Whether or not it’s the eye-popping The Suave Escape or the music-driven masterpiece Sayonara Wild Hearts, Annapurna Interactive has put out quite a lot of must-play titles on the Nintendo Change, so after we heard the writer’s subsequent venture was somewhat puzzle recreation known as Storyteller, you possibly can guess we needed to test it out instantly. Developed by Daniel Benmergui, the person behind clever little flash video games I Want I Had been the Moon and Immediately I Die, Storyteller has one of the crucial imaginative premises we’ve seen shortly.
It appears easy at first. Every puzzle has a title, a set of scenes, a handful of characters, and a bunch of clean areas so that you can fill. The title is vital and may learn one thing like ‘A Heartbreak is Healed.’ With Wedding ceremony and Loss of life Scenes accessible, together with 4 characters to select from – Edgar, Lenora, Bernard, and Isobel – fixing this puzzle is simple. Inserting Edgar and Lenora into the Wedding ceremony Scene locks of their love. Inserting Lenora in a subsequent Wedding ceremony Scene with Bernard reveals that she is certainly devoted to her real love from the primary scene, and this in flip breaks Bernard’s coronary heart. With a damaged coronary heart, inserting Bernard in one other Wedding ceremony Scene with Isobel has them marry – therapeutic his heartbreak and fulfilling the title necessities.
Some titles even have alternate methods to finish them — equivalent to inserting Edgar in a Loss of life scene, thus breaking Lenora’s coronary heart, after which throwing her in a Wedding ceremony Scene to marry one other (poor Edgar, proper?) — however most titles solely have one particular final result to finish inside a set quantity of scenes.
With 12 chapters which have 4 puzzles every, the titles get progressively extra difficult. Characters are added with parameters that set off particular actions in sure scenes, such because the evil Baron who will push nearly anybody to their demise if positioned within the Cliff scene with him. Then again, the chivalrous knight is not going to shove anybody to their doom until offered motivation in a previous scene. Later chapters star a set of fairy story dwarfs ripped out of a Disney film with names like Hatey and Tiny, and it’s as much as you to change their household timber, give them motives to kill each other, after which marry once more with difficult, six-scene Shakespearean puzzles titled ‘Hatey Murders Father and Marries Mom.’ And plenty of extra, with all these situations intuitively controllable on the Change’s touchscreen or with a controller.
Whereas we solved most titles with out a lot bother, significantly having fun with the expressive little characters and absurd situations alongside the best way, the final three chapters ramped up the issue, stumping us most of the time. This was the place we felt Storyteller was at its strongest; with evocative titles starring characters that reacted otherwise when positioned in diversified scenes. Actually, our solely disappointment was when the credit rolled after clearing all of the puzzles in about two or three hours. To us, the premise had simply begun to problem our creativeness and we desperately needed extra.
Whereas our hopes for some secret, extra-hard ranges or some post-credits problem have been rapidly dashed, Storyteller encompasses a small tease of the potential for extra sooner or later, and after simply this quick style, we sincerely hope Benmergui and Annapurna give this intelligent premise a sequel.