Meadowland is the first game of Mårten Jonsson, and more of an art form rather than a game if you ask me. It bears no complexity in gameplay and only serves for an hour's diversion, yet it presents a naively beautiful display of an age old story.

As the dawn breaks, our gaze meets with a sleepy valley under the summer sun. There is a pond, a meadow, a bridge hanging between two huts, an old archway and a cliff by the sea... and a storybook residing just above the valley. The utter presence of ultimate peace. And here, out of nowhere, we come in to this pastoral scenery. As many gamers call it to be "Navi" - a reference to the fairy companion of Link from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - we take the role of a tiny glowing fairy.

As we move our cursor around the environment, the fairy moves around and explores this limited geography, and when we click on it, it sings. Our aim here is to take clues from the storybook scenes and make the fairy sing in the appropriate place, time and condition to make the story progress. For every scene from the storybook we successfully manage to imitate, we observe the next chapter of the tale. These tiny puzzles are not hard to figure out and their results are exceedingly beautiful in a minimalistic way. The environment has its automatic day/night cycle, and the time of the day is directly a piece of the puzzle so you end up waiting for the appropriate time to trigger the event most of the time. There are some other little puzzles that would change this dreamy geography unrelated to story chapters, but they are all details of the end result. The most annoying side puzzle - which reveals the actual ending whence you manage to complete - is finding the half transparent pieces of a photograph concerning the main story around. These pieces appear randomly around the map in different times and stay around only for a couple of seconds, so if you'd like to see the ending event and grab the related achievement, you keep wandering around to catch those annoying pieces.

Even with events with slightly annoying triggers, the whole game doesn't take more than an hour - an hour and a half at max - to complete. There is no actual narrative in game, yet there is a poetic narration about the possibilities imagination may hold power over at the end. Ultimately, it is a simple and elegant display with a naive message, open to interpretation by anyone who'd spare that hour.

The current price is an exaggeration for the content you'll be getting but the game goes into sale often or even may be acquired via some bundles. For a dollar or so, I can safely recommend the experience as a meditative choice before going to sleep; putting a silent, comfortable smile on your face. I haven't played the developers newer games here around Steam, but I'm told Star Sky also holds great promise and may very well be worthy to check.

Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page here - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!

[i]Meadowland[/i] is the first game of Mårten Jonsson, and more of an art form rather than a game if you ask me. It bears no complexity in gameplay and only serves for an hour's diversion, yet it presents a naively beautiful display of an age old story. As the dawn breaks, our gaze meets with a sleepy valley under the summer sun. There is a pond, a meadow, a bridge hanging between two huts, an old archway and a cliff by the sea... and a storybook residing just above the valley. The utter presence of ultimate peace. And here, out of nowhere, we come in to this pastoral scenery. As many gamers call it to be "Navi" - a reference to the fairy companion of Link from [i]The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time[/i] - we take the role of a tiny glowing fairy. As we move our cursor around the environment, the fairy moves around and explores this limited geography, and when we click on it, it sings. Our aim here is to take clues from the storybook scenes and make the fairy sing in the appropriate place, time and condition to make the story progress. For every scene from the storybook we successfully manage to imitate, we observe the next chapter of the tale. These tiny puzzles are not hard to figure out and their results are exceedingly beautiful in a minimalistic way. The environment has its automatic day/night cycle, and the time of the day is directly a piece of the puzzle so you end up waiting for the appropriate time to trigger the event most of the time. There are some other little puzzles that would change this dreamy geography unrelated to story chapters, but they are all details of the end result. The most annoying side puzzle - which reveals the actual ending whence you manage to complete - is finding the half transparent pieces of a photograph concerning the main story around. These pieces appear randomly around the map in different times and stay around only for a couple of seconds, so if you'd like to see the ending event and grab the related achievement, you keep wandering around to catch those annoying pieces. Even with events with slightly annoying triggers, the whole game doesn't take more than an hour - an hour and a half at max - to complete. There is no actual narrative in game, yet there is a poetic narration about the possibilities imagination may hold power over at the end. Ultimately, it is a simple and elegant display with a naive message, open to interpretation by anyone who'd spare that hour. The current price is an exaggeration for the content you'll be getting but the game goes into sale often or even may be acquired via some bundles. For a dollar or so, I can safely recommend the experience as a meditative choice before going to sleep; putting a silent, comfortable smile on your face. I haven't played the developers newer games here around Steam, but I'm told [i]Star Sky[/i] also holds great promise and may very well be worthy to check. Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ladystoryteller#curation]here[/url] - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!