Ord.

About

Ord. is a single-player Role Playing game that uses a minimalist approach to storytelling with only three words at a time. The game features five unique stories, minimalist art, text, and sound, and has won numerous critical awards and industry honors for its innovative approach to narrative. Prepare to laugh, cry, and be intrigued by this text adventure game.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player Play through the game's story or campaign solo

92%

Audience ScoreBased on 163 reviews

story17 positive mentions

music3 negative mentions

Ord offers a unique and engaging storytelling experience through its minimalist three-word format, allowing players to use their imagination.
The game is humorous and charming, providing a fun and addictive gameplay loop with multiple endings and scenarios to explore.
At its low price, Ord delivers a surprising amount of content and replayability, making it a worthwhile purchase for fans of text-based adventures.

The game suffers from repetitive trial-and-error mechanics, where players often die from seemingly random choices, leading to frustration.
Some achievements are bugged or difficult to obtain, which can detract from the overall experience for completionists.
The lack of save mechanics and checkpoints can make progress tedious, especially in longer stories like 'Foul Things,' which can feel overly punishing.

story
86 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
77%
3%
The game's storytelling is characterized by a minimalist approach, using only three words at a time to convey narratives, which encourages player imagination and engagement. While the first few stories are well-received for their creativity and pacing, the fourth story, "Foul Things," is criticized for being overly long, poorly written, and filled with frustrating RNG elements, leading to a repetitive experience. Overall, the game offers a unique and experimental storytelling experience, though it suffers from inconsistencies in quality across its various narratives.
- “Plus, the simplicity of storytelling by using only three words at a time gives you more room for imagination and quick pacing at the same time, so it's easy to indulge in and quite addictive.”
- “Expert usage of minimalism allows the player to fill in the blanks, creating a sense of story rarely seen in games.”
- “With just one word and two one-word choices on screen, the story plays mostly in your mind, yet manages to somehow still be compelling.”
- “With each increasingly difficult story, more baffling decisions and more RNG-locked content or padding/time-wasting are added into the mix, culminating in 'Foul Things' (Ord's fourth story), which is not only poorly written at times, to the point you barely know what's happening, it's also incredibly long, padded, filled to the brim with RNG elements and moon logic: such as blocking a door from closing by throwing a glass bottle and jamming it.”
- “Unfortunately, the fourth story ('Foul Things') is the polar opposite and outright horrible.”
- “My only issue with the game is that it eventually just becomes remembering which option doesn't get you killed, and then just repeatedly dying and restarting in order to push the story further.”
humor
15 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is widely praised for being both clever and entertaining, with many reviewers highlighting its silly and absurd scenarios that enhance replayability. While some situations may feel unfair or tedious, the overall experience is described as funny, charming, and filled with creative storytelling that keeps players engaged. The minimalist approach to dialogue adds to the humor, making it a delightful and amusing experience for those seeking a good laugh.
- “The humor is dumb but brilliant, and because of the gigantic amount of endings and stuff to discover, you're almost never getting bored: all of the stories are set in a different setting and feature a different type of character. In one of them, you play some kind of god who creates a world as they imagine; in another, you play an adventurer trying to defeat a warlock, featuring a lot of bizarre and hilarious scenarios that mostly appear randomly on your journey, increasing the replay value even further.”
- “A funny little novelty game that's cheap, inoffensive, and worth your time if you want a good laugh.”
- “It manages to be silly, funny, and interesting, and it just goes to show that a story can be created in as few words as possible.”
gameplay
15 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
60%
20%
The gameplay is characterized as a minimalist text adventure focused on choice, featuring a trial-and-error mechanic that can lead to frustrating dead ends and RNG-based events. While the low price offers good value for the hours of gameplay, the lack of save mechanics and community support detracts from the overall experience, making it feel more like a storytelling tool than a fully engaging game. Despite some interesting mechanics and replayability, many players find it difficult to stay invested in the grind to complete each story.
- “The core of the gameplay loop is comprised of choices.”
- “Other gameplay elements include dead ends that reset your playthrough, a certain randomness which events are drawn from a pool (adding some replayability) and a completion rating for each story (basically an achievement tracker).”
- “Simple trial-and-error mechanics but a surprisingly giant-feeling world makes the gameplay engaging.”
- “Unfortunately, the game's lack of community and amateurish developer decisions, such as no save mechanics and RNG-based events that are required for certain achievements, while ever more 'difficult' official stories with new achievements get released by the devs over time, keep it from being something special.”
- “This is honestly more of a storytelling tool, but the gameplay might qualify as a very unforgiving minimalist text adventure.”
- “At first, I was frustrated that I couldn't progress far with the story (I don't know, probably I didn't understand the three-word mechanic and blindly rushed too much) and uninstalled it.”
graphics
14 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
21%
57%
21%
The game features a minimalist aesthetic with no visuals beyond text on a black screen, yet it manages to create an immersive experience through simple graphical effects like rain. While some players appreciate the aesthetic appeal of its minimalism, others may find the lack of traditional graphics and music limiting. Overall, the graphics serve the game's concept well, emphasizing storytelling over visual spectacle.
- “Occasionally some graphical filters/effects (rain, etc.) can provide immersion.”
- “Personally, I found it aesthetically appealing in its minimalism, but many may not.”
- “The graphics are also very simple with some slight effects to give the game some ambiance.”
- “There are no visuals to this visual novel, just a black screen with the words.”
- “As you can already tell by the store screenshots, this game has an incredibly minimalist aesthetic.”
replayability
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
14%
43%
The game offers significant replayability due to its random event generation, diverse storylines, and numerous endings, which keep the experience fresh and engaging. Players can explore different characters and scenarios, enhancing the fun and variety with each playthrough. However, some users found the replay value lacking, indicating a mixed reception on this aspect.
- “Other gameplay elements include dead ends that reset your playthrough, a certain randomness from which events are drawn (adding some replayability) and a completion rating for each story (basically an achievement tracker).”
- “The humor is dumb but brilliant, and because of the gigantic amount of endings and things to discover, you're almost never getting bored. All of the stories are set in different settings and feature different types of characters. In one of them, you play some kind of god who creates a world as they imagine; in another, you play an adventurer trying to defeat a warlock. The game features a lot— and I mean a lot— of bizarre and hilarious scenarios that appear (mostly) randomly on your journey, increasing the replay value even further.”
- “I have spent quite a few hours on this game, and even the replay value is quite intriguing, to say the least.”
- “Other gameplay elements include dead ends that reset your playthrough, a certain randomness in which events are drawn from a pool (adding some replayability) and a completion rating for each story (basically an achievement tracker).”
- “The humor is dumb but brilliant, and because of the gigantic amount of endings and things to discover, you're almost never getting bored. All of the stories are set in different settings and feature different types of characters. In one of them, you play some kind of god who creates a world as they imagine; in another, you play an adventurer trying to defeat a warlock. There are a lot - and I mean a lot - of bizarre and hilarious scenarios that appear (mostly) randomly on your journey, increasing the replay value even further.”
- “Surprisingly replayable?”
music
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
29%
29%
43%
The music in the game is minimal, with a lack of a traditional soundtrack; instead, it features repetitive one-note sounds that can become melodic as players find their rhythm. While some users appreciate the subtle musical chimes and color effects that enhance the experience, others note that the background music remains unchanged throughout gameplay, leading to a somewhat monotonous auditory experience. Overall, the music contributes to the atmosphere but may not satisfy those seeking a more dynamic soundtrack.
- “The musical chimes and subtle color effects elevate the experience as well.”
- “While this game doesn't really feature a soundtrack since there's no music, the one-note sounds that accompany the words start to feel pretty harmonic and melodic once you've found your rhythm with the game.”
- “There is music in the background, but it never changed throughout my playthrough.”
- “While this game doesn't really feature a soundtrack since there's no music, the one-note sounds that accompany the words start to feel pretty harmonic/melodic once you've found your rhythm with the game.”
- “This is a great value for the price; for a simple concept, it's explored very well. I was impressed by how suspenseful it could be without much graphics or music.”
grinding
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be tedious and repetitive, often requiring multiple resets and encounters with low chances of success. While some enjoy the creativity and humor of the game, the need to repeatedly navigate through previously seen scenarios to achieve completion can lead to boredom, especially for completionists.
- “Filling the completion rating requires quite a bit of grinding, as there are some pretty obscure choices to make and low-chance encounters to find, leading to lots of boring resets.”
- “This is text-based die-and-retry, very tedious and boring.”
- “I'm a completionist, so sometimes trying to get specific achievements or 'fix where I went wrong' only to play the same scenario over and over waiting for the right random event to occur is tedious, but overall this game has a lot of creativity and fun humor to keep the player going.”
atmosphere
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The game features a minimalist atmosphere that effectively conveys diverse moods across its five adventure stories, ranging from RPG to horror. Despite its simple design of black backgrounds and white text, it utilizes subtle sound effects and text modifications to enhance the atmosphere, creating a unique experience for each scenario. The overall ambiance is casual and relaxing, complemented by charming comedic elements.
- “Each of these scenarios manages to have a unique atmosphere and each comes with a multitude of different endings and achievements.”
- “The sound is fairly minimal, and adds nicely to the simple and relaxing atmosphere of the game.”
- “Despite this premise and only featuring black backgrounds, white font, and one-note sounds whenever a word is revealed and/or clicked, the game manages to cleverly convey changes in atmosphere and mood by adding simple effects to the text or slightly modifying said sounds.”
- “Each story has quite a different atmosphere.”
- “Whilst being casual and keeping on a minimalist atmosphere, this game gives us 5 adventure stories varying from classic RPG to world-creation simulation to horror escape game.”
emotional
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Reviews indicate a mixed response to the emotional aspect of the game; while some players feel it lacks a strong emotional connection, others appreciate its depth and ability to evoke feelings, albeit at a slow pace.
- “Somehow it manages to be really emotional and contain depth despite going at the pace of three words at a time.”