How Storyteller is Different

Play with Stories

Games like The Last of Us use character expressions, dialogues, settings and plot twists in a static, cinematographic way that is not directly related to the gameplay of the game itself. Games usually use a story to enrich or frame what the player does most of the time: play the game.

In Storyteller, Expressions, settings and plot twists are gameplay elements to play with. In Storyteller, stories *are* gameplay.

A Game about Love, Resentment, Death, Parenthood, Tragedy and Happiness

Storyteller has a neat story simulator that deals with these concepts and many more. Players need to ponder about these in order to make progress. What does "Inheritance Money Murder" mean? And how do you make a story that has one?

Puzzle Solutions are Not Fixed

Storyeller is a puzzle game, but unlike many puzzle games, levels are not solved by figuring out the right order to do things, but by exploiting all the character personalities. Not only are there many solutions to a level, but there are probably some solutions that even I didn't think of, and I designed the game!

Storyteller is Not Just About Challenge

While designing the game, I bump into surprising and interesting story situations. Whenever this happens I make a level out of it, and I want the whole game to be designed like this. I am not thinking in terms of difficulty and will not include any filler, even if I end up with a 3 hour game. That said, the game has many levels that need cleverness and instincts to solve, as I found out during playtests!

Storyteller has been in development for 3 years because I picked an ambitious, different and open-ended project, but the game is already 10 times better than it was when it won the Nuovo award at the IGF so I am confident the end result should be awesome. It must!