Storyteller

Storyteller is a unique experience, very original and fun, although the core idea ends up feeling a bit unexploited.

Storyteller feels like the perfect game to play over a few sittings with a cup of coffee in the morning. I enjoyed seeing how various scenes I tried putting together played out with lovely animations, but hoped to see more possibilities for solutions. In its current state, Storyteller is a short but great experience that I recommend to anyone wanting to experience something only possible through games. It also has been a joy to play in handheld mode on Switch. Storyteller is great, but it would definitely benefit from an expanded release that also sees a retail version on Switch.

Storyteller is a wonderful game that uses a simple mechanic in a clever way. Linking panels is addictive and due to this, you’ll want to peruse the pages and continue to the next chapter. Unfortunately, you’ll fly through and reach the end in no time at all. While there is no incentive to revisit the chapters, you’ll still thoroughly enjoy your first read-through of this charming telling tale.

Storyteller makes the player a would-be narrator, with a focus on finding the correct story under the guise of narrative independence. It’s a polished experience that’s very interactive and easy to pick up. The levels pad the game’s length out nicely to create an experience that can be played in a single sitting if you don’t get stuck. It’s just a shame the replayability suffers when the player realises there isn’t room for agency in a prewritten story.

For those more than happy with a brief game with a singular-though-solid concept at its heart, Storyteller serves up a pleasant, though far from extraordinary, take on the art of narration. A premise, though novel in its approach and easy to grasp from the word go, that sadly stops short of anything radical or surprising to help this leap off its figurative pages. Even so, a familiarity in presentation that lasts right through to the end, short and to-the-point its offers may be, there’s a sufficient sense of delight to be found in the way Storyteller hones in on the allure of storytelling as a mechanic in of itself. Something that few puzzle games truly experiment with and apply from a gameplay standpoint, but one Storyteller, if nothing else, prides itself on and more importantly succeeds in showcasing.