RPGMemes

Oh my God yes

The success of Recettear and Moonlighter show there's a market for subversions of the genre and I'm here for it.

Just spitballing but what if the faeries' actions wear down the boss's defenses over time. Also they can loot the chosen kid's body for stuff to pass on to the next one.

The kids have psychological profiles. Most of them are dicks who have done something to deserve their fate but you can get a random roll of a kid who is a shining moral beacon, and that run gets to take advantage of his +25 Power of Friendship or whatever. (He probably still dies, but you can make a lot of progress that way.)

Oh! And what if the faeries can affect the quality of kids they're getting? Something like a PR campaign they can run in "our world" where, if their quest is whispered into the right circles, they can get a kid who's more studious or works out more, or something. They get better at this over time, which is important because towards the endgame you actually need a pure Chosen One to achieve the win state, and the only way to pull that off is good marketing.

EDIT: to add that after the first run, the game over screen lingers on a shot of the kid's corpse on the ground. After the second run, the new kid's corpse is added on top of the first kid. This continues throughout the entire save file until you win; by the end it should be a sizeable pyramid of dead chosen ones.