Dear Reader from developer Local No. 12 is a game that very cleverly uses its assets to create one of the most bingeworthy experiences on Apple Arcade. The game first presents itself as straight-forward and simple – each level is a chapter of a book in the public domain, we interact with the levels by rearranging sentence structure, fixing typos, and otherwise restoring books to their original intent. All the books used are certainly classics, though there were many I hadn’t personally heard of.
The game gets its hooks in players with its points system, promising players more content if only they spend a little more time playing through what is already available. As we unlock new books and finish more chapters, more ways of challenging the players are unlocked. New players only have access to levels where they will select the correct words to fill in the blanks, and as the game continues to earn our respect and invested playtime, things get more complicated. At time of writing I have eight specific types of wordplay, out of a total of twenty-four available.
I have already put a heavy amount of time into Dear Reader, much more than I have with any other Apple Arcade game I’ve played so far. Between the daily challenges and the promise of more books to unlock, I am confident the game will hold my interest for some time going forwards.
I’ve always been a fan of what I call the cross-binge, which is the art of listening to audiobooks while playing games like Elder Scrolls Online or something equally undemanding. I suppose with Dear Reader I have unlocked another style of the cross-binge, now playing a game while reading a book with Netflix or something in the background. This makes me very happy.
Dear Reader was played on Apple Arcade.
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