Developed by Argentinian Daniel Benmergui, Storyteller took a decade to wait, but the premise was too interesting to go unnoticed: the idea was to build a deduction game - a real puzzle - on the mechanism of sequential narrative. It took Benmergui years to perfect his formula and find a distinctive and immediately recognizable graphic style, but above all to look for a form of immediate and instinctive interactivity that would translate the abstraction that is the creative process into gameplay.
We have completed the Benmergui and Annapurna title on Nintendo Switch and ours Narrator Review We tell you if it was worth waiting all these years to play screenwriters.
Tell a story
Storyteller could be defined as a kind of Scribblenauts in reverse: if in the 5th Cell game you had to choose the right words to solve the puzzles, in the Benmergui title the player has the right words immediately available, but to use them effectively must Let us first deduce the logic with which they were chosen by the author. Inspired by the stories of the great authors of the past, from Shakespeare to Conan Doyle, passing through the Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allan Poe, the Levels 52 The thirteen chapters of Storyteller are divided into short, unconnected episodes, illustrated as if they were comics, with a maximum of eight vignettes. The player has a title, a certain number of spaces and some elements, which may be settings or characters, but which are actually real concepts, with which he must build an illustrated story.
Although it is possible to choose in which order to play the different stages, the first ones perform a tutorial function that indirectly teaches the basic concepts of the game. There are no real instructions, no overlying teaching tips; Benmergui trusts the player's intelligence and his own deduction capacity, which are basically the only tools available for solving puzzles in the virtual book.
It's a kind of puzzle game. The story that must be told - but sometimes there are multiple solutions to the same enigma - must be deduced from the title, as we have already said, but also from the interactions between characters protagonists and the settings in which it takes place. The way the characters react to each other, in different settings, suggests their character and the direction of the narrative, as well as a vague order of events. Examples are worth a thousand words and one of the first stages suits us well: titled "Seeing a Lover's Ghost", this puzzle provides us with two scenarios/concepts (love and death) and two characters (Adam and Eve). . So he solution It's quite simple, because in three panels we have to tell a story in which Adam and Eve fall in love, one of them dies and the survivor sees his ghost. It's a story that practically resolves itself.
However, in later stages things change. they get complicated enormously. In "Bernarno drinks poison" we have three scenarios/concepts (forest, moon and poison) and two characters, Bernardo and Julieta, who however react differently depending on the scenario in which they find themselves, alone or together, or in the phase mole. that changes depending on how many times we use the setting in the six available cartoons. If we place Bernardo in a cartoon with the moon, we discover that he transforms into a werewolf: in the forest, before the full moon, Bernardo will love Juliet, but after the full moon, in the form of a werewolf, he will kill . his.
As you can imagine, there are many variables and the title of the story offers different interpretations. Bernardo drinks the poison...why? And when? Does he drink it to commit suicide after unintentionally attacking the woman he loved? It would seem like the most logical solution - and tragic, a characteristic more or less shared in all of Storyteller's dark stories - but it doesn't have to be and in any case the story must also be ordered in a visually logical way. . The control system is based on buttons. Nintendo Switch and on the touch screen, if you prefer, but as intuitive and immediate as it is, it must be said that we often feel the need for a mechanism that allows us to save the most complex narratives in case it is necessary to change. one or more elements while preserving as many others.
Let's say that a good half of Storyteller is genuinely inventive and fun to play: the puzzles test our deductive and logical skills, but also creativity and language. However, as the stages become more complicated and the variables multiply, we encounter some really frustrating moments in which we end up trying, without trying too hard to find the solution through reasoning.
The sober but pleasant style of Storyteller
Storyteller is absolutely a single-player game, but for the reasons mentioned above you will have much more fun in company, racking your brains together with another person while comparing solutions and ideas. Benmergui's title has a sober but pleasant appearance; The small and simple animations with which the characters express their feelings are expressive and manage to effectively convey the meaning of the scenes in which they are involved. This is undoubtedly a significant advantage that, in a broader scheme, demonstrates the attention and ingenuity with which the Argentine author worked on this very particular game, also carefully choosing thesound accompaniment, which reworks the greats of classical music: very appropriate, considering the themes of the stories told.
Conclusions
Tested version Nintendo Switch digital delivery Nintendo eShop Price 13,99 € Holygamerz.com 7.5 Readers (12) 7.2 your voteIf you've waited almost ten years for the little title developed by Daniel Benmergui, you may be a little disappointed to run out of it in a couple of hours: Storyteller is a very short game, although it obviously also depends on your skill. but it is offered at a reasonable overall price and is one of the most original indies on the market. It works, especially in company, but the idea deserves a little refinement and, without a doubt, a sequel that can express its great potential even better.
PRO
- It is a truly original and thoughtful title.
- Immediate and intuitive
AGAINST
- It is completed in a very short time.
- Some puzzles are frustrating
