this game sounds so insane
Freshly Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland
"Tingle" utilizes an even more vexing trade-off: your money is your life. Your health bar is measured in rupees. Taking damage from an enemy knocks rupees from your wallet. Get all of your money knocked from you and Tingle is dead. Note that you must spend a lot of money in this game, always keeping your funds spent fairly low and therefore Tingle's life in precarious balance (pun certainly intended). You must spend on essential items such as glass jars that can contain the soups and juices you concoct and sell for profit. You need to spend money to open gates that give access to dungeons. And because Tingle is fairly weak, you need to spend money hiring wacky bodyguards -- a feisty kid, a warrior princess, a guy in black suit and shades -- to get you past just about any trouble.
This whole game is about money. Once you adopt a dog who dresses up in the same kind of green hood Tingle wears, you don't give the dog a bone. You "sell" him one. At one point, the dog showed me his pleasure by offering 74 rupees.
Yes, it's all about money. The wise old sage who encourages you throughout your quest has a giant rupee for a head.
How can a game about money work? "Tingle" shows that it can confound so many of your notions of what works and what is fair in a video game. Consider these twists:
In most adventure games the cost of items is clearly established. Need to buy a shield? Some armor? A golden chicken? A village merchant or town elder tells you what you must give to get what they've got. In "Tingle" the non-player characters will rip you off. Want a 10-ingredient pot in "Tingle"? Don't know how much it costs, because the lady cook won't tell you? Well, make an offer. In a miserable twist to classic bartering, most of the game's character to whom you make a lowball offer will pocket the money you offer them. And then they will start negotiations over from scratch. So when I found a character who promised a great secret if only I could pay him "four figures," I made a mental note (only possessing three figures of rupees at the time). I came back to him later in the game when I had about 3000, offered him 1000 , got laughed at and left with just 2000. Did anyone else know that Nintendo published games this mean?
In most adventure games the rewards for your heroic deeds are pre-determined. Save the princess or beat the mini-boss, and you can trust that you'll be rewarded with an amount of gems, hearts or some other reward appropriate for your survival through the next stage of the game. In "Tingle," the people you save ask you what your reward should be. In the game, I saved a dehydrated journalist by serving him some needed drink. He asked me to name the figure for my reward. I did not jot down in my notes the amount I asked for, but I did note that he laughed that I asked for so little. He gave me what I wanted, but it seems I could have taken him in for more. Had I just cost myself some money that I would need to buy my way through the next level?
In most adventure games you are given a map -- or you can buy one. In "Tingle" you can risk navigating in ignorance by selling your maps back to the game. At the start of each chapter of "Tingle," you are given an unfinished map. You can complete each one by circling areas where you find unusual land formations and monuments. While exploring the game's Lon Lon Meadow area ("Zelda" reference, see?), I was hurting for money. So I went to the old lady in town, sold my map of Lon Lon for 1250 rupees, thereby deactivating the map read-out on my DS' upper screen. What's next, selling your health bar or inventory screen for profit? What would you do without in your heads-up display to gain more money and health for your character?
In most adventure games -- platform games and MMOs too -- the player can easily determine what they must do to reach the next locked-off level. A blocked door will commonly be marked with the number of stars or puzzle pieces required to open them. In "Tingle" the player can only guess what it will take to reach the next level. An elevated wishing pool next to Tingle's house is the literal jumping-off point from which the game's hero can access each new area of the game. The tower needs to be elevated to trigger access to a new place, and that trigger only flips after Tingle has thrown coins into the pool. How many coins? The game never says. The player must keep on tossing gems into the pool until the tower rumbles and rises. Trust me. Not knowing how close you are to being able to level that tower up is a strange experience. It makes you keep wondering if you're keeping pace with the game or doing something wrong.
I reached my "Tingle" breaking point just before Thanksgiving. I was exploring the game's Deku Forest. I had come across a washed-up Tarzan named Junglo who, like most other characters in the game, would only help me if I paid him. For example, I had to pay him to help me cross a chasm. For my money he made his ape pal stretch from one edge of a narrow expanse to the other. Classy guy.
So I was deep in the forest and, I suspected, close to my destination, the Great Deku Tree. I found myself in one of those old-school mazes like they had in the original "Metal Gear" and "The Legend of Zelda" -- one that requires you to walk through the same screen multiple times, exiting and re-entering at different sides in a specific pattern. Junglo charged me money to guide me through it. At its exit I faced the Great Deku Tree. The mighty Tree explained it needed saving from some polluted water and asked me to enter and be a hero. Except it also wanted money first. And once I paid and entered, I immediately encountered a gate that, you guessed it, required I pay a toll.
