One of the aspects I appreciate most about the indie gaming space is that it taps into the creativity of many developers, allowing them to utilize combinations of elements you’ve never seen before. Of course, one of the reasons bigger publishers tend to avoid this sort of behavior is that it can be risky, since though some ideas manage to make a big splash, many of them tend to crash and burn. In the case of Storyblocks, I can’t just blame its issues on its concept though, as its implementation simply feels lacking in ambition.

Conceptually the idea here is that you’ll construct a number of different narratives that follow varying paths, exploring alternative choices to lead to divergent outcomes. The way you’ll do this isn’t to be presented with clear narrative choices though, it is instead accomplished by stringing together bricks on a grid to connect between the current story node and another. To its credit, I can’t think of any other game I’ve played that has had even remotely the same approach, but I must admit that when I understood the limited scope of what was being attempted I already was a bit baffled by the idea.

When trying to put a finger on what doesn’t work, I actually found it difficult to choose which aspect I disliked the most. I landed on the puzzle element, which really is what you’ll spend the bulk of your time with. The most irksome thing is first the insistence that you use every piece available to you in order to reach a destination. Yes, I understand that makes it more puzzle-like, but it’s also tedious simply filling what can be quite a lot of space with bricks that are all the same basic rectangular shape to get to a precise spot. This isn’t helped by the isometric view and the fact that precise placement on the grid, or even trying to grab a placed brick to reposition it, is clunky at best. The task is also incredibly repetitive, with only only the spaces you’re working in and the number of bricks you’re given varying, making it quite dull to work through. Worse, very honestly the carrot of the narratives you’re building is also inadequate as each step adds very little to the narrative, and since you don’t know what choices you’re making and how they’ll impact the story, the final versions you’ll end up with just feel pretty random.

Where I struggle the most with feeling positive about the overall experience is what happens when you choose to end your current run. You’ll then get an animation of a new page being added, your storybook closing, and that’s it. You can then go to the library and see what I assume are blank spots representing every combination of choices possible, and your only choice being to start over again and construct a different one, ad nauseum. I just can’t see the fun or engagement of the experience being sufficient to recommend doing it the first time, let alone continuing to do so, repeating the same bland puzzling that results in the same pretty generic storytelling.