Tulgey, written by Uncle Vova is an adventure for Cairn based on Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It is available on Itch.
Tulgey was written for the Cairn Jam A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon which ran in June 2023.
Reading some reviews on Cats Have No Lord inspired me to write about one of the Jam entries I quite enjoyed reading.
Premise
The adventure takes place in the Brillig Forest, a portion of the Tulgey Wood. Some years past, there was a war between the towns of Galumph and Horsley Towers which nearly resulted in the destruction of both factions. The only thing that stopped the war was the sudden appearance of a Jabberwocky. (Uncle Vova uses the spelling Jabberwocky throughout Tulgey, so that spelling will be used here.) The party follows rumors from the Royal City in Galumph through Frabjous Town in the trees of the Brillig Forest to the caves of the Sloe Fell cliffs, eventually finding a creature called the Boojum Snark that may or may not actually exist.
Things I Enjoyed
First off, Uncle Vova does some great stuff with language all through this adventure. Not satisfied to just use the original Carrollian nonsense words, he adds to them with real-life slang from Southamption UK circa 1863. This was a really cool choice. The words fit, and the glossary of which terms came from Southampton was a really fun addition for a language nerd like me.
If you were a Disney kid or a nerdy kid who loved reading classic books (Hi! It’s Me!), there are a lot of things here you’re going to find and shout to yourself “Oh! It’s that thing!” even when the reference doesn’t perfectly match up to the referent. There’s a woman named Dinah with a bunch of cats. There’s a barrister named Mark Turtle. And of course, there’s a capricious Queen of Hearts. We wouldn’t have her any other way.
This one was super fun to read.
Things Needing Work
This is a small project developed during a one-month game jam. So there’s definitely work to be done. Not in a bad way though. Uncle Vova admits on the first page that Brillig Forest is just one quarter of Tulgey Wood and there’s more to come. There’s a statement that some stuff is just beyond the scope of this first adventure. Unfortunately, one of those things is the Jabberwocky beyound mere references by name and references to history. Though to be perfectly fair to the work that was there, all of these are things that just make me want the next installment. They’re not promises that weren’t kept, they’re things I was explicitly told weren’t there and so now I want to see how Uncle Vova puts his touch on them in the next chapter.
Final Thoughts
As is probably pretty clear, I really enjoyed this one. It touched on a lot of the things that got me interested in fantastical stories before I knew what the fantasy genre even was. As soon as I read it, I clicked Follow on Itch so that I would see when the next installment gets released.
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