Lantern

Bedtime tales you make up together.

A magic lantern on the phone: light it, and slides of painted glass come out — a hero, a place, a magic thing, a trouble, a helper. The parent and the child make up the tale from them, with the phone face down. Free, no ads, no account, no internet permission.

English · Русский · Changelog

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How it works

1. Light the lantern (or shake the phone). The glass comes out one slide at a time: a hero with a job (Lamplighter Mouse, Captain Fox), a place, a magic thing with a power, a trouble, a helper, and a quirk if you like. Each slide can be swapped once.
2. Tell it. Lay the phone face down and the screen goes dark. Turn it over and the lantern gives a twist. A candle says when it's time to finish; tell it round the table and a bell passes the tale on. Hold the grown-up's card for the next step of the tale (after Propp) and a question to ask the child.
3. The quiet ending. An ending slide, a name for the tale, and lights out to rain, the sea, crickets, a fire or the wind, made on the phone as it plays.

What else

🎞 Many slides	42 heroes × 28 jobs, 34 places, 48 magic things × 40 powers, 38 troubles (in three levels of scary), 30 helpers' skills, 32 quirks, 36 twists, 18 endings. All cut-outs in the manner of Lotte Reiniger's shadow films, drawn in code.
🧒 Little ones / bigger ones	Three to five: a hero, a place, maybe a thing. Six and up: the whole set.
👋 Old friends	Heroes from earlier tales come back. Call one into tonight's tale from the World tab.
🗺 The world	A night map of every place your tales have been, joined by a dotted road.
📦 The box	Every evening with a tale brings a parcel with one rare slide. Winter glass comes out in winter.
🖌 Painted by hand	The child paints a hero, a helper, a place or a thing with a finger; it goes into the lantern with the rest.
📞 A tale over the phone	Both phones deal the same glass from one five-digit code, for a parent far away.
🎙 The shelf	Every tale kept with its glass, a few written lines and, if you like, the recording. Sequels with the same hero. A little PDF book to print.
☀️ The morning after	A widget and a card with last night's glass and three questions to tell it back.

Privacy

No account, no cloud, no analytics and no internet permission. The microphone is used only when you choose to record a tale; the recording stays on the phone.

Screenshots

Build

./gradlew assembleDebug             # app.lantern.dev
./gradlew assembleDebug -Pdemo      # app.lantern.demo, a made-up family's three weeks of tales
bash tools/capture.sh <dir> en|ru   # screenshots from a -Pdemo -Pshots build
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest         # unit tests
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest -Prender --tests '*RenderArt*'   # every cut-out to app/build/art

Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Room, DataStore. Fonts: Alegreya and Alegreya Sans (OFL).

Part of Stillcraft. MIT licence.