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
How it works
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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| 🎞 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.
