Storyteller is definitely an interesting game, but I'm not really convinced by what it ends up doing. I don't really mind the short runtime, though I do feel like it's a little undercooked - I only ever had to really think about 10 of the 51 stages. The game essentially asks the player to reproduce and rearrange tropes in a certain way, or as the developer put it "play with the common sense and instincts you bring from outside videogames." I want to highlight that comment because "common sense" here means mostly knowledge of tired (hetero-)normative tropes and concepts.
In other words: Storyteller reproduces and lets you reproduce boring and vain fairytale tropes in search of something fun to salvage from them. It rarely succeeds and only lays bare how... boring they actually are. You're never asked to re-think tropes, only to rearrange them. And I think that's the key to why I don't vibe with this game - it's a missed opportunity that made the whole experience really dull overall. There's a lot of potential for deconstruction in the concept, but Storyteller never manages to break free from the tropes it cemented into its gameplay system.
In other words: Storyteller reproduces and lets you reproduce boring and vain fairytale tropes in search of something fun to salvage from them. It rarely succeeds and only lays bare how... boring they actually are. You're never asked to re-think tropes, only to rearrange them. And I think that's the key to why I don't vibe with this game - it's a missed opportunity that made the whole experience really dull overall. There's a lot of potential for deconstruction in the concept, but Storyteller never manages to break free from the tropes it cemented into its gameplay system.