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dkirschner's Stories Untold (PC)

[July 22, 2021 11:15:50 PM]

Like Observation, the game No Code made after Stories Untold, I was a bit disappointed with this! I thought Stories Untold was a horror anthology. It's less horror and more a Stranger Things 80s vibe, and while it is an anthology, the gameplay was basically just manipulating tactile interfaces to solve puzzles (not nearly as fun or interesting to play with as GNOG). Each of the four episodes is different, but they are tied together, which you discover in the last one. In episode one, you basically play a text adventure game; in episode two, you follow instructions to operate machines to perform experiments; and in episode three, you follow instructions to decode messages.

I had no idea what was going on after episode one, even less after episode two, and in episode three you get some clues that you are playing one character in all the episodes, though it isn't clear how they tie together yet. I think what I was most disappointed with was how easy/boring the gameplay was. Yeah, the "what's next" of the story was cool, and it fit the gameplay, but the gameplay didn't carry the experience like I hoped. So in episode three, for example, you are in some remote station in the middle of nowhere and you have to decode messages. To do this, you look at microfilm for instructions. Scanning the microfilm is slow, and the text is not in sharp focus. So when you have to find and copy text to decipher codes, you will often be wrong because you had trouble reading the text instead of for any dullness on your part. So I eventually was just looking up the answers to move the story along. I am sure other people played Stories Untold by, at some point, just looking stuff up. It's not that rewarding figuring out the puzzles.

So yeah, this was fine, not as special as I thought it would be. Similar disappointed feeling as Observation. They have some great ideas, some really cool elements, but the execution is flawed.