Rumpledonk’s Ruins

Rumpledonk's Ruins sends you down through a crumbling hand-drawn ruin to the thing that lives at the bottom. The Rumpledonk eats letters. All of them. Spell your way from chamber to chamber, loot the chests, steal the gems and feed it the whole alphabet before you finish it off.

That's the Word Dungeon formula with an appetite. Place letters, spell words, find your way through. Each word connects to the last, pushing you deeper into the ruins. Rumpledonk's Ruins just wants feeding while you do it.

Every letter you place goes on the Monster Food tracker. A to Z, in any order, a point for each. Q, X and Z won't place themselves, so you'll be hunting for words that use them all the way down.

Once it has eaten all 26, you kill it with a word that ends in its mouth. You pick that letter at the start. S is the easiest. M is the hardest.

Every chamber has a locked door. Grab the key, use its letter on the door and move on. Leave a chamber and there's no going back, so take what you want first.

You also pick five monsters from a list of nearly fifty, from Oni and Orc up to Leviathan and Strzyga. Strike their names off letter by letter with the words you place. Harder monsters score more. New players start with the ones worth 1 to 3.

The dungeon is drawn by hand. The Rumpledonk is by illustrator Tom Stratford. A game takes 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how hard you chase the score. Hit 100 and you're a Word Dungeoneer.

Rumpledonk's Ruins comes with five map variants. Print it on A4 or play it on a tablet.

Rumpledonk's Ruins is also in Word Dungeon Series Two, with Dragon's Castle and A Day at the Zoo. All three for £10, saving £5.

Note: This is a print-and-play game. After purchase, you'll receive the files by email. The printed sheets are A4, and unlike the preview images, the files have no background and are designed to use as little ink as possible.