Storyteller is a Puzzle Game developed by Daniel Benmergui and published by Annapurna Interactive. The player is presented with a series of plotline prompts (such as "Heartbroken Spouses are Reunited") and must arrange the provided scenes and characters into comic panels in order to complete that prompt.
The key part of the puzzle is that each character's state is altered by the events that came before. If a character experiences an emotion (anger, jealousy, heartbreak), that emotion persists until something replaces it. If two characters are married, they'll refuse to marry again so long as their spouse is alive. Dead characters become ghosts and can still influence the living world. The comic panels are mostly wordless, with the story told through Pictorial Speech Bubbles, actions, and body language.
Although it can be amusing to change around the panels to see the characters' reactions, the goal is still to correctly fulfill each prompt. Given the game's emphasis on classic stories, most of the stories involve Overdosed Tropes.
The game's official website can be found here
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This video game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Jerkass: The Genesis chapter has a puzzle where the player must recreate the story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. In the Bible, God kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden after eating of the fruit, but lets them live with hope of redemption. Here He just smites them.
- Anachronism Stew: Downplayed; for the most part, the game appears to be set in a medieval fantasy setting. However...
- There are a few stories where characters from such a setting need to interact with a Sherlock Homes-style detective, or to use a gun.
- There's one story where Friedrich Nietzsche is in the Garden of Eden, then somehow enters a mansion, grabs a gun, and shoots God with it.
- The Devil is perfectly happy to use a spray paint or sunglasses regardless of what time period he's in.
- Arrange Mode: The demo had jester hats, which were alternate goals for existing levels. As of the September 2023 update, completing the game will award you a set of Devil Levels, which introduce a Devil character who meddles in existing stories to achieve completely different goals.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Some of the stories require you to arrange for a villainous character like the baron to triumph.
- Back from the Dead: The Revive scene brings a dead character back to life.
- Bewitched Amphibians: As first demonstrated in "Curse", the Witch can turn other characters into frogs, who can be returned to normal form with a kiss. For the record, any kiss will do, not just a true love's kiss.
- Blame the Paramour: In "Loose End", the plot is kicked off by the Duke secretly witnessing the Duchess flirting with the King, who appears uncomfortable. The Duke is angry enough to murder the King even though the King didn't really do anything objectionable. The story can also be completed by having the Duke murder the Duchess, which at least has a thread of logic.
- The Butler Did It: The Butler has several stories involving stealing a gun and murdering the Duke and/or Duchess. He's the only one who will do so without any prior provocation.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Most characters need a reason to murder someone. The Baron will happily kill anyone at any time.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: The Devil cannot be killed by anything that normally kills other characters, the only exception being the Judgment scene, where God will smite him without provocation.
- Death by Woman Scorned: One possible outcome of "Spite" is for the Queen to witness an affair between the King and Maid, and she executes them both.
- The Dog Bites Back: The goal of the final Devil Level is to finally make the Knight angry at the Queen.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Implied between the Knight and Queen. In all stories, the Knight is in love with the Queen, but the Queen begins stories either in love with the King (if present) or herself (if not). Regardless of whether the Queen ends up returning his affections, the Knight always refuses to take any adverse action against the Queen and will become angry if he finds out anyone has hurt the Queen.
- Dramatic Irony: Characters tend to not have information unless they explicitly participated in it, witnessed it, or were otherwise informed (such as by seance). This results in several marriages where one spouse has secretly murdered the other's previous lover. "Love Revolution" takes the logical next step by having the Knight and Maid become lovers after both have secretly murdered their partner's previous lover.
- Driven to Suicide: Characters experiencing guilt or heartbreak are willing to drink poison to kill themselves.
- Drowning My Sorrows: While no character needs an excuse to drink wine, heartbroken characters will drink with a sad expression while thinking of heartbreak.
- Easter Egg: Certain arrangements not even close to fulfilling the prompt will result in some unique outcomes. Some of them were made into achievements at launch, while the September 2023 update added a "Secret Stamps" system that encourages finding as many as you can. A few examples include:
- In any story involving wine, you can have Edgar, Lenora, or Isobel just repeatedly drink wine. Edgar and Lenora will start drinking straight from the bottle, while Isobel will pass out drunk.
- In "Deceit", you can get two bewitched frogs to kiss each other.
- In most stories involving the Butler, you can have him just attempt to serve drinks, but the recipient keeps asking for a different drink. If the recipient has witnessed the Butler flaunting a gun (and he put it back), then they'll accept the drink, terrified that they'll be shot if they refuse.
- Engineered Heroics: In "Suitor", the Baron disguises himself as a dragon, captures the Queen, then removes the disguise and rescues the Queen. It's also valid to reverse it, having the Baron capture the Queen and then rescuing her while wearing the dragon disguise.
- Everyone Is Bi: Only the King and the Witch are explicitly heterosexual; he speaks a female symbol if you try to hook him up with another man while she speaks a male symbol. While some other characters happen to have only heterosexual pairings available, their reasons are more specific. For example, the Baron is only interested in marrying royalty; if paired with the King, the King rejects him due to incompatibility and the Baron is angry, indicating he was willing to marry the King and is reacting to being spurned. Nobody else objects to a same-sex pairing for the same reason as the King.
- Guide Dang It!: Most of the stories aren't too hard to figure out, but the final one is very thorny, requiring the knight and maid to murder the king and queen after having affairs with them. The knight is completely pacifistic and the queen normally rejects him even if she has no other romantic options. Figuring out how to completely change their personalities while pulling off everything else required is quite a challenge.
- Last Straw, the final Devil Level, requires the knight to finally be angry at the Queen and imprison her. Getting him angry at her, which he hadn't done in any story beforehand is a challenge.
- The Help Helping Themselves: Many scenarios involve the butler stealing the Duke's gun to murder the Duke and Duchess. This is downplayed in one story, where the butler simply picks it up and returns it, making the Duke happy to see it's still in its place.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: If you have extra panels you can potentially tell a story where you complete the goal of The Bad Guy Wins, but then have something afterward that invokes this. For example; the Baron poisons someone to get their lover? Put the now dead character back in after he gets married, now Baron looks on in horror as he now has an angry ghost on his hands.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Amnesia scene results in a character forgetting anything else that happened before in the story.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: The "Family" scene lets a character tell another he or she is their parent. This can be used at the beginning of a story to establish relations, but can also be sprung as a surprise at the end, causing an appropriate reaction if it reveals Surprise Incest.
- Magic Mirror: "Competitor" and "Inclusive" feature a magic mirror who is implied to reveal who is the most beautiful person around. It has a particularly amusing reaction if approached by a ghost, even though this doesn't help with any story prompts.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Certain characters are naturally vindictive and will become angry when spurned by a potential love interest. This is enough to spur them to murder the competitor.
- No Ontological Inertia: In "Vampire", killing Dracula will restore anyone he bit back into normal human form.
- Off with His Head!: The Execute scene allows a character with monarch power to execute another character by guillotine. They also need a reason, such as anger or jealousy, to perform the execution.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Played for Laughs. The Dragon is really just the Baron wearing a cheap dragon suit that somehow manages to fool everyone.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Any dead character can still participate in future panels as a ghost. In most cases, this is not useful as they only provoke a fear reaction. However, they can reveal their murderer in the Seance scene, and they can also commit murder in the Cliff scene by scaring someone into taking a long fall (if they have a reason to do so; a ghost won't intentionally scare someone they have no grudge against).
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The baron can dress up in a dragon costume that is obviously felt and has very visible seams. It will 100% fool everyone.
- Pictorial Speech-Bubble: With the sole exception of "I am your parent", all speech is rendered with pictoral speech bubbles. Combined with the body language, the speech bubbles often include a character's face, object, or emotion, such that the context is easily guessed as something like "I love Edgar", or "I want the crown", or "I saw the Butler holding a gun".
- Plot-Inciting Infidelity: Some stories, such as "Spite", are kicked off by the Affair scene, where a third party can secretly witness two other characters romancing.
- Portrait Painting Peephole: The Witness scene allows a character to secretly spy on what happens in the Ballroom.
- Programming Game: Downplayed in that you get to see the results in real time, but most puzzles do involve laying out a specific sequence of instructions, some of which can dramatically alter a character's preexisting functions.
- Remarried to the Mistress: In "Promotion", the Queen witnesses an affair between the King and Maid. After a certain series of events, the King executes the Queen and marries the Maid.
- Rescue Romance: The knight is besotted with the queen, but she normally has no interest in him. This will change if you have her kidnapped and let him rescue her. The baron also disguises himself and kidnaps her so he can "rescue" her to win her hand.
- Revenge: One recurring motive for murder, even for the characters not predisposed to murder for petty reasons.
- Spooky Séance: The Seance scene allows a character to speak with a ghost, typically so the ghost can reveal the identity of their murderer.
- Surprise Incest: In "Oedipus", the prompt is to have Hatey marry his mother. The marriage must occur before the familial reveal, otherwise the characters will refuse any romance on the basis of being blood relatives. This is a reference to Oedipus the King.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Angry characters are willing to use poison on wine in an attempt to kill the subject of their anger. Anyone who drinks the wine afterward will die.
- This Is Unforgivable!: The Knight is a mellow character and is not easily angered. However, he loves the Queen; if he discovers that any adverse action has been taken against the Queen, he will do anything in retribution. He also holds a grudge for being murdered, but this fact only appears in "Rivals".
- Together in Death: The prompt for "Reunion" is Heartbroken Spouses are Reunited, ending with the two ghost characters reunited in love, after both having been married and seeing each other die in life (with some Back from the Dead shenanigans in between).
- Trauma Conga Line: In "Misfortune", the objective is to have the Queen suffer four tragedies. Specifically, those tragedies are being kidnapped, having her crown authority usurped, the death of her lover, and her own death. All of this happens in six panels.
- The Usurper: The Baron will take any opportunity to kill the monarchs or marry into royalty. Stories such as "Usurper" have him kill the Queen and claim the empty throne.
- Villain Protagonist: Some of the stories have a villain as the primary character and the goal is to help them win.
- Wingding Eyes: Dead characters have an X for their visible eye.
- Why Won't You Die?: In "Rivals", having the Knight or Baron kill their rival twice will show the killer with a dismayed expression the second time onward, implying confusion as to why they need to kill someone twice.
