Storyteller Review – Old Story

For many of us, fantastical tales of knights and dragons, love and loss, and brave heroes who overcome all obstacles are what got us hooked on storytelling. As we get older and life gets more complicated, so does the kind of stories we crave. , retelling, reimagining, subverting, and evolving into entirely new creations. It is this sense of wonder and joy that Storyteller seeks to capture. But the imaginative puzzle game ultimately fails to bottle up its magic, failing to meaningfully evolve, instead offering a repetitive and overwhelming experience.

Storyteller’s premise is simple but intriguing. Create stories with specific outcomes by changing the order in which key events occur. To do this, use an established list of characters and settings and type them into a box that resembles a panel on a comic strip. Panels interact as you build the story and adjust the variables needed to create the ending you need to pass the level, giving you a sort of interactive butterfly effect.

The challenges start out simple, such as making a prince and princess fall in love, or helping a knight defeat a monster, but they quickly get a little more complicated, with specific characters’ temperaments and what it means. You have to understand how it is seasoned. interaction with others. For example, noble knights are wary of killing other characters. Meanwhile, the bloodthirsty Baron jumps at the chance. Likewise, a knight will always vie for the queen’s affection, but it’s up to you to make her feel the same way towards him.

Simplicity is at the heart of Storyteller, for better or worse. The game mechanics are easy to understand and provide a refreshing experience, and the understated, cartoony yet minimalistic artwork is appealing. Its simplicity also makes it a suitable experience for portable his consoles, as you can easily pick it up and play a few puzzles on the go.

But while the premise is inspired, the storyteller struggles with emotion too much Simple. At about 30 minutes into the game’s one-hour runtime, he already starts to feel empty and too small. Too small to be creative, too small to provide a sense of challenge, too small to create an engaging experience. You’ll quickly discover that there are very few variables or characters that you can interact with, and that they repeat frequently throughout the levels. This means that halfway through the game there are no new puzzle pieces to ponder or try to shove into the right place. And once you get a handle on how these variables interact with each other, each level feels less like a puzzle and more like a quick exercise in throwing things into place to move forward. increase.

At times the game starts to feel downright boring as it just lays out a series of very obvious events instead of solving puzzles. For example, in one puzzle, I was able to relate several different characters by having them say, “I am your parent.” There was only the frustration of having to create several panels with different characters speaking the same sentence in order to establish this pedigree and their love for each other. Anyway, with the exception of one level that took me a little longer than usual to figure out, I can idly breeze through the whole experience and it fails to deliver the satisfaction I want from a puzzle game.

Even the few optional objectives scattered throughout the level don’t add much complexity to the game. included things like completing the story, but it’s simple enough to usually knock you out the first time you solve a puzzle. It was cute, but I wish the game had more room for creativity. .

Storyteller is frustrating in that it doesn’t feel like you’re really solving puzzles or creating your own stories. Rather, it tries to piece together the exact story the game expects. There are some levels where you can achieve a satisfying ending in multiple ways, but these are few. Ultimately, all these issues stifle the experience and reduce it to an unsatisfying creative concept. This also eliminates any replayability the game might have. Once you’ve played the level, there’s no benefit in trying to find different solutions and achieve new results.

As someone who loves fairy tales and spends a lot of time playing creative puzzle games like Scribblenauts, I was excited to play Storyteller. Unfortunately the experience was overwhelming. The concept is interesting, but the game ultimately feels limited. It’s held back by simple puzzles and a lack of creative freedom.