Q & A Session
So what is Stories Untold?
Stories Untold is a horror game by No Code Studios, a Glaswegian company (yay Scotland!) that was recently adopted by Devolver Digital. The game describes itself as “a compilation tape of four experimental text adventures”, so the format of this series is going to be episodic in nature, I’m planning on a single video for each episode, though depending on how later chapters go they may require more than one video. We’ll see!
This game is based on No Code’s earlier indie title, The House Abandon (Play it for free here, if you’re brave and/or morbidly curious), and this game opens up with a remastered version of The House Abandon, which is significantly improved and addresses some of the original game’s text parser problems.
Text parser? So this is a text game Like Zork? That sounds boring and not fun to LP.
You might think a compilation of four text adventures might end up being like a Twine series or something, but Stories Untold is a lot more intense than that. Rather than just taking place as a full adventure game interpreter, the game’s four episodes take place in various 3D environments, starting with the first chapter, The House Abandon. You’re sat at a desk, with an old-school Sinclair ZX Sp-- -ahem- a Futuro 128k 2+ computer system, playing the titular game, The House Abandon. So far so good, this seems like a pretty novel environment for emulating the Interactive Fiction of old! Right? …Right. The subsequent chapters feature more interactive environments in addition to a text interface, too which only enhances the experience.
This game just came out. Are you going in blind?
Not entirely. I just got it, and I haven’t played the full way through yet, but I finished Chapters 1 and 2 already, and by the time I record subsequent chapters I will have played through the rest of the game, so don’t worry about me getting hung up or stuck on potentially obvious puzzles! Probably. I’ll probably still get spooked by parts of it, as you’ll see.
Spoiler Policy?
Blur or hide your spoilers, please! I haven’t played through this game fully yet, but also I want to make sure viewers can enjoy the experience without it being spoiled for them, too!
Trigger Warnings
This game relies on flashing lights and loud sounds. If you suffer from epilepsy, you may want to give this series a miss (Or at least just listen to the audio and my narration, I’ll try to be as descriptive as possible!) If you’re easily startled by loud noises, definitely turn the volume down.
Apart from that, what I’ve played of the game so far features some existential horror, some gory descriptions and a bit of visual gore in the second chapter, any other potential trigger warnings I’ll try to remember to include as each episode goes live or as I play through.
These next trigger warnings are for episode 4 and are therefore major spoilers, so I’ll blur them, and let you folks choose whether you want to view them or not.
Episode 4 contains a detailed description and reliving of a car accident, caused by drink driving (So alcohol is involved here as well), and there’s a hospital sequence where you are a patient being operated on. Nothing visually gory about it, but there’s some blood and some unpleasant noises.
In this one we perform science!