The game is playable but hard, maybe even unfair. It took me several tries to beat and I think I only won thanks to one unbalanced stat and a possible bug exploit:
- At first I thought Health Regen and Heal for Word were the way to go, but they don't scale well.
- Words sometimes take too long to spawn (until you have 4-5 hits in, then they pick up the pace). And sometimes they don't at all (due to some bug and/or enemy skill).
- Then I got lucky and got some early Damage Resist. Raising it to ~100 (~200 by the end) made the rest trivially easy.
- Discarding the items anywhere made it easier. Just drag and drop near the character's feet. The shop trash area remains active despite visually disappearing, which might be a bug, albeit a good one.
Overall, I think the game has a good concept, style and the beginning of an interesting story. But it could use some polish (e.g., rebalancing, player stat/enemy skill tooltips, bug fixes).
At this point, it's fun to try and fool around with, but it might get frustrating if you truly want to play till the end.