“Fairytiles” by Catie Jo & Florent.
“[The] love child of a “Choose your own [adventure]” book and a game of [“Scrabble”] – choose your words wisely! Armed with only a handful of letter tiles, take a bold adventurer through the journey of her lifetime!”
What really astonished me about the forty-fifth Ludum Dare was the amount of entries that worked with some kind of typing mechanic in a fun way. “Fairytiles” is another great example for that trend. Like in any other text adventure, you have to type in some action you want to do after a portion of the story gets displayed to you. The twist is, that you only can use the letters that are in front of you. And sure, when “RESTART” is offered for you, you could just type “RESTART” as well, but why do you not try writing “REST”, just to see what happens then?
Start with nothing or a thing or do not start at all! Fight dragons, dogs or gods! The developers of “Fairytiles” reward your curiosity with various achievements; for me, this design intensified the whole exploration aspect. I enjoyed the different short branches of the adventure and especially the ‘sidequests’ like taking a nap or getting drunk on the Bahamas or becoming the queen of the whole land. [PLAY]
