Tell Me Your Story (Review)

When Grandma Rose moves into her new house, her granddaughter Amelia is there to help unpack and set up. What Amelia isn’t expecting is to come across multiple mementos from all over the world – it turns out Rose was quite the globetrotter in her youth! Together, they relive Rose’s life – an adventure that led to places such as the Amazon, China, and Paris. Players will need to help Amelia solve short puzzles as they make their way through some of the chapters of Rose’s life.

Brought to us by RedDeer Games, Tell Me Your Story may be a short game, but it’s an utterly charming one as well and is sure to brighten up a couple hours of your life. Instructions, hints, and story aren’t given to the player via swaths of text – instead the game is almost completely visual, relying on art and image-based clues. Players are encouraged to play with their environment, as the low-stakes puzzles are hard to completely mess up. The end result is a playful, beautiful atmosphere that urges you to try your options until you find the answer.

As far as puzzle difficulty, Tell Me Your Story won’t be very challenging for most players. It should be playable for both young players and adults, and the hint system is available at any time. After requesting 3 hints, you’ll have to solve a mini-puzzle in order to earn more hints, but you’ll be able to count on asking for a clue at any time, which is nice for some puzzles if you need a start. The variety of puzzles keeps the game interesting, so that even if you solve one immediately, you’ll still have to switch gears for the next experience.

Unfortunately, I did run across a lot of bugs in my copy in one of the later chapters – I didn’t see a lot of reviews mention this, so it’s impossible to say if somehow my switch download had an issue or if it was across the game as a whole. A few times I found puzzles impossible to solve – eventually I realized that at least one of them had glitched and was bringing images from the previous puzzle into the next, making it effectively unsolvable. After this, I kept encountering errors that caused the game to shut down. I did reach out to report this, and I’m hoping this isn’t a common experience (or that if it is, it’s been patched!)

Despite the bumps I ran into while finishing, I’d still recommend Tell Me Your Story. I am a huge lover of puzzle games, and while many games get very in-depth, Tell Me Your Story is such a beautiful, relaxing experience filled with delights. It’s perfect to relax before bed or enjoy on a rainy day, and slowly uncovering the adventures of Grandma Rose is a lot of fun.

I played this on switch, and I think it was nice to be able to easily curl up on the couch with it. I expect it may be slightly easier to maneuver on the PC, but it adapted to the switch very well and I don’t think players will struggle regardless of it they are using a controller or a mouse.

This is a game that makes us think about the legacies we’ve left behind and encourages us to take adventures with our loved ones. If you enjoy puzzles or bright, cozy games filled with imagination, this is well worth your time.

Overall Rating: 8/10

You can pick up Tell Me Your Story on Nintendo Switch or on Steam!