Annapurna Interactive has had an incredible run since its inception delivering some of the most memorable games I’ve played over the last five years. Between Florence, Gone Home, Telling Lies, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Neon White, and Maquette, I’ve had my fill of a diverse range of video games — each one more incredible than the last one. Then you have something like Storyteller added to an incredibly stacked roster and you begin to feel like maybe Annapurna has wizards scouting for some of the most diverse developers in the industry.
Storyteller lets you create your fictional tales by filling in all the blanks. Want to tell a story about heartbreak? Then pick whose heart is breaking and the situation that leads up to then what follows. You can essentially drag and drop the required components in storyboards and then watch as the events unfold hoping you’re able to solve the puzzle in front of you.
Storyteller Features Interactive Picture Pages
Using bite-sized short stories, Storyteller uses a fantastical storybook filled with blank panels. The gist is you’re provided with a prompt for each page and are expected to fill in the blanks by adding characters or backdrops to fill out the pages. You’re essentially given the reins to mix and match the elements to fit the narrative which is exciting at first before it ends up becoming the entire premise of Storyteller and little more than just ensuring the right pieces fit together.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my time creating the stories within this beautifully animated indie title. I certainly found it charming but it never really went off the established path. Storyteller features 12 chapters with each one focusing on a specific story and a checklist required to move on to the next chapter. Early chapters focus on the biblical story of Adam and Eve, while others centre on Snow White with three to eight panels given to you to make sense of the story. The panels feature a bevy of situations and characters specific to that story.
In one chapter you’ll need to marry the queen so you set the correct backdrop and character, figure out the queen has been kidnapped, and then discover it was a ruse by the baron. You fill each panel out with the correct logical story piece like in the corresponding panel until the puzzle is solved. I might even compare Storyteller to the order of operations, a series of rules which must be done in a specific order to get the correct answer. It felt like I was relearning the rules of arithmetic once again only this time I’m using a series of stories to do so.
You have 51 levels to tell a story and the earlier stories aren’t a vast challenge and it isn’t until the later chapters did I find myself stumped. I found that the difficulty isn’t really meant to keep you away for too long and usually stepping away for a bit helped me reach the end of the book. As you work your way through the chapters, the stories become a bit more complex with more panels to add the correct terms.
Many of the themes are familiar and I can recall many of them from high school English courses like love, revenge, and jealousy serving as the basis for many chapters. There’s also so much charm flowing through each tale and while Storyteller’s runtime is roughly three hours, there is something worth coming back for once you’re wrapped up. My main thing was to revisit the earlier chapters and see what I could think of for any given scenario. In most cases, you’ll get a worthy response from the characters and it generally is worthwhile to look back and mess about with the panels to see what you’re able to come up with.
Sadly, and surprisingly, there is no hint system available in Storyteller. Earlier puzzles aren’t particularly challenging to start but as I mentioned earlier, the final few puzzles left me stumped. Hitting a brick wall at the end of the journey is deflating and it breaks the streak you’ll be on when things click with previous chapters. Eventually, I was able to return and add what I felt was the next best option to the final chapters but it left me ready to call it quits.
Verdict
Storyteller is a charming puzzler filled with fantastical stories. It is both beautifully animated and uniquely fun that has a rather simple premise but one that has the potential to offer something more than it does. In a world where Baba is You, and Snakebird exist, you’ll find new puzzlers compared to the best in their genre. In the case of Storyteller, I felt it gave you more information than necessary, which often made solving the puzzles far easier than I’d have liked. Still, I had fun with the clever moments offered throughout the short runtime, even though it lacks the depth the genre provides typically.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PC
