About the game

LAN: Letters against Numbers (LAN, for short) is an independent game made in Spain by marcojlv. It grew from a simple idea: what if the letters in a notebook had to defend themselves from the numbers falling onto it? That became a game about climbing without end, with a bit of idle, a bit of tower defense and a lot of collecting.

Who makes it

LAN is made by marcojlv, who makes 3D printing videos on YouTube and runs other websites, such as hotend.es, with free tools and comparisons for anyone who prints in 3D. LAN is something else: a spare-time project, one more hobby. The whole game, from the code to the pixels, is a one-person job, and it grows with what its players suggest.

What LAN is

Your letters form a squad at the bottom of a squared page and the numbers come down for them. The letters fight on their own; you help by tapping numbers and upgrading them during the run with the diphthongs beaten numbers drop. When your squad falls you scratch a ticket with the syllables you earned, and every syllable gives copies of its letters to level them up. There are 27 letters, 39 numbers, 5 symbols and 6 bosses, and numbers grow stronger the higher you climb.

How it is built

• One simulation for everything. The game's rules live in a single engine that runs the same on the phone, in the browser and on the server. Each run depends only on its seed and on what you do, so the server can replay it from start to finish and check the result matches what your device says. That is why the leaderboards can be trusted.
• Balanced with simulated players. Before each version, a calibration system simulates, day by day over two months of play, three kinds of player (one who never watches ads, one who watches some and one who watches them all) to check the pacing: when each new letter arrives, how far you climb each day, how long runs last. If something is off, it gets fixed before release.
• Pixel art and chiptune. The graphics are drawn pixel by pixel in the game itself, and the chiptune music is made for it: every moment of the run has its track.
• Really offline. The game keeps the seeds of the next runs in advance, so you can play without a connection and everything is checked once you are back online.

The rules of every update

LAN gets new content every so often, and each version follows fixed rules:

• You never lose what you earned. No letters, levels, currencies or looks. If the balance changes, it changes going forward.
• No purchases. Everything is earned by playing.
• Ads always optional. On Android, rewarded only: you watch one if you want the reward. In the browser, none.
• No spoilers. The game never names a letter you don't own or a number you haven't seen.

Where to play

In your browser, at game.lettersagainstnumbers.com (on iPhone, iPad and computers too, and it installs like an app), and on Android, on Google Play. With your Google account linked, it is the same game everywhere.

Contact

Ideas, bugs, questions or anything else: [email protected]. Players' suggestions have already changed quite a few things in the game.