From left to right: Grace, Marion, and Jessie, all partially Shapeshifting
Not to be confused with the Changeling Tale trope, the H-Game Visual Novel Changeling Tale is about a man living in 1919 Scotland and his love interests cursed to turn into a variety of Fae races. Following years of development, during which multiple demos were publicly released, the base version of the game officially launched on on December 27, 2023, with additional free content planned to be added later. The game's official, and suitable for all ages, website is located here
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Returning home after participating in war, Malcolm Campbell is eagerly welcomed back by his neighbors and childhood friends, the MacLeod sisters; Marion, Jessie, and Grace. However, all is not as peaceful as it seems, and soon Fae magic causes various people in Malcolm's hometown (including the sisters) to start transforming. Despite this, can Malcolm find true love? And if so, will he lose his own humanity in the process?
Tropes:
- And Then John Was a Zombie: Jessie ends up accidentally infecting Malcolm with lycanthropy in her route. Whether or not he remains a werewolf alongside her is dependent on player choice. It's taken further in one of the bad endings, where both Malcolm and Jessie completely lose their sense of self and become feral wolves with no memories of their former lives.
- Arc Words: “Whit’s fur ye’ll no go past ye.”note
- Babies Ever After: In Marion's "Heifer Parade" ending, the post-credits CG shows Marion with a large baby bump, knitting a tiny jumper.
- Bittersweet Ending: While the canon endings average more positively than the early endings, there are still a few that fall into this:
- Malcolm will always manage to make things work with Jessie after making it to the end of her route, but in two of the endings Jessie will be permanently stuck in her human form or werewolf form respectively, each leaving her wishing she could reclaim the other part of herself.
- Grace's route contains the only ending where Malcolm ends his relationship with one of the girls, as both come to the painful realization that their worlds have grown too far apart for them to remain by each other's side. However, they manage to reconnect and gain closure, and the epilogue states that Malcolm goes on to romance an unnamed nurse.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: Effie, the shy, bespectacled girl who sells Malcolm his trademark hat, is secretly a rabbit Fae hiding her tall ears under her cap.
- Childhood Friend Romance: The MacLeod sisters were Malcolm's playmates during his childhood, their families having been well acquainted due to the small size of Ach-na-Creige.
- Jessie actually had a one-sided crush on Malcolm before he left to go to war. Her sisters' routes subtly hint at her continued feelings towards Malcolm, though she gracefully keeps out of their way.
- Clothing Damage: Each of the creatures that the MacLeod sisters transform into are significantly larger than a human, so this naturally happens repeatedly in all of their routes.
- Constantly Lactating Cow:
- No calves can be seen on the MacLeod dairy farm. Fiona the highland cattle is even referred to as a "heifer" as she's being milked.
- Marion's transformation into an anthropomorphic cow includes sudden lactation without having given birth, though this is a magical Fae cow we're talking about.Malcolm: ...but perhaps there's a reason you took this form. A reason you produce this milk! Otherwise it... it makes no sense!Marion: It's magic. It doesn't need to make sense.
- Cool Horse: Malcolm obtains a horse named Hazel in an auction, and while she's stubborn and her loyalty is questionable, she remains by her new master's side no matter what he gets involved with. There are also indications, both in the story itself and in supplemental material, that she is actually sentient.
- Easter Egg: By clicking on specific parts of the special images of the girls, it can cause a special scene to play out (such as clicking on a transformed Jessie's stomach to give her a belly rub). There's even a tracker for how many have been found.
- Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: Appropriate to the Scottish setting, several music tracks make use of pipes, most prominently:
- "Scott and Nanny," a festive tune that plays during playful scenes and town celebrations.
- "To The Queen," a Scotland the Brave-esque military march often associated with manly characters like Balgair and Douglas.
- The soundtrack also includes the pre-existing composition "Highland Laddie," the tune used as the quick march for the Royal Scots Greys, Malcolm's regiment during the Great War.
- Ironically, despite the mostly masculine connotations of the bagpipe-heavy music tracks, Alana is the only character shown to play the bagpipes in-game.
- The Flapper: Jessie considers herself one, wearing appropriate fashion and singing jazz at a local club.
- Gender Bender:
- Previews of the novel's additional planned content released by the development team include images of Rowan Ashfield, one of Malcolm's male friends that was injured during the war, turning into a female dragon.
- One of the entries in Baird's Unabridged Compendium illustrates a human man transforming into an anthropomorphic female unicorn after sticking a broken horn upon his head.
- The novel's digital artbook includes some bonus images of male characters transformed into women, such as Malcolm himself and Balgair Buchan.
- Girl Next Door: All three girls are this in a literal sense, but Marion and Grace fit the trope more than the exotic Jessie, with Marion being the more sweet and down-to-earth and Grace being the more open and unassuming.
- Gossipy Hens: The Whist Club, of which Malcolm's grandmother is a member.
- Great Big Book of Everything: A prominent feature is Baird's Unabridged Compendium of Faerie Lore: Rhymes, Myths & Legends of Scotch Tradition, an in-universe glossary from which Malcolm can look up detailed information about any Fae creature after first learning about them.
- Haggis Is Horrible: Malcolm needs only smell Balgair's beer-battered haggis balls to remember how absolutely wretched they are. The novel gives you the option whether to humour Balgair's offer of one after he inadvertently interrupts Alana's prying questions.
- Karmic Transformation: At least for the MacLeod sisters, their Shapeshifting correlates to key elements of their character: the eldest and most domestic-minded Marion tends to the farm's cattle and becomes a literal cowgirl; the sexually liberated and independent Jessie becomes a werewolf; and the solitary, freedom-seeking younger sister Grace turns into a sea dragon.
- Man in a Kilt: Balgair is the most stereotypically Scottish-looking member of the main cast, proudly wearing a tartan kilt and sash.
- Meaningful Gift: At the start of Marion's route, Malcolm goes to market to buy her a gift to commemorate their budding romance. At Effie's suggestion, he gives her a little cowbell that she wears as a necklace. This is before either of them realize that she has begun to transform into a cow. At the end of her route, Malcolm replaces it with an engagement ring, which won't fit on her hoof-hands.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: If not careful, Jessie might end up losing control of herself whenever she transforms into her feral wolf form, as seen by her attacking Malcolm when he first runs into her as a wolf. The same applies to Malcolm himself, as after getting infected with lycanthropy, he also briefly loses all sense of himself after transforming.
- Moby Schtick: The moment Douglas catches a glimpse of Grace partially transformed, he becomes dead set on capturing the Uilepheist lurking in Loch Finlay, believing them to be bad omens. Luckily, Grace has no trouble escaping his net, and after toying with him for a bit, she manages to talk him down.
- Multiple Endings: The story branches depending on which of the MacLeods you focus on, and this will eventually result in multiple endings.
- My Local: The Stag and Nanny, owned and tended by Balgair, where Jessie works nights as a singer and dancer.
- Nazi Gold: Kind of. It's gold from a reich, not the reich. Grace finds a chest filled with gold bullion in a sunken U-boat, marked as property of the German Empire. With the Kaiser dethroned, Malcolm and Grace have no qualms about taking the gold and sharing it with their families.
- No Animals Were Harmed: The credits include the disclaimer, "No animals were hurt in the making of this game."
- Non-Standard Game Over:
- In addition to the multiple endings you can get by playing through to the end, each route has additional endings with their own epilogues that can be achieved before the full story has finished, though most of these are less satisfying than the full story endings.
- If you play Grace's route and choose to chase after her with Douglas in Chapter 5, choosing to continue the chase instead of turning back will cause you to fall overboard and blackout before immediately cutting to credits.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Jessie's transformation isn't triggered by lycanthropy specifically being in her bloodline but rather is implied to be her family possessing blood from The Fair Folk. Though she spends much of her time as an anthropomorphic wolf girl, whenever she loses control over her emotions, she transforms further into a feral quadrupedal wolf. She later finds that she's capable of transforming into a much larger bipedal wolf creature.
- Parents as People: Owen falls mostly on the negative side of this spectrum. He certainly didn't have it easy, having spent twenty years a widower, and five years serving in World War has distanced him from his children and home life, leaving him adrift and searching for a sense of normalcy. To top it all off, in any route that he comes home he will find one his daughters transformed into an animal person. However, none of this changes how his emotional immaturity has made and continues to make life considerably more difficult for all of his daughters.
- Marion, as the eldest and most domestic of the three daughters, has the best relationship with him, so it's no surprise that her route shows him at his best. That said, even she finds him stressful to have around. After an argument at dinner stemming from Owen's intolerance of Marion's internal and external changes, one ending has Owen quietly leave town to reenlist in the armed forces, while the other endings have him reconcile with and even stand up for Marion.
- Jessie, as an independent, modern woman, brushes up against his traditionalist and self-centered mindset. In her route, his disapproval of Jessie's lifestyle leads him to humiliate Jessie during a big performance, setting off a chain of events culminating in him threatening her at gunpoint (albeit in her werewolf form) convinced that she is not his daughter, after which he will either coerce Malcolm or Jessie into making a choice against their will, or get royally dressed down by Jessie, always resulting in their permanent estrangement.
- Grace is the most reclusive of the trio, which Owen's emotionally distant parenting likely contributed to. He never appears in-person in Grace's route, and she seems all the happier for it, as it's obvious that he did nothing to alleviate Grace's guilt complex over her mother's Death by Childbirth. Damningly, each ending contains a footnote saying that he returned, and notes how none of his daughters are willing to put up with his miserable attitude. Grace and Jessie have left Ach-na-Creige, Grace explicitly avoids him when she visits, and even Marion is so fed up with him that she leaves the family farm.
- Parrot Pet Position: Wondrous Walter's pet Capuchin monkey Little Nap rides on the back of his shoulder.
- Promotion to Parent: Marion can inform Malcolm that, with their father currently away fighting in the same war that Malcolm was called back from and their actual mother having died long ago giving birth to Grace, she's had to act as the Team Mom to her two younger sisters.
- Redheads Are Ravishing: Jessie is the best exemplar of the trope, a sexy singer-dancer with bright red hair, but auburn-haired Marion and strawberry blonde Grace are no slouches either.
- Selkies and Wereseals: Douglas Crannach attributes his strong knowledge of and belief in the fae to his "finfolk" third great-grandmother, which his family takes great pride in. It's his ancestor's sealskin that allows Malcolm to become a selkie himself and achieve Grace's happy ending.
- Shapeshifting: The crux of the story (and its main appeal) is that various characters are transformed into various mythical creatures. As of the current build, Jessie is the only one capable of transforming back into human form, though she isn't quite in control of when this happens.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Jessie is the only one who can transform between her forms at will, but she starts her route stuck in feral wolf form, requiring magical assistance to become human again, and then emotional support from Malcolm to gain control of her transformations. This comes back again in the final chapter, where both she and Malcolm are stuck in werewolf form after she loses control of herself in the Stag and Nanny. In the ending where Malcolm waits until the confrontation with Owen to use Alana's potion, Jessie will remain stuck in her werewolf form with no known way of turning back without giving up her shapeshifting abilities forever.
- She Is All Grown Up: Malcolm remarks this upon meeting each of the sisters.
- Marion has changed the least, having been an adult when Malcolm shipped off to war, so he's able to quickly recognize her voice, followed by her other physical features.
- Jessie has completely reinvented herself, so she has to identify herself to him, leaving him dumbfounded that the once mousy neighbor's daughter is a flapper.
- Grace was so shy as a child that Malcolm barely even remembers her, but he invokes this trope anyways out of politeness.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Malcolm, having just returned from the warfront, does not remember it fondly whenever it's discussed.
- Small Town Boredom: Jessie feels constrained by Ach-na-Creige and dreams of bringing her singing talents to a big city like Glasgow. She accomplishes this one way or another in every single route in the base game.
- Statuesque Stunner: Jessie has soft features, impeccable fashion sense, and stands taller than Malcolm in her human form, at 5'10" to his 5'9".
- Stock Ness Monster: Grace's transformation has her become a Uilepheist (Sea Dragon), a creature that's blue, gilled, finned, long-necked, and larger in size than a cow, with official statements from the developers stating that this transformation was directly inspired by the myth of the Loch Ness Monster.
- Story Branch Favoritism: While all three MacLeod sisters are given equal prominence, Grace's route is an Act longer than the others due to its pacing.
- Story Branching: The game keeps track of the player's path through the story with an image of a tree, and each MacLeod sister is the focus of one of the main branches, with smaller divergences and early endings depicted as smaller branches and blooming flowers upon them.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Despite being just two years older than Malcolm, Douglas is a dead ringer for his father, Murdoch, with the only visible distinction besides his choice of clothing being his hair being a darker shade of brown.
- Team Pet: Hazel is Malcolm's stubborn workhorse, and she's the only nonspeaking character with their own cast profile.
- The Three Faces of Eve: Marion is the responsible wife, always tending to the farm and trying to keep her sisters in line. Jessie is the sultry seductress, performing nights at a bar in a revealing dress, and Grace is the unbound child, off doing her own thing without any pretensions.
- Unintelligible Accent: Most of the characters speak English with intelligible Scottish accents, but Mr. Langham the trapper speaks in a full on Scots dialect, making him difficult to understand for even the other native Scots.
- You Sexy Beast: The majority of the romantic scenes occur while the girls are no longer human.
