I had a lovely bit of serendipity last night. I was having trouble sleeping, as I often do, and was thinking what I’d really like is a story based puzzle game like the Trader of Stories. I looked at Nordinho, and found a brand new Trader of Stories game. It was just what I wanted!

The Trader of Stories series tells the story of Myosotis, the titular Trader. Exactly how she makes a living on this is unclear, though in the first game she does get paid by the mayor of the town to dig into the local history and assemble a tale. It’s set in the beautifully imaginative world of The Big Old Tree that Dreams, invented by Marek Rudowski.

If you want to check it out, start with the first game, Bell’s Heart, and then the new one, A Grain of Truth.

Bell’s Heart includes a notebook that gives you a crash course in the world which I was missing in the second, having forgotten many details. In fairness it’s pretty clear from context that a Blossoming is a span of time somewhat analogous to a year and divided into multiple Breaths. You get the impression that a Breath is just a day, and reading background material it is indeed a cycle of light like a day is, but the actual span of time isn’t clear to me.

I wonder about this sort of thing. Although I perfectly understand an author’s desire to keep it a little vague so they have some wiggle room.

Anyway, if you want interesting stories in a beautiful alien world with stunning art, I strongly recommend them. There’s apparently a third game that’s been in development since before the first, which I’m hoping is because it’s a huge, massive, crazy long game that’s not suited to killing an hour or two like the existing ones are. There’s a playable demo of it here, which I’m going to pass on because those always feel like a tease when I’ve already decided I want to play the whole game.

This post feels a bit like an advertisement, and in a way it really is. I love everything about these games, except for a few details about the interfaces. I love the stories, the art, the characters, the world. I love how totally surprised I was by the end of the second one. I even love how it left us hanging, in a frustrated anticipation sort of way. Hopefully that means there’s another one in the works.

I want these games to get popular so that more of them will be made.