Type your own story in clever free game Fairytiles

Developers Catie Jo and Florent are onto a winner with this creative text adventure, which utilises player input in an exciting, hands-on way. Fairytiles is a browser game, created for Ludum Dare, in which the story branches depending on your typed input. But you're not thinking of words from scratch—you're making words out of assigned letters, finding creative uses for what is essentially a scrabble deck.

To give an example, the narration requests that you start your adventure with something, with the assigned letters heavily suggesting the word 'nothing'. The story will diverge in an interesting way, however, if you type 'gin' instead. Because, obviously, the best stories start with a shot of gin.

Fairytiles rewards your creativity with the only thing that matters in modern gaming: achievements. Fittingly, there are 26 of the beggars to discover, from A to Z. It's an excitingly creative game with some funny writing and a nice aesthetic, but on the flip side it is very short. Like, very very short. And not all of my brilliant text suggestions were recognised.

I'd love to see a bigger version of Fairytiles, because the puzzley text input system works remarkably well. You can play the game here, and learn a bit more about it over on its Ludum Dare page. (Thanks, The Game Curator.)

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.