now playing: "The Trader of Stories"

The Trader of Stories
Genre(s): Weird/unknown, puzzle, art
Credits: Pastel Games, 2010

Many thanks to Zekk Rotaru for recommending this neat title!

These days it seems like every little genre, type, platform, et cetera classification in the game industry is inundated with fantasy, science fiction, and just plain ol' modern contemporary-ness. And these labels have always been a part of the industry since its birth. Video games were our first glance toward the future, and every five years' breaking new next-gen platform continues to aspire to "the next big thing" in technological evolution. So when a game with a serenely paced mood, a highly linear story set in what feels like an alternate universe 1600s America, and illustrated-storybook gameplay comes along my way, you can understand why I was initially skeptical of The Trader of Stories.

"It's a graveyard. In these lands people still plant Birches to honor the dead. Friends and family look over the tree. A tree left to itself is a sign of someone who doesn't or doesn't want to remember." Such is the poetic, lowly language of Trader.

You're introduced to a woman named Myosotis (the species name of the forget-me-not flower, an insight which mirrors her own unknown backstory), young in appearance but old in experience, who makes her living by collecting stories from the places she encounters on her travels. When her wagon breaks down, forcing her to make a detour for a nearby village, she discovers a fragment of an unsigned love letter, prompting her to start asking questions and collecting bits and pieces of an enchanting part-legend, part-true-story about a Romeo-and-Juliet couple and their fate. The player's primary interaction comes from picking up items, buying them from vendors, and dragging items onscreen to unlock various conversations with the townspeople.



As you gather more information from the scattered townspeople, your Book of Stories gains more pieces of the puzzle that make up the mysterious love story.

My personal experience with point-and-click endeavors, combined with highly linear storytelling, is that yes, technically it's interactive (see my discussion of last Friday's The Road), but is it really a game, or a story? To me, a game is an open-ended exploration of a scenario, with either multiple defined or infinite possible outcomes, or at the very least the illusion of multiple endings (for example, a series of chess board problems, to which there may only be one right answer, but nonetheless entertains the player's imagination just as much). By contrast, Trader has a single, obvious ending, and its relationship to the player is of the teacher-student variety. You must do x if you want to get to y. The player's interactions are meaninfully equivalent to turning pages forward. You can't explore the village beyond what the game will allow you to do for the purposes of completing your Book of Stories. Essentially, Trader's value as an epic casual game isn't immediately apparent when you play it the first time.

It wasn't until I stopped trying to squeeze more out of the linear gameplay that I realized that The Trader of Stories had a magic of its very own. I started actually noticing the sketchbook illustrations, listening to the ambient acoustics, and paying attention to the unfolding dialogue hints about the origins of the enigmatic Derrida and his secret lover. Suddenly I felt immersed; I felt a part of a different timeline. It wasn't just another Kongregate badge diversion; I was reading a young adult or children's book, like the ones I sometimes stumble upon when I get lost in the library, making me feel all fuzzy and warm with a fond nostalgia. There's no bad guy to defeat, no diabolical dilemma to solve—just a mystery to explore and questions to answer. In fact, its open ending leads one to believe that this is simply a chapter in a collection of similar adventures about the protagonist's life. Its timeless, nostalgic themes exist to remind us just how valuable stories really are in games.

Next time: This one's often quipped as "the hardest game in the world" and not without reason.