Where Unpacking is a game about unravelling someone’s life through moving boxes, A Storied Life: Tabitha is one where you piece together who someone was by boxing up their possessions after they die.
It’s a wonderfully thoughtful story, one which leaves some nice wiggle room for me to create my own narrative for who this woman was when she was alive. A Storied Life starts off when I receive a letter from this elderly relative, sent to me posthumously, and I’m tasked with visiting her delightfully cosy cottage to tackle her personal belongings.
(Image credit: Secret Mode)
Each item holds a little fragment of who she once was—an impressive amount of cat accessories and cat-themed decor, some witchy goods, and a handful of oddly-sourced and shady bits thrown in for good measure.
It’s all about choosing what to keep, what to auction off, and what to throw away for good. It’s where A Storied Life’s puzzley elements come into play—each item has its own shape that has to slot nicely into the ‘keep’ box, while also keeping in mind each item’s weight and fragility.
Something looking breakable? I can pop it in some bubble wrap to keep it safe. Soft furnishings can be vac-packed to save space, and paper pieces folded into neat squares. And if it’s all a bit too heavy, a few reinforcements of the packing box lets me stuff weightier things inside. It’s nothing too challenging, but is a nice way to encourage being thoughtful about which items I snag for myself.
I do wish there was another option to donate something rather than discarding it. It felt a little wrong to be chucking away stuff like homemade gifts and trinkets that I couldn’t fit in my box, but the only other option was to recycle them.
(Image credit: Secret Mode)
Pedantry aside, the items I do claim for myself become the key to writing the story of Tabitha’s life. Each possession comes with a handful of key words, and at the end of each chapter I slot them into a few passages to shape a narrative. It does mean that sometimes the story ends up a little weird depending on what I chose—like one chapter where I ended up having to say that I had a gang of cats over for dinner.
But being able to shape the idea of who my Tabitha was is incredibly endearing, and I became immensely careful over which words I was choosing to represent this fictional woman who had passed away. I paid closer attention to what each item was in later levels, thinking of the story they could help me mould at the end of the chapter.
It truly is a wonderful and cosy little game, one that you can easily tackle over a few short evenings. I snuggled in with a cup of hot chocolate and a blanket to play and write this, and it was the exact sort of vibe this game demands. A slow, careful, and thoughtful experience. It’s also delightfully British in its quaint setting and handful of objects—I got a little chuckle out of the stereotypical bright plastic off-license lighter I fondly remember knocking around my nana’s house when I was very young.
A Storied Life: Tabitha is out now on Steam, and if you’re a try-before-you-buy kind of gamer, there’s also a demo you can take for a spin first.
