Nintendo Switch Review Code Provided by Annapurna Interactive
Bringing a lore-focused puzzle game is Annapurna Interactive as Storyteller creator Daniel Benmergui is ready to send out his storybook challenges. When I first played the demo for this game, I wasn’t convinced that the game was going to end up being challenging, but they turned out to have a handful of very difficult puzzles in their storybook puzzle style. The main part I didn’t realize I would enjoy was the amount of creativity I had to use to solve even the easier puzzles as you are putting stories together after all.
Gameplay
From the start of the game to the end, the gameplay is the same. This is a game that offers a very simplistic gameplay style and puts the challenge in the puzzles. Because of this, the game is pretty short and the length depends on how quickly you can solve the puzzles.
When you open a puzzle, on the top you will be given the prompt goal. Below, you will be given a number of scenes and a number of characters. From here, you need to put together a storyboard that makes up the tale that matches the prompt goal. There is consistency as well so scenes will always be the same as they always are and characters will generally play the same role as they tend to.
For instance, if the goal is Two Lovers Poison Themselves then you will use a Marriage scene with two characters to make them love each other, a Death scene to break one character’s heart, a Poison scene to do that to one, then a Revive scene to bring the other back, a Death scene to break that revived characters heart, and finally a Poison scene to get the second lover. Boom, you wrote ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and met the goal.
Some puzzles will give a secondary prompt after you solve it. So, using the same puzzle scene, you would get the prompt that somebody drinks poison twice. To meet this, you chance the scene on who Revived and then have them drink Poison again.
Audio and Visual
They kept both of these aspects very simplistic, which makes sense for the kind of game it is. The music is fitting to a sort of Medieval theme, but it is definitely only meant to be background noise. And with the game all about putting a storyboard together, the visual aspect is just enough detail to make each character stand out from the others and the backgrounds are penciled in, which is just enough to get the point across.
Replayability
As I mentioned, some of the puzzles open a secondary objective when you solve them. To that extent, you have a little bit of replayability. Aside from that, there isn’t much reason to play the game more than once.
What It Could Have Done Better
With how simplistic the setup for this game is, I really expected there to be more puzzles. I only got stumped on a total of 5 of them with only 2 puzzles being truly difficult. They should have kept adding more premises and kept the difficulty increasing. As it stands, it is a low-tier difficulty game which may be a put-off for some players.
Verdict
Storyteller is a fun way to utilize your creativity! Despite the game being rather short and the difficulty not getting too high, it seems to be an entertaining puzzle game that invites all kinds of puzzle and story fans to play. I do wish there was a bit more to the game, but it manages to pull off the gameplay it is designed to.
Storyteller is set to release on March 23rd, for PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch.
