Tell Me Your Story Review – A Trip Down Memory Lane
| Tags: Reviews
| Author Timo Reinecke
Here is our Tell Me Your Story Review. Learn if this short but extremely sweet adventure puzzle is more than just a nostalgia trip down to Grandma's place.
Games as a medium can be so many things. They can be fun, grand adventures that tell heartwrenching stories that stick with you long after you roll credits or a sport that will have you hone your skill forever until you become a champion.
Tell Me Your Story is more in the former category, a short sweet title. With beautiful artwork that explores through visuals and audio how we can connect with each other via the things and pieces, we pick up on our journey through life.
And despite being a bit clunky and hard to read at times, it is an experience worth having if you're up for what it's putting down. Here is our review of Tell Me Your Story by RedDeer.Games.
*Review Copy was provided ahead of release by the Publisher*
Tell Me Your Story Review
The Adventure Game is a genre that has been in a deep, deep slumber ever since Lucas Arts Games switched gears towards Star Wars licenses. Since then there have been attempts to revive the genre but they are either too lost in nostalgia or try to imitate something else.
Tell Me Your Story tries to change things up by being best described as a picture book with tasks you'd find in a game like A Litte To The Left to tell its story. I would go as far as calling it the Dark Souls of cozy adventure games but I think the meaning of that reference would be lost on people.
You play Amelia, a young girl who is spending her summer vacation with her Grandmother Rose in the countryside. The game doesn't tell you this story, it doesn't need to either. You're supposed to puzzle together its narrative while completing little tasks left and right.
Little puzzles in all shapes and forms. Cleaning out your room, preparing dinner, or trying to put all the details of a story in order. I don't want to go into specifics here because the game is rather short and seeing the patterns the game asks you to recognize is a quite beautiful discovery.
Gotta say whoever, some of its riddles play a little clunky in their execution and some solutions to riddles are a little odd and inorganic. Luckily the game's tip system is more than stellar and can help you out whenever you're in a tight spot.
But that is not why Tell Me Your Story is special, it might be short and a little unrefined in execution but its vivid, children's picturebook art style and sweet story ultimately won me over.
It's a story about connecting to older family members through the little trinkets they collect over a lifetime. Sure, Amelia's grandmother Rose has lived an exciting life going by the stories you discover but the game recreates the feeling of finding out something about your relatives you may not have expected.
The way it unfolds as Amelia's vivid imagination links these trinkets to places filled in what I presume is her grandmother's story is quite beautiful. And it shows what kind of nonverbal narratives games are capable of if you explore the medium for all it has to offer. And it is the kind of tale that will connect with people in ways they may not expect.
Tell Me Your Story Review – 8/10 Short and Sweet
I wish I wouldn't have to put a score on this. Tell Me Your Story is a fun, sweet title whose objective complaints boil down to a short runtime and the occasional weird puzzle. But it offers a lot of variety through its 2-hour runtime and I think it is the kind of title to play with younger audiences and or their elderly relatives.
There are not many games yet that I would recommend as the video game equivalent of a children's book but I had a blast playing through this a second time with my 6-year-old nephew. It's a special little game that I hope to see more of in the future since its format is so promising.
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