with higher gold values. You also get a bonus the longer your word is, no matter what letters you use. And if you make a word with a chest or a key tile, you'll unlock that item!
All the gold you earn is saved to your account. You can use it to unlock heroes. You can also spend gold to level your heroes up, heal them when they're injured, unlock new quests, and more.
Heroes give you bonuses to words. You can see these bonuses on a hero's page. For example, a level 3 Dread Pirate gives you a +5 bonus to the following words: rat, thief, and haul. You can also send your heroes on quests, where they'll earn gold and experience. The more experience they have, the more powerful their bonuses become.
Heroes have five stats that represent their abilities: chatting, economics, luck, power, and stealth. Sometimes they're abbreviated with their first letter. Their stats determine how well they'll do on a quest. Higher stats make them more likely to succeed and less likely to be injured. Don't worry - even if they fail, they'll still earn a little gold and experience. You can also find items for your heroes that boost their stats, and let them take on harder quests to earn a shot at a bigger reward.
You can earn items two ways: as a quest reward, and from opening chests. Items have a level requirement, so you can't put your level 50 item on a level 1 hero. They also have a rarity. Rarer items are more powerful! There are even rumors of mythic items that give word and letter bonuses in the game!
You can get chests and keys from special tiles in the game, or from quest rewards. They have their own rarities, and you need the right rarity of key to open a given chest. Using the key opens the chest, consumes the key and the chest, and gives you some great rewards! Always grab the chest or key tile if you can.
We're really in more of a pre-alpha than true early access, but it means that Codename ONYX is still in development. There are major features that we haven't rolled out yet: leaderboards, friends and messaging, global competitions between factions, monthly rewards, and secret words and achievements, to name a few. We're also planning a player's council so you can help shape the future of the game.
There will come a time when money enters the conversation. This is a labor of love, but it's still labor, and we need to earn money to support the game the way we want to. But we've seen monetization destroy too many great games. We won't do that to Codename ONYX. When the time comes, we promise to put the game first and money second.
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