The Unlucky Hans. The Difficulties of Adapting Fairy Tales as Text-Based Games for Young Readers

Abstract

There is a vast amount of children’s literature in the public domain that could be adapted for the purpose of game-based learning and reading. Here I recount my attempt to design a text-based game based on the popular fairy tale Hans in luck, with the purpose to improve children’s engagement with text in primary school. Using the open-source tool Twine (2021), I made an interactive hypertext version of the story. Unfortunately, play-tests with children revealed that they found the interactive story to be little engaging and too predictable. I illustrate what design decisions may have contributed to this failure and discuss the drawbacks of converting existing literary works to an interactive format.