Stories Untold: “It’s free so it must be good” – Review and Playthrough

I had never heard of this game until the Epic Store pinged an advert on my desktop to say they were offering it for free. A relatively small download, some sort of atmospheric retro adventure game… what’s not to like?!

I streamed my entire playthrough live on my Twitch channel. I loved the retro feel of it (even though I was a C64 guy rather than the featured Spectrum clone…), but by the time I am playing this, the whole Stranger Things vibe is all played out. I felt that this game was trying to actually BE Stranger Things. I imagine that this game felt a lot more fresh at the time of its release in 2017.

I won’t put any spoilers in this review (although the video below has spoilers by default BECAUSE IT IS THE ENTIRE GAME). Suffice to say, I found the first two episodes pretty engaging, and downright creepy (in a good way) at times. However, the final two just felt… flat. The twist (Let’s face it, there’s always some form of twist in these games) just left me cold. I didn’t get the whole, “OHHHHHHHHHH!” moment that I’ve had with other games, or movies come to that.

A suitable gaming diversion for a couple of hours, but I would have felt a little disappointed if I had paid full price for this on release. Especially compared to the classic ‘Gone Home’. Now, that is a great example of a game that uses the retro style to help in actually telling the story… where the story is also exceptionally interesting and well written…

Perhaps that’s the core of the issue I had here: The execution was pretty cool, but was the story ultimately that interesting and well put together?