Storyteller – Review
It’s not easy to find quality puzzle games. Too many games fail to properly instruct the player while also providing enough challenge through rule extensions. In that case, it’s much more difficult to stand out from the crowd. Daniel Benmergui and Annapurna Interactive’s Storyteller successfully combined all three of these features. When it was announced in July of 2021, I immediately added Storyteller to my list of most anticipated games due of its fresh visual style and intriguing take on the puzzle genre. Is it everything you hoped it would be now that you finally have it? Absolutely.
In a twist of fate, Storyteller doesn’t actually tell all that interesting of a tale. An enchanted book of tales has been bestowed upon you, and you must read them all to earn a crown. The hitch is that outside from that, you are just given a prompt, some characters, and some situations. Construct the story so that it responds to the prompt. Whether you’re writing a simple love story or a modern classic like Dracula, the Werewolf, Oedipus, Romeo and Juliet, and more, you’ll find inspiration in these questions. These are very basic recountings. Still, there’s a plethora of ways to tell them; the stories recounted are only limited by the listener’s creativity.
The first thing I thought was that it was over too quickly. My time investment was roughly 2.5 hours. The problem is that those moments passed incredibly rapidly. It wasn’t a case of “blink and it’s over” speed; rather, I was having too much fun with the puzzles to notice how quickly time was passing. Not because the puzzles were hard or deep, but because the visual makes for some great “a-ha!” moments in the game. The artwork has the look of a children’s book, with simplified, exaggerated environments and characters that look like they’re straight out of a cartoon. When you think of a wicked witch, what comes to mind? Do I get the impression of a tiny, elderly lady with a long, crooked nose? For the simple reason that this very queen is used. The same might be said of an angry dwarf who resembles Grump, one of Snow White’s seven dwarves. Even Dracula has a traditional vampire appearance.
It’s bending these time-honored tales to your will in order to achieve a straightforward objective. This would not have been possible without characters who are the most accurate archetypes of the people in these tales. The game’s unstated rules and the way they all work together are another great feature. Very little is revealed about the interplay between these persons and their environments. When you first start the game, all you’re really given is how to arrange the various locations and people on the storyboard. Now we’re done. It’s a lot of fun to see how different rules and interactions apply to different characters and different environments.
As an illustration, I’ll briefly go over one of the potential Dracula stories. (no spoilers). The locations include a wooded area, a university laboratory, and a tomb. Dracula, a young man, and a young woman round out the cast. Place either the kid or the girl in the forest with Dracula, and he or she will become a vampire. In contrast, if you put Dracula and that same individual in the crypt before the scenario, the latter will discover Dracula asleep. In order to respond to the prompt, you will need to find out how to include all of that information, as well as a character learning how to fix vampirism and the story’s resolution, in four to six panels. This is the part I enjoy the best. The answer is within your grasp. But how can you fit everything into the allotted panels?
A further stroke of brilliance is the way character interactions shift as the panels are rearranged. If you alter the events in one panel, they will ripple across the rest of the comic immediately. This may give you some idea of whether or not you are heading in the right way. Two characters could become angry at each other in a single scene. Then, in a flash, one of them is dead and the other is the murderer. If you make a mistake, you don’t have to reset the entire page. To a greater extent, this aided me in later chapters and levels where I was missing a crucial piece of the jigsaw. I could swiftly test out multiple possibilities to reach the result I desired, even if the fate of the entire tale hinged on a single panel.
And last, some stories have extra challenges in the form of special variables that only become available at the end. The first suggestion may be something like, “A father is murdered by his daughter.” He may have been trying to aid her after completing the level. The question then becomes how to adapt the first viable scenario so that it satisfies both of these conditions. Each of these options is a refreshingly novel approach to problem solving that can alter not just the final destination but also the path taken to get there. Even after completing the game, I was left wanting more Storyteller and wishing that there was a challenge mode option for every level.
Storyteller is endearing and funny and puzzling all at the same time. All are constructed so that you can tell the story that you envision in response to the prompt. This is an absolute must-play for anyone in the market for a new puzzle game, thanks to its many noteworthy features such as its hands-off instructions and subtle butterfly effect interactions. Even without its own story, the game’s use of well-known fables is fantastic, and the fact that you can put your own twist on them is what makes it truly special. Now that I’ve defeated it, there’s nothing I desire more than more.
