I haven’t even seen Stranger Things, but the theme music and logo of Stories Untold instantly made me think of Stranger Things. There are 4 episodes in the game, and the first three seem unrelated, but all is explained in the fourth. I won’t go into detail about the fourth episode because it’s basically a story based game, and if you explain the plot; then it is a spoiler.
In the first episode, you are playing a text-based adventure game on the Spectrum computer. You type in commands to navigate a house like “open door”, “go to hallway”. At first, you play a normal version of the game, but then replay a creepier version.
In the second episode, you are performing lab experiments by switching on machinery and turning dials. You have a computer with the instructions, so need to check them to work out which machine to turn on and adjust.
In the third episode, you are adjusting a radio to pick up a code to enter in the computer. Then you need to check microfiche for the next codes to enter. I found it difficult to see the text, and some of the instructions seemed a bit cryptic, so I looked up what you needed to do on a walkthrough.
The fourth episode revisits mechanics from the previous three. At this point, I realised there were controls to zoom and focus the text to see the microfiche, so maybe it wasn’t hard to see the text in episode 3 afterall.
However, I think this highlights the main problem with the game. It doesn’t do a great job of explaining what you need to do. When you play the text adventure, certain commands seem to work in some areas, but not others. Often, the objects you need to type aren’t displayed on screen. So for example, it tells you that you are in a room of people you don’t recognise, but doesn’t give you any more info than that. I tried “look at room”, “look at people” without success, then I assumed we needed to leave the room. I tried typing “go to kitchen”, “go outside”, but it actually expected “go to hallway”, then from the hallway I could move to the kitchen. In general, the controls are clunky and it’s a bit stressful to play.
With each episode, they seem incomplete stories. They are just experiences without a conclusion. Like I said, the fourth one does explain how they are related to each other, but even then, they still feel like throwaway experiences and the story really just exists in the fourth episode. The story is pretty similar to those stories in the show Black Mirror.
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Stories Untold is a game that brings together several different styles from the adventure genre to create a short, cinematic experience. It consists of four short "episodes" that ultimately contribute to a greater story. Large portions of the game consist of text adventure sections played first-person via an in-game monitor (very meta), though there are point-and-click and walking sections as well. There are some good puzzles in the game and some that simply boil down to following directions. The text adventure sections aren't written particularly well, but I noticed a small amount of attention to detail which could be interesting sometimes. In some situations the text parser would do a good job and know exactly what I wanted, but in others it was frustratingly rigid. Taken on their own merits, each of the first three episodes are either just okay or mediocre, with the first one probably being the most effective in the writing department, and the second excelling in gameplay and puzzles. That second chapter features some cool interactive analog equipment that feels especially polished and unique. The third episode features among other things a lengthy walking section which is extremely boring and feels like padding on top of what is potentially a less than two hour long game. As the story wore on, I started to become somewhat tired of the cliched dialogue and situations, and the flat voice acting took me out of the experience.
The big reveal at the end of the game is that the whole story is a dream in the mind of the main character who fell into a coma after driving drunk and crashing his car. He inadvertently kills his sister, and we are treated to a very dramatic retelling of this incident that offers no choice and hammers home the message that drunk driving is very bad and that drunk drivers can be evil, thoughtless people. While it's hard to disagree, I have a feeling this story was motivated by an experience in the lives of one of the writers. It's all played very seriously and feels a bit one-sided, like it was written by either a victim or a drunk driver plagued with guilt. The message is that our main character is completely to blame for what happened, despite being persistently asked by both the sister and their dad to drive, even though he would have been clearly intoxicated to all involved. It's just a muddled message with a framing device that feels like a "postmodern" twist concocted for the sake of having one. If anything, this twist undercuts the mystery of the previous sections, and all of the cool, supernatural horror ideas are replaced with what feels like an after-school special financed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. At no point did any of the writing in this game feel particularly clever or inventive. Almost all of this is just the same old horror cliches played out for the nth time. However there was a tiny bit to appreciate with regards to the old-school tech, especially in episode two. That was probably my favorite parts of the game - the attention to detail on the analog devices was a bit impressive. It's just a shame that the writing felt so forced.
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