The game I decided to play was Storyteller, a puzzle video game designed by Daniel Benmergui. Storyteller is a mobile, single-player game I played on my computer, which made it super easy to navigate! The game is designed for players who enjoy puzzles and narrative-centered experiences, but its simple mechanics make it accessible to a broad audience. It’s recommended for those 12+ because players need to understand nuanced stories and cause-and-effect logic to solve each puzzle.
When I played Storyteller, it genuinely exceeded my expectations. I didn’t think much of it at first because I assumed it would be super simple and straightforward. There was only one goal: to build a story of a given prompt. The prompts were extremely concise, so I was definitely suspicious of the game. For example, one of the prompts was “Seeing the ghost of a lover” and other prompts were only three words. However, as the game progressed, it ended up being way more challenging than I expected. I was thinking of the elements of storytelling from a puzzle-like perspective, while also figuring out how to piece them together in a meaningful way. Thus, Storyteller uses simple but clever mechanics to interconnect storytelling and logic, turning narrative-building into an interactive puzzle-solving experience. The game’s mechanics encourage trial and error, pushing players to think critically about how small placement/plot changes can entirely reshape a story.
By constraining players to a fixed space and cast, Storyteller turns storytelling into a puzzle that is centered around being intentional and precise. Each level gives players a limited number of frames and predetermined characters, which forces them to think critically about how to arrange events and people to solve the story. For example, in the puzzle “Everyone Rejects Edgar,” the goal seemed simple at first. I assumed that I could just have each character reject Edgar directly, but it wasn’t that easy. The game’s limited panel space, situations, and characters didn’t allow me to do what I wanted to do (Picture 1). Instead, I had to follow the game’s rules and carefully consider the sequences of events/characters to solve the prompt. To solve the puzzle, I actually had to kill off certain characters and create different relationships that made Edgar’s rejection possible (Picture 2). This added unexpected layers of nuance to a seemingly straightforward story prompt. Storyteller is an example of a game that successfully uses space as a formal element. The fixed number of panels, characters, and situations creates this magic circle that forces players to create a concise story where every frame is intentional. The game’s procedural rules (i.e. who can interact with whom and in what order) don’t give complete freedom to players, but that is what makes the puzzle engaging and entertaining. Instead of straightforwardness, players have to truly understand how the game’s system works and use that to their advantage. Together, these elements make Storyteller an entertaining puzzle game that quietly forces you to think way more than you expect.
Picture 1: The moment I realized where the game wasn’t as simple as I thought, I had to think of solving the story in a unique way.
Picture 2: The successful puzzle I made. I had to create a series of different situations while using all the characters/limited panels to achieve the story.
Moreover, in Storyteller, each story has multiple possible combinations. Thus, the game rewards experimentation and shows how the smallest differences (i.e. situation and character placements) can lead to extremely different outcomes. In one puzzle where the goal was for a couple to fall in love and then separate, I tried changing just one scene from a wedding to a funeral, which completely changed the scene’s emotional tone. The mechanics of the game encourage players to play around with possibilities and teach them that stories aren’t just about what happens, but how and when it happens. This is an example of an emergent narrative, where the story’s meaning comes from the player’s actions rather than it being directly handed to them. Moreover, since the puzzles use the same characters in different roles, it adds an interesting layer to how players think about character function and identity in games. For example, one moment a character can be a hero and lover, and the next they’re the villain and/or cheating on another character. On another note, I do think the game could do a better job of acknowledging alternate but valid solutions. Sometimes players may end up creating a story that technically “works,” but because it doesn’t match the game’s expected logic exactly, it gets rejected. That makes the system feel a little rigid, especially in a game that centers itself on creative problem-solving. Still, this openness to multiple narrative paths is what makes Storyteller feel so dynamic and mentally engaging.
Although the game’s simple mechanics make it accessible to a variety of different players, it does have some ethical issues. Storyteller assume that players have a basic understanding of Western storytelling conventions. For example, tropes like love triangles, Biblical references, and “Shakespeare-like” stories are central to solving many of the puzzles. The game relies on players recognizing narrative patterns like “a hero defeats a villain” or “a character mourns a lost lover,” which are common in Western fairy tales, literature, and media. This assumption can unintentionally exclude players who come from cultural backgrounds where these story structures aren’t as familiar or where emotional cues are represented differently. While the puzzles don’t require academic knowledge or language fluency beyond basic reading, the underlying logic is built on a specific cultural idea of what makes a story “make sense.” As a result, players outside that cultural or narrative context may find it harder to intuitively solve certain puzzles. Thus, it would be interesting to see the game including other narrative tropes from different cultures to cater towards diverse perspectives.
