French-teaching edutainment mystery The Abettor’s Letters is the Kickstarter du jour

Parlez-vous français?

If you've ever wanted to visit scenic Paris but just didn't have the money or mastery over the language, now you can kill two birds with one stone with a Kickstarter contribution to the French-teaching edutainment mystery The Abettor’s Letters.

The Abettor’s Letters casts players in the role of secret agent Carsen Brooks, an “American spy hired by a mysterious party to investigate a criminal conspiracy taking place in France.” Once in Paris, Brooks must contend with “both the cabal of criminals led by vengeful villain Didier Diamante, and the attentions of the French authorities, on high alert for suspicious foreigners. He even finds himself tracked by a resourceful counterintelligence agent, Shima Abdel, and her canine partner, Watteau. Things are difficult, but Brooks isn't alone. His anonymous contact promises to aid and abet him with financing, intel, and French language lessons, and if Brooks studies hard and avoids suspicion, he can continue on his quest to discover the truth, and save the day!”

As seen in the first screenshots, The Abettor’s Letters is a stylish (or is that chic?) point-and-click adventure set in a re-imagined turn-of-the-twentieth-century France that's been hand-painted with watercolours. With a “brand new twist on the classic dialogue tree mechanic” in between the puzzles and minigames, as you explore the streets of Paris you will “enter shops and cafés to practice buying and ordering; listen to sections of French audio as a character rehashes his past; (and) read French text in a love letter found tucked away inside an old book at the library,” among other tasks. Players will need to “successfully navigate dialogue interactions with French-speaking characters to progress the game and gather the information they need. Different sections of gameplay challenge the player's abilities in vocabulary, verb conjugation, sentence construction, and reading and listening comprehension.”

Created by indie team Beach Alt Ed and designed exclusively for iPad, The Abettor’s Letters is a planned seven-part adventure series (as if you could learn French in only one!), each installment providing a “complete, self-contained story and lesson” that eventually “connect in an overarching storyline and lesson structure”. The first episode will be offered completely free, but in order to fund this pilot installment, the developers are seeking $25,000 through Kickstarter by August 10th. Any money above and beyond the initial target will go “directly into funding production of the full, multi-episode game.” While there is no minimum pledge required to play the first game, a $75 donation will result in a free download of all subsequent episodes as they become available.

To learn more about The Abettor's Letters, watch the crowdfunding pitch video, or to contribute to the campaign, visit the Kickstarter page for further information, along with the game's official website.