It’s time once again to go over our free Epic Game Store game. This time it’s Stories Untold, a somewhat thematic game with the tagline “4 Stories, 1 Nightmare.”
I’m assuming, based on the tagline, that all four of these seemingly un-related narratives are tied together in some way. Unfortunately, in the making of this post, I did not get through all of them, so cannot be certain.
The first story takes place pretty much entirely as a text adventure using the console on the left. They did a great job at using the environment for atmosphere, but I do feel that it was rather difficult to use the rather small text area. This was something of a recurring problem and leads me to the impression that this game was intended for a 60 inch TV and not a standard computer monitor. I’m also glad I’m old enough to have experience with this type of text adventure, which made the clues it provided very straightforward, for the most part.
I really liked the second story. It had an SCP Foundation sort of vibe to it and I really enjoyed the way to section played and progressed.
This section also introduced the ability to switch between two different views. One using the computer to see what you’re supposed to be doing and how to do it, and the other, where you can fiddle with all the bits and pieces in the experiment proper.
The third section plays similarly, with a microfilm viewer in place of a computer, helping you tune to various radio frequencies, deciphering the encryption code, then interpreting the proper commands. I got somewhat stuck on the morse code bit and had to look up why what I was certain was the correct code wouldn’t work. Apparently, I had some of the digits wrong due to the fuzzy microfilm situation. Operator error, I assure you.
I made it at least partway through the last section before the power went out, and I probably won’t be dealing with it again until late this evening. I got far enough to infer where this might be going, but can’t be certain.
Decent little puzzle game, overall. Subject matter can get really dark though, so player beware. Overall time commitment from beginning to end is probably only 4-6 hours, I’d guess. Those people over at Epic sure do like their narrative puzzle games.
Y’all take care and stay safe. Maybe don’t drink and drive, yeah?
Unidentified Signal Source 