storyteller

started: 3/27/23 | finished: 3/27/23 | reviewed: 3/28/23

i tried the demo for this a while back and i loved so much that i got every achievement in it, so of course i had to get this right when it came out!! its a pretty unique puzzle game where you are given a prompt like "these two people get married" or "this person kills this person" and you have to arrange characters and events in story panels to make that happen. i really love this concept and thought the game was really fun to play!!

the demo took me half an hour to 100%, and unfortunately, the full game only took me three times as long. i found most of the puzzles pretty easy - out of 51 levels, there were two i had to look up the solutions for (one was poorly worded, and the other was the very last level of the game). im not the kind of person who complains about stuff like "i paid x dollars for this game and it took y hours to beat, thats not worth it". i think thats very silly. i value quality over quantity and think some games are better suited to be longer or shorter than others. stray, for example, is a game many people complain about the length of. i enjoyed the hell out of my 4 hours of gameplay though, and i think if this kind of game were 20 hours long, it would become a slog. i would rather pay full price for a 4 hour amazing game than a 25 hour alright game. and to be honest, i gravitate more towards short games and stay very very far away from long ass rpgs and open world games because i always get bored and never finish them.

anyway uh. tangent over. this game isnt reviewing super great because a lot of people are upset about the length. i read these reviews and bought it anyway, and honestly? i definitely think this is a game that could benefit from being longer. it was in development for over ten years, and there is a good amount of depth to it. there are tons of different character reactions to discover, depending on how you arrange the stories. the short length and linear style of gameplay mean this depth does not come even close to being fully explored. and i expected there to be many more optional challenges, but there were only a handful, some of which i completed on accident. if not more levels and challenges to show what else the characters and scenarios could do, i really think this should have had a sandbox mode where you could set up your own stories, name them, and share them online. i know it would have required a huge amount of effort in drawing and coding, but i think an amazing concept like this deserves that kind of attention. characters and events can only be used in their respective collections of levels, which limits possibilities significantly.

some of the characters on the cover image of the game arent even in it, and the demo contained a good amount of cut content. why?? with how long this game was in development, im surprised there are so many missed opportunities. overall, i loved this game and i think its really cool and worth playing, but since its such an incredible and fun concept, i really wish it was expanded upon a lot more.

score: 8/10