A Storied Life: Tabitha dropped their demo recently and I decided to dive right in to see what it was all about. The game takes us into a fairly common trope of dealing with organizing and decluttering after a loved one has passed. However, it does manage to shake things up by bringing an interesting gameplay dynamic into the mix.
You play as someone who is tasked with cleaning out a home after a loved one has passed. You’ll sort through the items and decide what stays, what’s trash, and what can be put up for auction. Unfortunately, you can only put one thing into auction per chapter, so you have to be very critical of what you decide to toss in.
Personally, I got a kick out of tossing the empty pill container up for auction, but upon seeing that I could only sell one thing, I switched it out. You shouldn’t expect a tidy fortune out of this game; the highest I got out of the two chapters I played was about the price of a cup of coffee. You can use that money to buy packing supplies, and whatever is left will go into saving up for a holiday trip.
In my experience, there was more than enough packing material scattered around, so I doubt you’d need to spend money there. Of course, this is an adapted demo, and the actual game may have more incentive to be thrifty.
Watch the trailer for A Storied Life: Tabitha!
In the first chapter, you’ll find a damaged memoir that is soggy with water. Your main goal in A Storied Life: Tabitha is to try and restore the memoir back to factory settings. You’ll do that by sorting through the objects available to you.
When it comes to deciding what stays, you have to be very mindful because you only have so much space. You’ll have to engage in some inventory Tetris in order to fit what you like in the box. Each item that you choose to keep has a set of words attached to it. Once you’ve made your choices, you’ll use those words to restore the memoir.
Each item has its own words, so you may want to go back and change your choices based on the words it gives you. This form of setup allows you to decide for yourself who this person was in your life. Unfortunately, since you only have so much space, you may need to make some concessions in order to tell a complete story and switch out the items for different words.
Overall, it was an interesting little demo that showed us versions of chapters one and four. It was about 20 minutes of gameplay, so it was enough to get an idea of what the final version of the game will look like.
If I’m honest, I’m not sure it snagged me, but I absolutely adored the art style, the ambient sounds, and the strings of music that accompanied it. It may not be my perfect little cozy game, but I found nothing wrong with the demo as it is, so I highly encourage you to download it and try it out for yourself.
While you’re there, if you like what you see, go ahead and wishlist A Storied Life: Tabitha, as that will help out the devs! If you’d like to check out some of the other demos available right now, check out Little Corners or Tabletop Game Shop Simulator!
