Glittermitten Grove

Glittermitten Grove is a title that contains two games. On the one hand there is the faery village management game Glittermitten Grove and on the other there is Frog Fractions 3. The latter is the main draw even though Glittermitten Grove is a fully realized game as well. Glittermitten Grove is the game available right away at the surface, while a door to access Frog Fractions 3 needs to be located through specific actions and access to that game can also be missed entirely. Frog Fractions 3 is the sequel to Frog Fractions and toys with the fourth wall, so elements of Glittermitten Grove sometimes bleed into that game. When Frog Fractions 3 is discovered it is possible to continue there at any moment, but it is also possible to return to Glittermitten Grove and start a new village there.

In Glittermitten Grove the player has to build and manage a faery village. In an environment with a number of trees, shown from a side view with zooming and scrolling, different resources such as food, wood, crystals and sparkles need to be managed. As the trees grow, room becomes available there to build houses where faeries can sleep, eventually attracting more to live there. Faeries can be issued commands, but mostly act on their own and cannot be controlled directly. Available buildings are houses where faeries live and sleep, sight orbs for a broader view, woodsheds to store wood, pantries to store food, prisms to convert light into sparkles, torches to light underground areas, huts to store sparkles, and vaults to store crystals.

Wood can only be gathered by cutting the same trees or branches also used for buildings, so the player has to watch out a large part of the village does not come tumbling down. There is a day-and-night cycle that plays an important role as trees need light to grow and prisms convert light into sparkles. Trees that are shaded eventually die off. While the focus is on verticality and height, there is also a very large underground system to explore. It is caved out by planting fireworks, which use sparkles as a currency. An custom underground path can can be created with torches to light the areas. The caves are the only location where the crystal currency can be dug out and there are also treasure chests to discover. These chests contain food, resources and sometimes new plants to start a new tree. Other spells are for planting seeds, fertilizing plants and casting light.

Frog Fractions 3 is a very different game and it is presented as an ASCII art action-adventure title, inspired by Warren Robinett's 1979 Adventure which is also referenced directly in the game. The visual style and basic gameplay is very similar to ZZT. The environment consists of a large amount of flip-screens. The player controls a character and is given very little guidance, as almost all interaction with the game world needs to be figured out through experimentation. Through exploration enemies are defeated, closed routes are opened up and many new abilities are introduced. This ASCII hub world is a constant presence, but as in the first game many scenes and mini-games with very different gameplay are introduced as well.

Examples are a Flappy Bird clone with a toaster, a Snake-like turn-based puzzle game, a text-based investigation based on the Inferno of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, a trivia game combined with a strategy title where you need to scare off an alien roommate, an LCD version of Dark Souls, an aggressive chess game and more. Eventually the player also needs to decipher an alien language and engage in conversations using the symbols in text prompts.