Like most kids who grew up playing video games, I didn’t want my adventures to stop when the screen turned off. As I raced down the road on my bike or zoned out in the backseat during long drives, I’d imagine what my favorite characters would look like superimposed onto the world around me, how they’d run along the telephone lines or dart between the trees. Playing the demo for Tala felt like those childhood musings brought to life.
This point-and-click adventure from “micro” game studio The Garden Well transforms nature photography into an interactive forest floor populated by a colorful cast of woodland sprites, with everything from their mushroom homes to their matchstick garden boxes traditionally animated by its sole developer, Matthew Petrak. It’s aiming for a mid-2019 release, he says, depending on the success of Tala’s recently launched Kickstarter [Edit: the Kickstarter fell short a day ago].
You play as the titular Tala, a forest spirit tasked with watching over her pastoral village while its leader journeys farther into the woods to gather food. But it’s not long before news arrives that the Town Guardian’s become stranded on their quest. A busted plane in town could hold the solution to his rescue, but Tala will need to coax help from her neighbors (using typical roundabout, puzzle game logic, of course) if they want any hope of surviving the winter.
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