Tlon

Tlön: The Misty Story is a third-person point-and-click adventure game with action elements. It is based on the general ideas of the short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (published in 1940) by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The original story was written as an encyclopaedia article about a mysterious country called Uqbar. It is revealed to be a conspiracy among intellectuals to imagine a new world and it deals with the theme of how ideas can manifest themselves to alter the physical world.

This game takes a similar approach, but from an entirely different setting. Biatec, a simple villager, lives in a poor and dull town in the countryside. When he goes frog hunting in the swamp one day, he ventures too deep and finds a horse skeleton and parts of rusty armour. Suddenly, he is reminded of his whole life leading up to the present, as he had forgotten, but never contemplated, how he came to live in the village. It is revealed he is in fact a knight who set out to find out more about a Symbol of Creation that is tied to an ancient realm called Tlön. During the journey, he fell off his horse in the swamp, cracked his head on a large rock and forgot about his past life. The player now needs to guide him to continue the quest and discover the hidden realm.

The game has all traits of traditional adventure design. Biatec is moved around using the mouse and can explore various locations, examine objects, talk to characters, collect items in an inventory and use them in the environment. The action elements come through the form of fighting scenes. Some characters and creatures are potentially dangerous and need to be fought. This is done by switching to a combat mode, and both attacking and dodging in real-time. Consequently, it is possible to die in the game. There are seven different weapons and three types of armour, of which the strength is shown as a number in the inventory.

Another different element is that Biatec needs to eat and drink during his journey. This is not based on the actual game time, but the player cannot neglect it when an opportunity arises. Even though the game is in 2D, the characters are pre-rendered in 3D. Next to the main storyline, there are different branching paths that delve deeper into the story, and many optional items to acquire.