Whether it’s the incredible The Artful Escape or the musical masterpiece Sayonara Wild Hearts, Annapurna Interactive has released more than a few must-have titles on Nintendo Switch, so when we learned that the next project from the editor was a little puzzle game called Storyteller, you can bet we wanted to check it out right away. Developed by Daniel Benmergui, the man behind nifty little flash games. i wish i was the moon there i die todayStoryteller has one of the most imaginative premises we’ve seen in a long time.
It seems simple at first glance. Each puzzle has a title, a set of scenes, a handful of characters, and plenty of blank spaces to fill. The title is key and could be something like “A Broken Heart Heals”. With wedding and death scenes available, plus four characters to choose from: Edgar, Lenora, Bernard and Isobel, solving this puzzle is easy. Placing Edgar and Lenora in the wedding scene locks in their love. Placing Lenora in a later wedding scene with Bernard shows that she is truly faithful to her true love from the very first scene, which breaks Bernard’s heart. Heartbroken, placing Bernard in other The wedding scene with Isobel marries them, healing their grief and fulfilling the requirements of the title.
Some titles also have alternate ways of completing them, like putting Edgar in a death scene, thereby breaking Lenora’s heart, then throwing her into a wedding scene to marry another (poor Edgar, right? ?), but most titles only have one specific. result to be completed in a set number of scenes.
With 12 chapters that each have four puzzles, the titles get more and more complicated. Characters are added with settings that trigger specific actions in certain scenes, such as the evil baron who will push almost anyone to death if placed on the cliff scene with him. On the other hand, the chivalrous knight will not drive anyone to their doom unless motivated in an earlier scene. The following chapters feature a set of fairy tale dwarfs straight out of a Disney movie with names like Hatey and Tiny, and it’s up to you to edit their family trees, give them reasons to kill each other, then remarry with a complicated, A six – Shakespearean puzzle scene titled ‘Hatey murders the father and marries the mother’. And many more, with all these scenarios intuitively controllable on the Switch’s touch screen or with a controller.
While we got through most of the titles without too much trouble, thoroughly enjoying the small, expressive characters and absurd storylines along the way, the last three chapters upped the difficulty, leaving us perplexed more often than not. This was where we thought Storyteller was strongest; with evocative titles featuring characters that react differently when placed in various contexts. Really, our only disappointment was when the credits rolled after solving all the puzzles in about two or three hours. For us, the premise was just beginning to challenge our imagination and we desperately wanted more.
While our hopes for extra-difficult secret levels or post-credits challenges were quickly dashed, Storyteller hints at the possibility of more levels to come, and after this short teaser, we sincerely hope Benmergui and Annapurna give it that chance. . clever premise a sequel.