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Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
Today we bring you Cursed Words v4.12 and some exciting news: Cursed Words is now Steam Deck Verified! ✅
The Steam Deck version includes UI and text adjustments for clarity and readability, and both we and Steam are happy to say that Cursed Words is in great shape for handheld play ✨
Steam Deck support arrives as part of Patch v4.12, which is available now. Alongside verification, this update includes fixes for the final puzzle and adds a 25-letter word to the French dictionary to better support wildcard-heavy builds.
For the full changelog, check out the patch notes below.
And while we're here, we'd like to invite you to join our Discord community! If you use Discord, we'd love to have you with us. It's a friendly place to chat about the game, share your discoveries, discuss strategies, and hang out with fellow word enthusiasts.
Thanks, folks. Have a great week!
Steam Deck-specific font and UI sizes
Added ‘eunoia’, ‘luxembourg’ and ‘vietnam’ to English dictionary
Added ‘anticonstitutionnellement’ to French dictionary
Fixes to final puzzle grid to make sure solve button works and grids are all solvable
First shop biases towards Pin synergy items where possible
Minor wording changes for things related to Steam Deck/PC differences (e.g. avoiding ‘click’)
Blacklisted Arrivals, Departures, Michael’s Book and Shaved Ice from Random Access Memory
Michael’s Book applies score when you submit multiple words with Honeypot
Retro Raider no longer errors with Tin Of Beans/in Chromatic Aberration
Updated description for Busy Schedule
Updated descriptions for incremental items to show increments
REMOVALS
Removed some slurs from dictionary
Removed mouse specific tooltips on Steam Deck
Removed resolution selection from Graphics settings on Steam Deck
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.'Ello 'ello, what's all this then? Why, it's Devlog #2! Take a trip back to May 2025 and join us as we work towards getting our first playable prototype. In this episode, we introduce VOID and SHINY to the game, talk about Michael, and get some integral infrastructure sorted out.
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
This update brings a whole bunch of bug fixes, balance tweaks, and quality of life improvements, including new loading screen tooltips with helpful tips and reminders between encounters.
We’ve also updated a variety of items, interactions, and boss fight behaviours, alongside fixes for achievements, consumables, word tracking, and more.
And one more thing: Cursed Words is back on sale later today with a cheeky 10% discount. Already own the game? Maybe it’s time to gift a copy to a friend as an incredibly early Christmas present.
Loading screen tooltips show after winning an encounter
Added ENBY, ENBYS and ENBIES to the dictionary
Shop biasing now considers your three most common build tags rather than choosing any random build tag from your inventory
Updated consumable tiles, aiming to fix issues with tiles moving at start of grid; error when using Brick; duplication/errors with GOLD consumable tiles
Dialogue and boss fight changes which account for finding GLITCH tiles before entering the Beans boss fight
Stats no longer show wrong dictionary word for uncursed words
Removed retry button from daily puzzle
Final puzzle grid word no longer considered for longest/highest scoring word of run
Limited save backups to 20
Fixed 100% Steam Achievement not being granted immediately when earning final achievement
Showing Nat and Scattered Items unlocks after beating stage 5
Fixed Castle interaction with VOID tiles
Fixed Banana to work correctly with odd number of tiles
Beam Me Up increments Tile Ninja
Luffing Jib Crane made rare
Bar Chart scattering now works with Magnet
Departures, Arrivals and Diving Mask now work in Frankenstein
Retro Raider now randomises colour in Chromatic Aberration/with Tin Of Beans
Frankenstein upgrades show correct colour during Chromatic Aberration/with Tin Of Beans
Made Avocado, Fortune Cookie and Tin Of Beans edible by Mr Hippo (we gave them a can opener)
Unicorn now considered an animal
Wording updates to April Showers, Coin Purse, Depth Limit, Diving Mask, Efficient Recycler, Fried Shrimp, Retro Raider, Rollercoaster, Shelf Life
Las Vegas now pulses relevant jokers
Removed FOID and FOIDS from dictionary
v4.5 comes with plenty of new fixes and a balance change or two, but more importantly, it comes with a few new features that have been often requested. Have a read of the Additions, if nothing else!
Firstly, when submitting cursed words, Michael's chosen word submission is now saved and shown wherever you can see that submitted word. We went back and forth on this for a long time, and there are very good reasons we didn't put this in at release. In fact, originally Michael wasn't even going to tell you the word you submitted. This is a discussion I find interesting enough that I honestly might make a whole video about... But I digress, enough people have asked that we're doing it, but note that it's a setting you need to enable, so go check your game settings if you want it.
Secondly, the in-game menu now shows a Retry button so you can begin a new run with the current character without needing to go via the Character Select menu.
Finally, Escape will open and close settings menus whenever they are available.
Retry button to begin a new run with the same character without returning to the Character Select menu
An opt-in setting to show the "real" words you submitted in your Word History, game wrap-ups and Stats menu
Settings menu can be opened and closed with the Escape key
New dictionary words: JANK and UNEQUIP
Shaved Ice buffed to +0.2
Shield works with Purple tiles
Bullseye is now marked as an Elite quest
Television and Twinkle Toes work in RAM
Items which consider submitted words (e.g. Bar Chart) correctly apply priority when in RAM
Fixed Haunted House removing tile colours
X appears over items on tiles in On Cooldown quest
Beefeater, Bento Box, Bicycle, Slide and Smart Shirt reworded
Michael's Book is ignored by Sewing Needle
Flamingo compatible with Tin of Beans/Chromatic Aberration
Made Down Under clearer about being a x -3 multiplier, not an x - 3 score
Removed JAP(S) from dictionary due to racial slur implications
Foil items do not appear in the shop until you have upgraded your first sticker to level 3
If you're curious how we got here; we did this. Going to try and get these episodes up weekly but you guys keep finding bugs (rude).
Enjoy!
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
We've just posted the first episode of our brand new devlog!
If you're curious about the journey that led us to the game we know and love today... This is where it all started! Come check it out, and drop us a like and a comment if you're enjoying it.
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
Hey folks, a patch to sort out some recently frequently reported bugs has just been uploaded!
Items which look for poker hands have had their descriptions updated to include a more explicit description of what counts as that poker hand
VOID tile scoring has been reworked; the negative modifier is always applied last after all other changes to BASE SCORE
Fixed Nat-H4 not unlocking on stage 6
Fixed beating a Quest with a character unlocking Crowns for them
Fixed Jokers which are scattered over chess pieces retaining some chess behaviour
Cable Car changed to upgrade stickers in your word on submission (thereby removing the consumable tile sticker bug)
Fixed Juice Box and Bucket sometimes overwriting their own scattered cards
Fixed absolutely no typos whatsoever
Told one lie
Many of these bugs had lots of reporters so I will avoid specific shout-outs and probablly accidentally missing people out. Thank you everyone for taking the time to make reports!
Thank you to all of you who took the time to report bugs and share your suggestions. We see them all, there are many discussions within the team, and as I'm sure you've seen, we act on a ton of it. The task list is big right now so our planned changes will come in multiple patches.
The main thing to call out in this patch are a change and a fix to end-of-game stuff. End-of-game meaning something you won't have come across until at least having the 6 main characters unlocked. If you aren't confident you know what this is then avoid spoilers for the first Addition and first Change listed.
Completing stage 5 is now considered a win even if you aren't done yet; you will be granted relevant unlocks
System for retroactively granting the reward for having beaten a zero-Crown run with a character
Fixed an intermittent end-of-game issue where the final grid
was occasionally not solvable, or at least auto-solvable by the button
Nat-H4 is unlocked earlier; it now requires 3 Purple Crowns instead of 6 (or, if you already have 3 Purple Crowns, she will unlock the next time you earn a Purple Crown)
Erupting Volcano description corrected, and made slightly cheaper
Jokers are considered Face Cards
Poker Face description is clearer about requiring cards
Some fixes to when tiles wobble (some currencies and cards not wobbling at correct times)
Safeguarding around failure to find Steam ID to prevent save files disappearing
Graceful fail out (i.e. no game crash) if firewall/security settings prevent the game from generating config files
⭐ Patch Notes v4.1
ADDITIONS
Add accessibility toggle to turn off Reroll reminder pulse
CHANGES
Cactus tiles in Sandy boss fight unaffected by Mirror Ball
Fixed older save files not being compatible with current game
Bones unlocked automatically on load if you have previously won with Sam in the demo
That's right folks, you can grab Cursed Words right now and discover a whole new world of... Cursedness? Cursidity? Cursequences? Don't worry about it, the words don't matter.
Do you remember how our original trailer said there would be 8 characters, 20 challenges and 200 items? Well we went a little zany in the final months of dev, so there are actually 11 characters, 26 challenges and 300 items waiting for you, and maybe one or two secrets too...
✨ Please let us know how you get on with the game, we'll be keeping an eager eye on the Steam reviews. Reviews do not carry over from our demo, so if you've been kind enough to leave a review in the past, you should be able to leave another and let us know how much cooler the full game is now!
Have a cursed day everyone, and enjoy the game!
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
Please note: Purple Crown has been removed from the demo! Crowns have changed in a way that cannot propagate over to the demo. We don't want to confuse future players who try the demo Crown first, which then changes when they get the full game. On that note, if you've done Purple Crowns in the demo, I recommend doing them again at full release... You'll notice it's different!
ADDITIONS
Hungry Snake wrapping affects everything! Tombstone, Saxophone etc...
Progress button in Character Select can suggest Quests as well as characters
∞ can now show as your highest score, but good luck with that in the demo...
Main menu notifications (currently you might get warned about Purple Crown removal)
0 Dang can be achieved with any x0 mult
CHANGES
Luffing Jib Crane nerfed
Mutating DNA reworded
Fixed unintended items being able to show up as the complementary item in the first shop
Fixed chess pieces which have been munched still being considered in line-of-sight checks
Fixed Bubble Tea making some numbers appear wobbly rather than Bunch Of Grapes
Fixed en passant availability being more true to actual chess
Fixed en passant pulsing the wrong tile during the event/erroring when failing to find a tile to pulse
Fixed Rooks defending themselves against Kings with Hungry Snake
Can now rearrange inventory during Capybara boss
...Fixed Hyena boss fight? Maybe?
Fixed data duplication with secret bosses
Fixed consumable tiles not appearing correctly 1 in 10,000 times
Minor fixes to dialogue and selected word preview
Fixed collection softlocking game when filter finds no items
Minor dictionary loading optimization
Fxid variuss typeos
REMOVALS
Purple Crown no longer in demo
Twinkle Toes silenced
Thanks to Natha, Queenie, Dr. Reissenstein, Kit, and Team Playtesters for your extremely helpful reports!
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
And for a long time, one word was missing:
You explored the demo, bent the rules, broke the grids, turned letters into numbers, numbers into symbols, and sometimes… into something we’re still not entirely sure how to describe.
But now, the missing piece is finally here 👇
Every run in Cursed Words is shaped by choices. And so was this game.
To everyone who joined playtests, left reviews on the demo, shared feedback through forms, or dropped messages in Discord...⭐ Thank you!
You didn’t just play the game. You pushed it, questioned it, broke it in ways we didn’t expect and helped us make it better.
A lot of what the game is today comes directly from you!
And don't worry - in the meantime, you can still jump into the demo. A Steam review would mean a lot to us 💜
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
In Cursed Words, everything begins with words… and normally ends with numbers, symbols, and complete chaos 🔢♔♘♙
And now there are even more words to play with.
We’ve just added new dictionaries to the Demo, making the puzzle grids playable in three additional languages:
Spanish
German
French
If you speak one of these languages, you can now try solving cursed grids using your own vocabulary and see how it changes your runs 🧩
Please note that the game interface is not translated yet. We’re currently preparing the UI for localization and hope to have it ready closer to the 1.0 launch.
💬 Share your feedback here in the comments 💬 Or join our Discord community
We read everything every day and your feedback really helps us improve the game.
Happy puzzling, and thanks for helping us make Cursed Words even better 🧩
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
The wait is over. The Cursed Words demo is back and playable again as part of Steam Next Fest!
After a short break, we’ve returned with updates, improvements, and a few surprises waiting beneath the surface. Some things may look familiar, but others have shifted, evolved, or quietly appeared where you might not expect them…
During the downtime, the team has been hard at work polishing and expanding the experience. Here’s a glimpse of what awaits you:
A new secret boss battle
A new playable character
3 new character-specific quests
A mysterious new kind of tile
Numerous optimizations, rebalances, and smaller improvements
Rumours are spreading about a local mahjong champion spotted roaming nearby, eager to test the skills of any explorer bold enough to prove their mastery of Consumable Tiles. Will you be ready for the challenge?
Steam Next Fest is the perfect time to dive back in or experience Cursed Words for the first time. Your feedback helps shape the game considerably as we move closer and closer to full release, so if you enjoy your time in the demo, please consider leaving a review and sharing your thoughts with us.
We’ve been building a lot behind the scenes, and there are still many questions waiting for answers:
Who are the secret bosses?
Who else might join the Secret Syntactic Society?
What lies beyond the fifth floor?
And what exactly is a cursed fairy?
Jump in, explore, experiment, and stay tuned. The full release is getting closer every day.
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
Remember when we temporarily took the demo offline to work on improvements? Well… good news. Updates fully updated. Improvements successfully improved. Words dramatically Cursed. The demo will be available again starting Monday!
We’ve been using this time to refine things behind the scenes, make adjustments, and prepare a better experience. We’re really excited for you to jump back in and see how it feels now.
We’ve also prepared a series of short Devlogs to give you a closer look at the game and its ongoing development, and the first one's already here! So why not take a look while you wait:
As always, your feedback means a lot to us. Once the demo is live again, we’d love to hear what you think! Thank you for sticking with us and helping shape the game ✨
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
A quick heads-up: the Cursed Words demo is still available right now… but won't be forever 👀
If you’ve been meaning to try it and kept telling yourself “I’ll play it later”, this is your sign. The demo will be taken offline on Monday, February 9 for a short break, before returning at the end of the month!
First of all, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who already jumped in, shared feedback, and left positive reviews. We’ve received so many helpful comments and a lot of support from you, and it really means a lot to the team ❤️
We’re taking the demo offline for a couple of weeks to prepare it for Steam Next Fest. During this time we’ll be polishing the experience, adding more content, and introducing a brand new boss on the mysterious 6th Floor...
The demo will return during the last week of February, stronger and more cursed than ever!
✨ If you haven’t played yet, now’s the time. 🧪 If you already played, thank you for helping us shape the game. 📜 Your feedback and reviews genuinely help us make the next version better.
See you soon… and stay cursed 😉
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
This is where theory meets practice. What started as words on paper has now escaped the lab and turned into something unpredictable, broken, and wonderfully cursed. Characters, Stamps, Stickers, Tiles… every run bends the rules a little differently, and no two experiments should feel the same.
If you give the demo a try and enjoy it, we’d really appreciate you leaving a review on Steam.
At this stage, reviews matter more than you might think. They help the game reach new players, tell Steam that these strange experiments are worth showing, and give us incredibly valuable insight into what parts of Cursed Words click and which ones need further mutation. Even a short review makes a real difference.
As always, feedback is part of the process. Tell us what you broke, what surprised you, what strategies felt clever, or what rules you’d like to break even harder next time.
Thanks for playing, testing the limits, and embracing the curse.
Happy experimenting 🧪
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
We’re excited to share that the Cursed Words demo launches on Tuesday, January 27.
This is a big milestone for us, and we want to take a moment to say thank you!
Thank you to everyone who took part in our playtests, shared feedback, reported bugs, and spent time experimenting with the game while it was still being though through. Your input helped us shape Cursed Words and reach this important stage of development.
The demo represents the next step forward, and we’re really looking forward to seeing how you play it, what you break, and what kind of cursed experiments you come up with.
As always, your feedback means a lot to us and will continue to influence where the game goes next. Thank you for being part of this journey.
We’ll see you on January 27.
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has taken part in the Open Playtest so far. We’ve received a lot of valuable feedback, and as you may have already seen, the team have been reviewing it and making fixes and updates based on everything you’ve shared with us.
The playtest will remain open until Friday, so if you haven’t had a chance to try the game yet, now is a great time to jump in.
And if you’ve already played and have thoughts you’d like to share but haven’t done so yet, we’d really appreciate it if you could fill out our feedback form here
If you don’t get a chance to join this playtest, there will be another opportunity to play very soon ;)
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
Ho ho ho! Or H0 H0 H0. Or maybe ♔♘♙? Honestly, at this point we’re not judging.
We just wanted to pop in and wish you a very Merry Christmas and a bright, joyful New Year 🎉 May your holidays be cozy, your snacks plentiful and your word builds absolutely unhinged.
First of all, thank you to everyone playing the Cursed Words playtest.
You’ve broken rules, bent letters, turned words into numbers (and numbers into regrets) and then kindly told us exactly what felt great, what felt weird and what made you stare at the screen whispering “wait… what just happened?”
That feedback means a lot to us and helps shape the game more than any spreadsheet ever could ❤️
To celebrate the season, we’ve also added some festive content to the game.
ADDITIONS
+ Christmas-themed main menu
+ Secret Santa challenge
+ Mystery Gift item (rewarded by Secret Santa challenge)
+ Advent Calendar challenge added to playtest
+ More sound for settings menu
CHANGES
~ Avocado is... different
~ Chess Strategy Guide renamed to Book Of Openings
~ Teapot price reduced from $14 to $9
~ Various fixes to when upgrades show up for items that can be, or have been, upgraded beyond level 3
~ Fixed currency Consumable Tiles
~ Further tweaks to speech bubble pacing
~ Fixed more wording and typos... This note is apparently going to be in every changelog until launch
Expect seasonal surprises, a touch of holiday flair and a few extra opportunities to break the rules in style.
Cursed Words started as “what if Scrabble slowly lost control” and thanks to you, it’s turning into something bigger, stranger and more delightful with every update. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who’s taken the time to play, test and share feedback so far.
We’ll be taking a short break for about two weeks to spend time with family and friends, recharge and give our brains a brief vacation from letters.
We’ll be back and fully online again the week of January 5, ready to jump back into feedback, fixes and whatever strange ideas come next.
Until then, have a wonderful New Year, enjoy the playtest and may your next run work exactly as planned… or at least fail in a very funny way ✨
– The Cursed Words Team
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
Thank you so much for playing the Cursed Words Playtest and for all the feedback you've been sharing with us. The Playtest is still ongoing, and thanks to your reports, suggestions and discussions, we’ve already released two updates that address many of the issues you surfaced.
It's possible that some people at a specific point in their save file might have had access to Quests and now no longer have them until they win one or two more runs. This is expected after the changes we made to the unlock flow, but feel free to reach out if anything seems off.
Below is everything we’ve updated so far!
New sounds on the rewards screen after encounters
The current game version is now visible in the main menu settings
Dialogue boxes that do not require manual dismissal now stay on screen longer when the text is longer so you have enough time to read everything
Corrected the text on some Collection items that were still showing Quest-locked requirements incorrectly
Fixed an issue where the inventory could break if you started dragging an item while input was blocked during grid generation and similar events
Fixed shop advice occasionally recommending a Tile you already own
Adjusted the audio played during unlocks at the end of a run
General audio level tweaks
Fixed several typos
Certain items are now blacklisted from the shop advice system to improve recommendation quality
Removed extra boss slots from the wrap-up panel after completing a 3 or 4 stage game
Added some words to the dictionary so you WISENED wordsmiths can YEET to your hearts' content
Heart On Fire can give a x0 multiplier for a word with no RED tiles, so watch out...
Made Cursed Hyena's explanation text more explicit during Boss Draft
Quests are now unlocked after a win with Sam Gambit rather than Nina Nix, giving players more time with the base game before jumping into them
Fixed the Capitalist achievement so it unlocks after winning a game with $350+ total earnings, instead of immediately upon reaching $350
Fixed a visual bug causing tiles and letters to rapidly pulse across multiple tiles when scoring certain incremental items such as Telescope
Reduced file size on some textures which brings the total game download size down from 6.9 GB → 3.5 GB
Fixed various typos
Removed Unity splash screen at game launch
Thank you for playing, testing, and helping us shape Cursed Words. We can’t wait to hear what you think! ✨
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
Today we are excited to invite you into the world of Cursed Words, a place where language bends, tiles mutate and every run becomes its own unpredictable experiment...
Whether you enjoy clever word builds, explosive synergies or discovering strange new ways to break the rules, this Playtest is your chance to dive in and shape the future of the game together with us.
👉 And when you jump in we'd love to hear your thoughts! Your impressions, ideas and discoveries will help us improve the game and shape future updates.
Cursed Words begins as a simple word game with familiar tiles like BUY or GAME. Then it quickly slips into lunacy as your grid fills with numbers, chess pieces, shiny pink score bombs and other symbols that twist the rules of language.
You build powerful synergies using Stamps and Stickers, face tricky boss encounters and push your score higher with every stage. A normal run features five stages, each one with two encounters and a boss. Beat Stage 5 to win the run, then take on special Challenges and Crown difficulty tiers that redefine the rules and push your creativity.
Each run is shaped by four pillars: your Character, your Sticker upgrades, your Stamp loadout and the consumable Tiles you bring into each fight. Every attempt becomes its own cursed experiment.
For the first time - Cursed Words is available for anyone to play! You can join instantly by pressing the green Playtest button on the store page. This build includes a sizable slice of the core game and plenty of opportunities to create broken, hilarious, and wildly powerful combinations.
Each one comes with a unique Pin that branches into different upgrade paths after every boss. They dramatically change how your runs evolve.
This version includes:
Red and Blue tiles
Void tiles with negative starting values
Shiny pink tiles with a strong base score
Number tiles
Chess piece tiles
More tile types and more characters will arrive in future updates.
Each character features Crown difficulty levels that raise score targets, increase shop prices and introduce tougher decisions.
Each Quest comes with custom parameters and unlockable rewards that add new twists to the way you play.
Use Stamps to shape your grids and Stickers to distort the rules of language. Mix them to create wild synergies, reach impossible scores and discover cursed interactions that only this game can offer.
Play, experiment, break the rules and tell us what you discover. Your feedback will help us shape future characters, challenges, tile types and the path forward for Cursed Words.
Have fun and stay cursed!
Looking for more?Check out the Forklift Interactive publisher page and follow it to see new games and updates as they arrive.
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Cursed Words: The Word Game That Isn't, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Cursed Words: The Word Game That Isn't statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.