Stories Untold | Review | Text-Based Eighties Horror Gloriousness
19You guys like Stranger Things?
Yeah, me too. It was a brilliant Stephen King/Goonies/80’s Teen romance smoothie. It tapped into a frame of nostalgia, we actually didn’t know we wanted: like a guy who shows up to a party with a full DVD set of The Raccoons. You’re ready to get your drink on, and suddenly it’s 3 in the morning and you can’t stop humming that goddamn theme song.
It wasn’t just the nostalgia, of course. Stranger Things had some brilliant writing that underpinned the entire show. You came for the 80’s feelgoods: you stayed for the pathos and drama and the scares.
And when Stories Untold was announced by Devolver Digital, it seemed a little… familiar.
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I mean, holy shit, most of us were thinking: “You’re not even trying.” But having played through Stories Untold, I can safely say that just like Stranger Things, it steals from the right material, while bringing its own individual mark to bear.
Stories Untold is a puzzler and text-based adventure. It’s actually sort of hard to tack down a genre, because the four individual stories that make up the game go all over the place. But they do it without making anything confusing or tacked on.
The anthology style of Stories Untold is really reminiscent of old shows like the Twilight Zone or even flicks like Creepshow. It has a real Weird Tales vibe: stories about ordinary people facing down extraordinary things. A creepy monster in every closet, that sort of thing. It’s wonderful. It builds a mood and atmosphere of dread that you can only really achieve in a video game. You’re part of the story and yet not. It feels present, but sort of far away: like the truth behind the stories is purposefully kept at an arm’s distance. Which you come to realize is exactly the point.
Because what isn’t immediately apparent when you play Stories Untold, is that all four games are interconnected. And they’re interconnected in a way that is so simple and yet so effortless that M. Night Shamaylan might as well just stop writing twist endings and take up a job as CPA. Actually that might not be a bad idea no matter what.
M. Please. Stop.
It’s important to point out what an amazing mood that Stories Untold is capable of, particularly with the simplicity of its gameplay. The first episode, House Abandoned, is told entirely through a text-based adventure game, and it is simply creepy as hell. You’re playing a game about someone who has returned to their old home, and what you do effects the world around you—it’s fascinatingly eerie and simple in equal parts. This progresses to an episode that uses half puzzles and half text adventure, while the third becomes a fully realized puzzle game. And the fourth? Well, you’ll have to play that one to find out.
The whole thing folds together beautifully. It takes about 2 hours to play the whole thing through, and I highly recommend you do just that. A couple of hours for a brilliantly composed horror mystery with genuinely intriguing puzzles—that not too high a price to pay, time wise. The only real criticism that I have for Stories Untold is that the moments in the game where you’re using your mouse to click aren’t always terribly reactive. It’s frustrating when you’re already unsure of what your next move should be, and then you find yourself clicking and clicking over and over until you finally get the door to open or the turn on the computer or what have you. I’ve mentioned this with games in the past, but it bears repeating: unexpected glitches when part of your horror involves purposeful glitches is obnoxious as hell. It’s like feeling drunk and then being informed that you’ve been drinking O’Douls all night. You feel hurt, betrayed, and most importantly, like a complete and utter dumb ass.
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