The game follows an alone and lazy 35-year-old man's transformation into his green-clothed fairy persona. The story starts when one day a voice calls the main character (whose name is chosen by the player) from his home to a spring west of his house. There, Uncle Rupee, an old man with a Rupee-shaped head, appears and offers him a life in a paradise called Rupeeland if he continues to feed Rupees to the Western Pool: if enough Rupees are fed, the tower found under the pool will grow upwards towards the sky, and Tingle will be able to enter Rupeeland. He accepts the offer and Uncle Rupee transforms him so that Rupees become his source of life: in fact, if unfortunately he loses all the rupees without preserving even one, he will die; moreover, Uncle Rupee gives him the name "Tingle", making him forget his own.
Dungeons within Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland are found on each of the game's three continents, and are a necessity to complete the game. By completing a dungeon, the player receives what are typically the biggest Rupee rewards and by defeating the end-of-dungeon bosses they receive one of five gems. Even if the player has successfully built the tower to its tallest height, they must have collected all the gems to access the final location. Accessing these dungeons is limited by the height of the tower, as certain areas can only be accessed once the tower is a certain height, and thus after the player has donated enough Rupees into it.
Source: Wikipedia, "Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland", available under the CC-BY-SA License.
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