Kitty Letter is a new mobile word game from the creator of The Oatmeal

Matthew Inman, the creator of The Oatmeal webcomics and the popular card game Exploding Kittens launched a free mobile word game called Kitty Letter. Inman describes it as “Scrabble combined with Clash Royale. “

In the game, you slide the letters at the bottom of the screen to form words, which sends small armies of cats marching towards your opponent in an attempt to blow up your base. Meanwhile, your opponent is sending armies back to try to blow up yours. The mechanics are easy to understand and everything was within my thumb’s reach, so I could easily play with one hand.

I played the first levels of Kitty Letterthe story mode, which not only served as a tutorial for game mechanics, but also told a silly, Oat comic story. There were lots of funny drawings, eccentric jokes, and even an extended section where I was forced to hear a person making deer noises to the sound of a smooth Barry White-style soundtrack. If you like The Oatmeal, you will probably like the humor here. (Yes, so I thought it was really fun.)

Best of all, the download is free and the entire single player story mode and multiplayer mode are free to play. I’ll let Inman explain why he made the game free in a blog post:

I hate free games. I hate games built entirely around retaining players and deceiving people into keeping the app open as much as possible. I hate coins, coins, chests and other money printing schemes disguised as fun. For Kitty Letter, I just tried to make the game as fun as possible. This means that sometimes the chapters are long and almost seem to discourage you from playing. There is an entire chapter built around slapping on a trout to thaw it out, and some musical deer that make sexy moans for a long time. I just tried to build a nice, short game, instead of a medicore game spanning months of free garbage mechanics. Fuck withholding. Fuck the game coins. Hug the trout, I say. Embrace the moaning deer.

If you want, you can spend money on in-game cosmetics designed in Inman’s signature style, but they are not required to play.

You can download the game now from the App Store or Google Play.