Letter Rain – a category word game for your Twitch chat

How a Letter Rain round works

The screen shows a letter and a category – say, "Animals with P". The timer starts right away. Your viewers type their answers straight into Twitch chat like any other message, and the game reads along, checking every word against the category's word list the moment it arrives. Valid answers pop up on the game screen together with the player's name and points.

There's no starting word, and unlike Wortkette (Word Chain), the letter stays the same for the whole round. It's always drawn from letters that have plenty of words in the chosen category, so nobody gets stuck with something hopeless. The next round then brings a different letter.

1. Letter and category appear. For example "Animals with P" – the clock is already ticking.
2. Chat goes wild. Panda, parrot, penguin, pelican, puma, porcupine – any matching word counts as long as nobody has typed it yet.
3. The live ranking updates. Gold, silver and bronze show who's in the lead while the round is still running.
4. Time's up – or the list runs dry. The results screen shows how many words chat found, who did best, and what else would have worked.

Capitalisation doesn't matter, and neither do accents. Typical chat filler like "lol" is simply ignored, and offensive terms are never accepted or displayed.

Round length: Short, Normal or Long

When you set up Letter Rain, you enter your channel, pick a category and choose a round length: Short is 30 seconds, Normal is 60 and Long is 90. If none of those fit, the settings let you pick anything from 15 to 300 seconds under "Letter Rain: time per round".

Most streams run a few seconds behind, so the game compensates for stream delay (3 seconds by default, adjustable). That way the countdown your viewers see matches the time they actually have. A round ends when the timer hits zero, or earlier if chat manages to find every word for that letter.

First to type it wins: scoring and combos

The core rule is simple and a little ruthless: every word only counts for the person who types it first. If someone beats you to "penguin" by half a second, that one's gone. It keeps chat moving fast, and it rewards players who dig for the less obvious answers that nobody else thought of.

Combos reward players who keep the hits coming. Land another valid word within 5 seconds of your last one and you get +1 on top; each further quick hit adds one more, capped at +5 per word. Once a streak reaches three, the game shows it on screen, which tends to make everyone else type faster.

Tip for your viewers: length pays. In "Food with C", "cauliflower" earns 11 points, while "cake" gets the base 5.

Combos even have their own achievements: "Combo king" for a 5-combo and "Combo god" for a 10-combo in Letter Rain. Every point scored in chat also counts as XP towards levels that carry across streams – the Twitch chat games overview explains how levels and achievements work.

Live ranking and results screen

A live ranking runs alongside the round, with the top three marked gold, silver and bronze. In a busy chat this turns into a proper neck-and-neck race, which is great material for commentary while the clock runs down.

After the round, the results screen shows the number of words chat collected, flags a new record if one fell, highlights the longest word and names the top player with their score. Underneath, "These would have worked too:" lists a few answers nobody came up with – usually the moment chat collectively groans.

Scores go into your channel's local leaderboard, either for the current week or all-time, and records are kept per category and per game. Letter Rain has its own records, separate from Word Chain. You can open them any time from the leaderboard in the game.

How it compares to classic category games

If you've ever played a pen-and-paper game where you fill in a city, a country and a river starting with the same letter, or one of the scattergories-style games built on the same idea, you'll get Letter Rain instantly. A few things are deliberately different so it works in a Twitch chat:

The English word lists are big enough to keep things interesting: over 17,000 animals, more than 18,000 cities and over 11,000 foods, plus Countries, Plants, Jobs, Rivers and an Everything category built on the public-domain ENABLE word list.

Example rounds

To give you a feel for it, here are a few letter-and-category combinations with answers the game accepts:

• Food with C: carrot, cheese, cherry, curry, cookie, cake, cauliflower
• Countries with M: Mexico, Malta, Mali, Morocco, Mongolia
• Rivers with T: Thames, Tiber, Tigris
• Jobs with D: dentist, doctor, driver
• Cities with S: Sydney, Seattle, Seoul

If chat types a word the game doesn't know yet, it gets reported so the lists can keep growing.

Tips for streamers

• Warm up with Short. 30-second rounds are a quick filler between other segments; Long works well for huge categories like Animals or Cities.
• Try a small category. Countries only has 218 entries, so chat can actually clear out a letter completely. The round then ends early, and it feels like a team win.
• Let your mods run it. Mods and the broadcaster can control the game from chat: !wk start starts a new round, !wk countries starts one with a different category, !wk skip starts a fresh round with a new letter and !wk stop ends the round.
• Keep trolls in check. If a word slips through that shouldn't count, !veto or V removes the last word and takes the points back from whoever typed it.
• Know the hotkeys. Space starts a new round, S restarts with a different letter and E opens the settings.
• Use auto mode for long sessions. Press A and rounds start on their own, with a break you can set anywhere from 3 to 300 seconds.
• Read out the misses. The "These would have worked too:" list is easy content for a quick laugh before the next round.

For capturing the browser window in OBS and placing your facecam, follow the setup guide. Found a bug or have a word suggestion? Drop it on the Discord. Wortkette is made by callmekyrus – come say hi on stream.

Letter Rain FAQ