Coherent Worlds: Researching games with fairy tale elements

The Faery Tale Adventure is a game by Electronic Arts. It uses a number of fairy tale tropes in its environment/characters and narrative that provide a fairy-tale like world for the player.
The game starts off with an introductory cut scene in the style of a fairy tale story.

The player takes control of one of three brothers, a theme found in many Grimm tales. The three brothers are to find a magical artifact that will save their home town from the forces of evil.
If the player dies as the eldest brother he will find himself playing as the next brother and so on. Each brother having their own personality and attributes.

The evil force that the player must contest against is an evil wizard/necromancer. An evil being able to cast magic is very common an antagonist in fairy tales, though it is more often a witch or sorceress whom the protagonist must face. Though in this game there is also a witch that the player must defeat

The player often faces common fantasy/fairy tale enemies as obstacles in his quest. Dragons, trolls, ogres, all common antagonists in fairy tales make up the ranks of enemy forces.

During the player's quest to find and use the magical amulet to stop the evil necromancer side-quests and other problems arise that the player must solve. For example the player must help a king find his missing daughter. Like in fairy tales where seemingly unnecessary detours occur to the main character who then benefits from doing the right thing, for example in The Golden Bird a Prince (one of three brothers in fact!) starts out trying to find out who is stealing his father's apples and ends up getting married and going on a long adventure.

The game also narrates what the player is doing making the game itself seem a lot more like a story book. The player also makes use of deals with magical animals which itself is a fairly common theme found in fairy tales.

Zork - Looking at what markets the redesign will be aimed at

The redesigned Zork will take cues from the Thief series on the PC and the Uncharted series on the PS3.
These games are critically acclaimed. Uncharted 2 has a metacritic score of 96. Thief has a score of 92. The numbers show that these games were critically acclaimed. Both game series sold large numbers <citation> showing that there is indeed a market that Zork can aim at an expect success.

Updating Zork - What changes I would make to Zork

I would move away from a text-based adventure style and move more into a 3rd person action/adventure game. From Zork I'd take a focus on puzzle solving and treasure hunting. What i'd evolve is the user interface and gameplay. Making it 3rd person and having a greater emphasis placed on enviromental/platforming puzzles. Zork's enviroments were also fairly open, with the player having an ability to go backwards and forwards between different areas, visiting and revisiting. I'd have a similar set up in the remake, with maps becoming more open as the game progresses, with a non-linear approach to the levels and what order the player completes them in.

Updating Zork - Examining Zork

Zork I is a text-based adventurer, the first in a series of games sharing various themes and styles.
Zork I is characterised by its use of humour and the complexity of its parser (eg. Use elven sword on hungry grue)

The main objective of Zork was to collect treasures from various locations, solving puzzles and defeating monsters in order to do so. The game world was a bizzare amaglam of modern/fantasy tropes. With trolls and dungeons alongside inflatable rafts and dams.