I feel like some animations to guide the players eye to what was happening would have gone a long way, but this is already looking like an incredible amount of work, so understandable why those were omitted.
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Wordless War's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| I appreciate the art/visual style | #43 | 3.289 | 3.289 |
| I would buy a longer/commercial version of this game | #49 | 2.044 | 2.044 |
| I appreciate the sound design and/or music | #52 | 2.956 | 2.956 |
| I appreciate the game-feel (responsiveness of interactions) | #57 | 2.578 | 2.578 |
| I appreciate the mood/atmosphere | #61 | 2.978 | 2.978 |
| I find this game's challenge/puzzles interesting or compelling | #63 | 2.111 | 2.111 |
| Overall | #70 | 2.460 | 2.460 |
| This game was intuitive and self-explanatory | #92 | 1.267 | 1.267 |
Ranked from 45 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Jam Entry Confirmation
Wordless War
The Team
Lazyanttu - Programming, UI
LunaTheMoonGirl - Graphics
Xinotine - Vocalist, playtester
Userkaffe - QA
Other Credits
Some of the games' sound and music were sourced from Pixabay with their permissive license. Some music, like the main menu theme, and sound effects were completely made by our team. Many music pieces were further edited and mixed.
Comments
Thanks for playing!
I'll "humble up" and add a few words after the jam and improve the presentation. It was fun to try this as a challenge, but it was too hard to pull off! I plan to improve this game after the jam based on the useful feedback.
I think it has depth, with the 6 unique factions having different play styles; they are not just reskins of each other.
I enjoyed it once I got into it. Very ambitious given the jam rules. Tutorial provides a set of actions for the player to copy in a real game but doesn't really give much else, it tells you what to click but doesn't highlight what those actions do (gaining gold could highlight the gold counter for example). 4x players will spend the time to learn but a lot of players would be completely clueless.
Submitted
Collaborative JamHard nut ^^. Cool idea with needed more time to produce, like animated icons, gifs, some small numbers or if dots, countable pieces, then make them more informative, like dollar, gun, people etc. It needs more animations of the actions on the map to be more intuitive as well.
Submitted
BinRun!I like what I'm seeing, but I don't understand what I'm seeing. Could be really cool but seems like a hard one to pull off for this jam.
Submitted
Interdimensional Elevator OperatorThis is exactly my type of game and I love the visuals, music, SFX, pretty much everything about this is super well done. However, this was not the jam to present this type of game, as I dont know what is going on.
Submitted
Show Dont TellDoing a strategy game like this without any words or numbers is crazy ambitious! Unfortunately I have to say it didn’t work for me at all and I was hopelessly confused. Which is unfortunate because the overall presentation looks very polished.
Submitted
Untitled Mole GameExcellent presentation, lots of (presumed) depth, and a lot of thought clearly went into this. Unfortunately, I couldn't really understand what was going on. Some of the basics (like splitting my troops, moving to a new location) etc were somewhat easy to infer, however this amount of depth and mechanics here seem to be better suited for a game that actually uses words and numbers. It'd be cool to see a quick reskin of this game with some words to see how it plays for another occasion
I've got your game timestamped in this group of playtesting videos
Submitted
Lil Guys (IGC CollabJam 2026 entry)Thanks for the playtesting video; it was very enlightening to see how it went and what caused the wrong kind of confusion! That helped a lot to understand the issues.
Yes, you are correct. I am actually planning to reskin the game with UI and symbol improvements, and some text additions. I will still keep the faction mechanics and strategies partially hidden (it is part of the puzzle to decipher what they do), but currently, wrong things are causing confusion, like "what happens in battles", "how to move units", and "what these are". The mystery should be at a deeper level, not at the surface.
Indeed, this game couldn't be "wordless", but the jam restriction pushed it towards elegance, where it could be "almost" wordless; by contrast, games in the 4X/strategy genres usually have very large amounts of text and symbols.
Thanks for the video!
seems like you built something really deep for such a jam length so congrats on that! I couldn't really figure out what things meant though. If the tutorial is intimidating it needs a rethink
Submitted
Turn 'em all!This was very ambitious, looks very good, but unfortunately I could not figure out how to play. I think my tutorial got bugged out at one point because it kept asking me to click the forward button but nothing happened after clicking it. I got the concept, and maybe given a lot of time I could have eventually puzzled things out, but it'd require a ton of trial and error.
Submitted
Sky Island ToursIncredible that you guys were able to achieve a game like this in two weeks, kudos!
Overall, I think I've spent around 30min or more playing it until I got a victory. The tutorial doesn't clarify much, at first I didn't understand how to move the troops and just skipped the tutorial. Skipping it didn't help, my first run was a very quick loss.
After understanding the basics here's what I've noticed:
- I have no idea what's the difference between level 1, 2 or 3 troops but getting level 3 is a must so that I can win every fight
- all the fights I didn't know which attack option did, so I just went with the highest I had available
- eventually, I got the impression that whoever attacks first has a massive advantage so I just went full aggro without much planning. It worked I think
Good game
Submitted
Stone SoupI can give you a hint: the level of units depends on the faction. They gain a minor combat bonus from higher levels, but typically, each faction's different-tier units start acting in different ways, either in macro or in combat capabilities. They also gain typically more slots for attachments on higher tiers.
The highest can be an okay strategy; typically, you have 2-3 options to choose from. There is usually one with the most raw power, and some with utility value (such as allowing/preventing retreat, destroying enemy attachments, etc.). Going with the highest power is not wrong.
Do you mean attack in the strategic map or in the tactical map? In combat, there is no advantage to the attacker. The defender has the advantage that the attacker must select a combat tactic first, and the defender can see what the attacker chose. But no numeric difference. Some factions may have a tactic that is effective against enemy bases, a rare attacker advantage.
Thanks for the insights!
Super impressive and ambitious! I tried to do the tutorial and that really confused me but once I jumped in and started pressing buttons to figure things out by the end of the round it had mostly clicked. I ended up winning, certain symbols and such still don't make sense to me and I found it worked pretty well to just throw troops at the enemy and pray for a win. Solid visuals and sounds to match and a good amount of signifiers to help guide. Awesome work!
Submitted
Day in the Woodscan someone make a civ like without text? sure. Can every faction be unique? Yeah... Should the icons that pack the most meaning be locked to those factions while other icons that represent resources be stars and triangles? I don't thing so, but then again I suspect that each faction was doing something specific that their icon represented... I look forward to the post jam version that has words to help the iconography along. I didn't hate this experience - there was a sense of sanctification in figuring out the smallest bit of what was going on and that satisfaction drove me to play longer than I originally thought I would.
Submitted
Magical Girl BallThanks for the feedback! You are correct: the icons need a rework to communicate more effectively. I am actually planning to make post-jam edits with some level of text. It will still not spoil what the factions are or what they do, but will tell you how to play and what the different results are.
My vision is a game where the mystery is what the factions are, what they do, and what strategy to use. Not what the UI does, what a symbol means, or what happened in combat, etc.
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