For the Puzzle Critical Play, I chose to play Storyteller. Storyteller is designed by Daniel Benmergui and published by Annapurna Interactive in 2023. It is made for players ages 12+ and is designed in a way which allows players to decide the narrative of a story while sticking to the theme of the game, which is displayed as the title above the comic frames.
Sample round (title is “About Heartbreak”)
Storyteller is an incredibly interactive game: not only do players decide the details for each scene in the story, they are also able to see the story unfold. For example, when you place two characters in a wedding, there is an animation which displays hearts around the character. This allows for players to understand that A. They might be on the right track, or B. This scene can be used later on. This mechanic of animations can be scene as bread crumbs which give subtle clues to the player throughout the puzzle. Another way in which the mechanics of the game produces hints for the player is through the use of question marks in certain scenes. For instance, if a player started off with the cemetery scene which one character and the other character alive, the scene would present some question marks around the live character so show that it is unknown how they would react because they did not have a backstory with the other character prior to the cemetery scene. These bread crumbs enable Storyteller to be highly interactive yet also allows for the game to lead the player if they are stuck.
Another mechanic of the game which enhances the playability and creativity of the game is through the presence of multiple solutions. As seen below, one could easily use Jack as the character which marries the two girls instead of what is presented below. However, the variability within the solutions allows for the puzzle to be catered to people of all backgrounds and sexualities, further increasing the playability of the game.
Alternate solutions to each round
A limitation to Storyteller, however, is the way in which the tip is provided to the player. When a player clicks for a tip, they get to see the entire comic drawn out before them. This is a negative experience to the player because there is no aspect of puzzle-solving as the story is displayed to the player all at once.
However, this choice in displaying the entire story as a tip could be useful when a player has tried multiple times to solve the puzzle and becomes frustrated. In that instance, displaying the entire story could be a refresher for the player so that they can resume the game by advancing to the next round. However, I still believe that displaying a portion of the tip would be more useful.
The last way in which the mechanics of Storyteller enhance the player experience is through the presence of multiple settings. As seen in the round below, there is a wedding, cemetery, revive, and poison scene. This might be initially intimidating to the player, but this allows for the game to be challenging and at various levels. This makes the game less boring and entices the player to continue.
Although Storyteller allows for multiple solutions for each round, it still requires a lot of “inside the box” knowledge. For example, there was a scene titled “Adam and Eve”. For those who are not Christian or have not been raised in the West, this might not be familiar at all. They would not understand that Eve has to eat the apple and later seduce Adam. This assumption by the designer can exclude non-Western players from engaging with the game in a meaningful way and to feel good about their intelligence, when in reality this was entirely based off of one’s engagement with Western literature and culture. Furthermore, the game ties closely to a medieval/renaissance vibe and only presents white characters, which again, is very reliant on Western culture and excludes other races. Therefore, although Storyteller is a very engaging game, the occasional references to Western cultural stories might not be the best in terms of promoting the game abroad. One way of solving this problem could be through introducing Eastern narratives as well. This can allow for all players to be “confused” in one moment or the other, level out the playing field. Another way in which the designer could make the game more inclusive is to potentially use animals as characters. This removes the necessity for equal representation of all socioeconomic groups, but it might be more challenging in terms of designing scenes (how would an animal wedding look? O_O). However, overall, Storyteller was an incredibly fun puzzle to play, and allowed me to better understand what we mean by puzzles in game design.
