During a meeting organized by Plug in Digital and The Side Kick, two video game distributors, I was able to test many small games that you should find in your dairy in 2016.
The game that I am going to present to you today is part of the Plug in Digital team. It is the team of Witty Wings, a small group of spanish people living in Paris that is at the origin of the SwapTales Leon project! I had already seen their prototype at Paris Games Week resulting from a school project that they wanted to continue in order to improve and market it. This is the first game of this small team and it is especially aimed at children who are starting to read and their parents who should also spend time on it as I will surely do with my son.
The pitch
The story tells of the adventures of Leon, a little boy who his parents cowardly abandon to a terrible baby sitter and who suddenly is very sad because he is going to have the worst day of his life. He then wants to change things in order to have a great evening that should make him live some crazy adventures or not and answer the question: what is growing up?
Indeed SwapTales Leon is a narrative game where the player, to advance the story, must interchange words in order to change the person to whom they are originally assigned and therefore change the story, but here I am starting to reveal to you the gameplay.
The gameplay
On the Witty Wings site, the team uploaded a diagram that is just perfect for explaining their concept, no need to try to make it better so here it is.
Nothing could be simpler but let's not forget that the game is aimed above all at a family audience and particularly at children starting to read, it is therefore perfect because it is very intuitive, easy to learn and totally adapted to Ipad tablets and Android to which the game is expected to be ported upon release.
During my preview on the introduction to the story, which was more or less the same as at PGW, I was bound to be pretty quick already knowing the concept and the important words. So I took the trouble to test other possibilities and suddenly other game-over which prematurely ended my adventure. In this first part I was therefore able by putting the cat in the oven, uh not actually on the table to put the baby sitter to sleep and get out of the house after my parents left ...
There should be for the release of the game in its final version for its release:
- 50 game pages
- 20 different endings
- 5040 possible combinations
- 30 original music
My opinion
- "hardcore gamer", go your way
- a little afraid that it is too short for my son
- planned for the end of August, it's too long
- very original gameplay
- graphics perfectly suited to young audiences
- an admirable desire to make an educational, cooperative and fun game
- the game should be replayable and therefore better experience than a book for evening reading
Well I admit everything, I have a 7-year-old son and a 10-month-old little girl and therefore this kind of playful adventure often makes me call out enormously and I have great difficulty in resisting. If you are in the same case, I think this application will be essential for parents who want to put a tablet in the hands of their children and at the same time give them to eat games that are not really but which for their offspring (and I know what I'm talking about) will have the same effect by giving them more learning without them realizing it. And so far from what I've seen, SwapTales Leon fulfills the contract perfectly. If you are not in this case go your way, this game is not for you.
