When I heard about A Storied Life: Tabitha, I hoped for a game that would involve the packing elements of Unpacking and the freedom of a visual novel. What I ended up with was a Mad Libs style adventure that restricts creative freedom and can result in a nonsensical memoir. It is a novel puzzle game, but it’s more about searching for specific routes tied to certain themes than getting creative with the possible story. It is fine, but you need to know its boundaries going into it.
A Storied Life: Tabitha is the story of the recently deceased Tabitha Kettlewell. She died, and you are the person tasked with clearing out the home she left behind. On your first day there cleaning up the entryway, you find a letter from a publisher and a drenched manuscript. It turns out a company was interested in perhaps publishing her autobiography. Since it is so messed up, it now falls to you to fill in the blanks by saving some items as you auction off and throw out the items remaining in the home.
The game follows a very particular pattern and never strays from it. You enter a room. A handful of items can be saved and taken in a single box home with you. Typically, between one and four items can be auctioned off for money, which will determine the kind of vacation your avatar gets to take after the ending. Everything else gets tossed. All items take up a certain amount of spaces on a grid, which affects what can be saved. There are also some fragile items and weight limits, though grabbing items like bubble wrap and packing tape can help protect and reinforce them to ensure they aren’t damaged as you bring them home. (The accessibility options in the menu let you turn those threats by giving you infinite packing materials.) You might also find a key when cleaning that opens a locked cabinet or door. After finishing for the day, you take the box home and get one to five pages of a Mad Libs-style story that help you finish the chapter by using the four keywords tied to each of the items you brought back.
A quick note, as I played on the Switch. There is an option to zoom in to better view items and grab them. However, there are still some situations in which that doesn’t feel like enough. The tiny keys you need to grab for some of the locked doors is a good example. They are quite small, especially if playing in handheld mode. Likewise, tapping some triggers to access new spots can occasionally be a bit cumbersome too.
While this might look and feel like a simulation, A Storied Life: Tabitha is actually a puzzle game. During each stage, you’re meant to be making the “correct” choices when selecting what to save and sell. For example, sending a certain piece to auction might lead to additional keywords that would help with completing the criminal kingpin storyline for Tabitha. These items tend to be rather telegraphed. For example, making Tabitha’s story all about being a grieving widow who can’t get by without her husband would mean grabbing things like the mourning veil, her husband’s pipe, and any pieces that focus on her never letting go of him. To focus on a medical career, a nurse’s watch and healing plants work. You could even pick up witch and coven-related pieces to tell that type of story.
The downside is, the nature of it being a Mad Libs sort of game means that the actual chapters between stages don’t always sound good. They might not even make sense. Words are categorized by color, and that could mean nouns or verbs in the wrong places if you didn’t pack wisely or find the right pieces. But since what the game really seems to want is to force you down set paths, you still get credit as long as you, for example, cram in only words from items with purple elements, crescent moon and stars on them, and “magical” influences.
The worst part is if you do go for something of a fusion of two stories or don’t pin down a tale enough in the hopes of telling a tale that seems interesting to you, then the resulting ending makes no sense. Creativity is not rewarded here. Worse, it feels like it’s punished. Like I’d be okay if a “mish-mosh” story resulted in a generic conclusion with a family photo or a few general things that were meaningful to any version of Tabitha. But when my first run yielded that result, I ended up with three final items in no way relating to any of the interests associated with any of the prior items found in the levels in the house up to that point. They didn’t even seem to be connected to her possible family, partners, or associates! It was so disappointing that I almost didn’t want to replay to get a “good” and cohesive ending.
I think I’d have appreciated A Storied Life: Tabitha more if it was only about packing things up and didn’t include the jumbled narrative. It being a puzzle game, rather than a simulation, is absolutely fine and not the issue. What category pieces fall into is very clear. The thing is that the story doesn’t end up feeling satisfying due to that Mad Libs element. The words you get result in some really boring takes on Kettlewell’s life. And if you do go in initially not completely committing to one direction or genre, then the ending is atrociously bad and unfulfilling.
A Storied Life: Tabitha is availableon the Switch and PC.