How to play, in the order you will need it.
Choose one of the three ways to play. Ordeal is the one the title screen opens on: Three wyrms and the corvid. The full map. If you have played before and not finished, a Resume button appears as well.
| Do this | To |
|---|---|
Arrow keys or WASD | walk |
Space or E | set down what you are carrying |
Tab | open the map of where you have been |
Escape | close the map |
R | begin again |
M | sound on or off |
| On-screen pad | walk and set down, on touch devices |
There are no turns. Wyrmward runs in real time: you, the wyrms and the corvid all move at once. The one moment the world holds still is while the map is open, so you may read it without being eaten.
Each room is a single screen. Walk off an edge and the next room replaces it. You may hold one thing at a time, and you take a thing simply by walking onto it, so crossing the map with your hands full is how most runs go wrong. The spanstone, laid across a wall, lets you walk through it; pick it up by its end posts, not from inside the channel.
You have one weapon and it is also a burden. The Rivenblade routs any wyrm that can see you holding it and kills on contact, but you can carry nothing else while it is in your hands. Each wyrm also flees one particular key:
| Wyrm | Guards | Flees |
|---|---|---|
| Sallow | the Kindled Vessel | the amber key |
| Verdral | the onyx key | the onyx key |
| Ember | the lodestone | nothing but the Rivenblade |
Contact begins a bite rather than ending you: you have about three quarters of a second to pull free before you are swallowed.
Carry the Kindled Vessel into Amber Hold. A working route: take the amber key from the Common and raise Amber Hold, set the key down, go south and down into the unlit warren for the bone key, raise Bone Hold, deal with the wyrm in the hall before you walk past it carrying something you cannot fight with, take the Vessel from the Cell, and carry it home.
If a wyrm holds its bite you are swallowed and the run is over. Press
R to set out again.
The game saves itself as you go, into your browser under the key
tronsoft_wyrmward_save, and offers to resume when you return.
Winning or being swallowed clears that save. If your browser refuses
storage the game still plays; it simply will not remember. R
begins a fresh run at any time.