Games Like Cognomancy

Your mind is your mana.

Cognomancy is a turn-based strategy game in the tradition of Heroes of Might and Magic. Explore an adventure map, build armies, conquer towns, and cast spells in hex-grid tactical combat. But here, magic works differently.

Every spell is a Chinese character. Every character is built from radicals. To cast it, you must know what it means.

Not your character. You.

Select a radical. The game shows you a glyph built from it. Identify it correctly and the spell fires at full power — devastating, precise, exactly what you commanded. Get it wrong and the spell fizzles. There is no mana bar. There is no cooldown. What limits your power is what you actually know.

The deeper you go, the stronger you become.

A basic spell fires when you recognize a single glyph. But the system is compositional. Radicals combine into compounds, and compounds follow logic:

Over one hundred spells are woven through a handful of radicals. A player who has seen fire once casts fire. A player who understands every compound fire appears in, every meaning it touches, commands it.

Spells degrade with use, forcing you to rotate your vocabulary. The magic system is spaced repetition disguised as warfare. You are the spellbook.

Six Factions. Six Doctrines.

Every faction fights differently. Not cosmetically, but structurally.

Iron Order: Formation warfare. Spearmen hold, Crossbowmen fire overhead, Lancers end battles in a single charge. The Kaisergolem anchors the line. Most powerful in open terrain. Most predictable.

Ashlands: Disruption. Fire Imps ignite and vanish. Nagas strike twice and retreat. The Asura Destroyer hits every adjacent hex, ally and enemy alike. They dissolve your formation before you can use it.

Clockwork Assembly: Construct positioning. Steam Turrets fire automatically. Iron Golems absorb while Engineers repair. The Titan Automaton is immune to all spells and repairs itself. No morale to break. No dead to raise.

Primordial Cradle: Nature and attrition. Wolf Packs punish isolated flanks. Vine Stranglers root enemies. Treants regenerate and heal every adjacent ally. Every step into their territory must be earned.

Dread Dominion: Undead persistence. Skeletons reassemble. Ghosts ignore physical attacks. Vampire Lords heal from damage dealt. The Lich King raises soldiers from every corpse. Against an army with no corpses, the engine stops. In every other fight, it cannot be worn down.

Celestial Court: Harmony. Every unit amplifies every other unit. Disciples grow with each spell cast nearby. The Celestial Dragon amplifies hero spells.

One World. Six Campaigns. Six Perspectives.

The same events. Seen from the inside of each faction. The conspiracy that looks like corruption in Campaign 1 looks like survival in Campaign 3. The enemy from Campaign 2 is your employer in Campaign 4.

Nothing is explained. Everything is there to be found.