Game info

• Title Dear Reader
• Developer Local No. 12
• Publisher Local No. 12
• Year 2019
• Platforms iPad, iPhone
• Genre Puzzle

Dear Reader lets you curl up and play your favourite books, turning classic literature into clever word puzzles. Unscramble passsages from famous books, unlock unique puzzles, and add new books to your library. Dear Reader includes over 130 literary classics and dozens of different types of word puzzles, from unscrambling anagrams to swapping lines of text. Dear Reader is the first and only game where you can play with the actual written words of so many tempting books of classic literature!

Player Select

I played this when it was first released, one of the early games on Apple Arcade and one that was exclusive to the platform I believe. It captivated me at first, such a good idea of gameplay, and lots of fun. Gradually, I played it less and less and haven’t looked at it in a while. There was an update a few weeks ago that added some new books to the library within, and that made me give it another look and what do you know? It’s captivated me again!

It’s in the Game

At it’s fundamental level, it’s a game where you play through a book. You have a classic piece of literature, say Emma by Jane Austen. It’s abridged into chapters, and as you play each chapter, you’re either unscrambling words, or filling in gaps, or deleting entire rows that are out of place. You can make a certain amount of mistakes each time, and the fewer you make, the more ‘ink’ you earn. And the more ink you have, the more books you can buy. There are also some specific objectives you can aim for that help you to buy Rare Books.

There are loads of books in the library, and I’m very impressed by the variety in there - all of them are classics and out of copyright, but there are super old works alongside more recent novels. There’s poetry and theatre texts, translations, non-fiction and points of view from all over the world. It’s enlightening and a lot of fun. There’s plenty to get stuck into and keep revisiting, and I love the options that allow you to deselect the style of games you don’t like so much, as well as the stress of the play - either no-time-limit for slightly less ink, or super challenging time that rewards you more. Great choices to make the playing style your own.

Thoughts

I love this game and if nothing else, the fact that I’ve suddenly become interested in it again shows that it has a great staying power - you can revisit many times, frequently or less often, and it will have the same effect on you. It can be as stressful or as relaxing as you want, and it’s a good way to learn about classic books you may not have known about, or revisit ones you haven’t thought about in a while. Love it.

Rating: 5 / 5