Sing Me a Fable › Play Me Arcade › U
U is for Ungratefulness
Gabby the Gull
A gull who is fed every morning and has never once said thank you — until the boat stops coming.
What happens in it
Barnaby the fisherman feeds Gabby a fish, then bread on a rainy day, then comes home to a pier she has been left alone with. Twice a level you choose what she does, and it plays out.
Choose what she does
Each level has two scenes. Barnaby gives Gabby something, or she finds his pier waiting, and two things she could do appear.
Nothing is timed and there is no going back — whichever you pick plays out.
In the last level the star is not for tidying up. It is for what she does when the boat finally comes back.
Tap a card, or use the left and right arrow keys.
The three levels
- The Morning Catch — The First Fish, then The Big One
- The Rainy Day — Bread Instead, then The Empty Dock
- The Empty Pier — The Dirty Mooring, then The Boat Returns
Why ungratefulness is one of the twenty-six
Sing Me a Fable is an alphabet of faults, one for every letter, from Aggression to Zealotry. U is ungratefulness, and this is the playable half of that fable: the child makes the choice the animal makes, and watches what it costs. Nobody explains the moral afterwards, which is the whole point of a fable and the reason the form has lasted two and a half thousand years.
Every letter has one: twenty-six fables, twenty-six faults, twenty-six games. See the whole arcade, or take the twenty-six colouring posters and Find the Error sheets free.
