Storyteller Review (Flame-Lynx99)
That feeling when you are promised that the book is going to be very exciting with many different variations of stories in 1200 pages, and in reality you get a small book with 20 times fewer pages and just over 10 chapters of stories.
The game is a book with blank pages, where we create stories with corresponding descriptions. There are 13 chapters, each with three to four scenes, all pages are divided into several cells. The main task is to arrange locations and characters in such a way that a couple of pictures make up a given scenario. Then you can move on to the next challenge.
For example, in the story “Isabelle remarries” we are given not only Isabelle, but also two more characters, Edgar and Lenora. Apparently, with someone she must first break up, and then, in the last frame, - to play a new wedding. Locations are four, including rooms with poison and wine - apparently, the fate of the spouse is unenviable. The stories here are dark - a lot of murders and betrayals, and closer to the finale almost incest appears.
The main problem with Storyteller is back at the beginning - 3-5 challenges in one chapter is very few. The first two are warm-up puzzles designed to either explain the mechanics or introduce the characters. Yes and the following situations are not much more difficult - not only that, but over time they start to get very boring and similar to each other. When you once again see that the butler killed someone, the first shots are arranged in the same way as in the previous mysteries with his participation. The overpopulation of scenes with the same characters makes the puzzles frustratingly easy.
At times, Storyteller offers multiple solutions to a single puzzle - when you pass, the test for the first time, under the initially set condition, another one appears. For example, you poisoned someone, and you are offered to pass the same puzzle without killing. But there are very few such moments, and they are performed in a couple of clicks - in some chapters there are none at all. Such bonus puzzles could increase the modest duration of the game - you spend a little more than an hour to go through everything that is available here, provided you know what scenes you need to place in the cells. And then you get the feeling that the developer was squeezing out the last of the puzzles - so bizarre are they that they start to resemble Santa Barbara. In Chapter 12, the family squabbles begin: in the opening frames, you have to put two characters across from each other so that one tells the other that he's his father or mother. If the comics have been anything like illustrated fairy tales up to this point, this is nothing at all.
A spoonful of honey in a barrel of tar.
The concept itself is not bad and quite original, and you can squeeze a lot of interesting things out of it. And again this idea could better reveal itself, if the game had a Steam Workshop, thanks to which you could create any story to your taste and color, sharing with other users of the playground, but, unfortunately, in Storyteller the basic mechanics is not developed in any way - that on the first level you move characters to the cells, that on the last. And there is no history here - the game just ends at the final puzzle.
The game should also be praised for its design. A beautiful book with charming illustrations, pleasant sounds when dragging locations and people, classical music in the background - everything is done perfectly.
Conclusion
I can't say that it's a frankly bad game, but it was definitely a disappointment for me. It's not so much about the short duration, but about the excessive simplicity of gameplay mechanics. Sometimes you should question the quality of the product and the description in Steam, which promises the possibility to “invent your own stories” - alas, you can't invent anything of your own here, and among the plots that are available, not all of them are interesting.
5 of 10