How would you write the story of your life? Your story is created in part by the items you hold dear. What do they say about you? How will you be remembered?
The Backstory of A Storied Life: Tabitha
Tabitha was someone who was dear to me, but her actual relationship was not made clear. That’s probably on purpose; she could be anyone special in my life, a Mother, a Grandmother, or a dear friend. After she died, I received a letter that she had written to me. In it she said she’d meant to set aside some special things for me but never got around to it. So I’ve been invited to visit her home and sort through her things. I should keep what I want, sell what I think is valuable and recycle the rest.
The opening cut scene in A Storied Life: Tabitha was quite unusual. It was a series of very short cut scenes, in frames, scrolling up my screen, like the credits to a movie. I thought it was very well done, as was the rest of the game, and it started the game on a nice tone.
The Look and Feel of A Storied Life: Tabitha
The entire demo took place inside Tabitha’s home; I believe the full game will do the same. The home was cozy looking with muted colors. It was hand-painted, and great attention was paid to detail. In one room, after I removed a painting from a wall, I could see the area where the paint around the art had darkened with time. Wow.
The rooms I played had enough objects for me to manipulate, and yet not so many that I was overwhelmed. In the first room of A Storied Life: Tabitha, I found a stack of vinyl records, which I chose to keep. In some levels of the full game, there will be record players that I can use to play those records. I can even choose which record I want to play. How cool is that? The soundtrack in the 3 levels I played was chosen for me, but it was quiet and soothing. The whole experience is serene and maybe a bit meditative. That’s because there was no pressure, no need to sleep or eat, no energy requirements. Just finding and examining items at my own pace.
The game autosaves a lot and has a neat mechanic to show that. A Polaroid camera appears on the left side of the screen and flashes as if it were taking a picture, indicating that it saved your game! That was yet another really original feature in A Storied Life: Tabitha. There are also lots of accessibility options, including the UI scale and dyslexia friendly fonts. I think that’s very accommodating of the devs, and I applaud them.
The Gameplay of A Storied Life: Tabitha
This is a narrative puzzle game. I was creating a story about Tabitha as I cleared her house of her belongings. There were 2 modes of gameplay for me to choose from. Cozy mode is the default; it’s a little more challenging because I need to consider the weights of the items I wish to keep. I can’t carry boxes that are too heavy. I chose to play in Relaxed mode, where weight did not matter. As long as my items fit in my box, I can keep them.
The gameplay in A Storied Life: Tabitha was to find items in various rooms of Tabitha’s house. Sometimes those items were hidden in drawers, and sometimes I had to move other furniture in order to see the items. Some items were in locked cabinets, and I had to first find the key. Once everything was found, I had to decide what to do with each item. I could only fit a few items to keep for myself in the boxes I brought, and they had to fit in a puzzle form. It was all a lot of fun!
I could also choose to recycle some items and sell some items at auction. I had no way of knowing the value of any of the items, so it was fun trying to decide which ones to auction.
One of the first things I decided to save was a letter that Tabitha had received from a publisher saying he wanted to publish her memoir. I also found and saved her memoir, but unfortunately, it had been damaged by water, and some of the words were missing. Fortunately, I could use her possessions to give me suggestions for the missing words. For example, a family picture that I chose to save could contain words such as Scrapbooking and Grandchildren.
A large part of A Storied Life: Tabitha is trying to figure out how to complete her memoir, specifically, which words to use to fill in the blank spots. I found and kept a picture of her loved ones, which contained tender, loving words. But I also found an envelope filled with tampered invoices, and contained words like “hide”, “undetected” and “sins”. Who was Tabitha? Was she a doting Grandmother, or maybe she was involved in nefarious things? It’s up to me to write the story of her life.
Final Thoughts
A Storied Life: Tabitha has great replay value. Each time you play, you can choose different items to save, changing the final story of Tabitha’s life. There are at least 5 different endings in the full game!
I liked this game a lot. In the demo, I was allowed to play 3 of the 17 levels, specifically levels 1, 4 and 7. I like how the devs chose to give me a real representative sampling of the gameplay, not just the first 3 levels. I think that I got a nice feel for how the full game will play out. In addition, in the full game, there will be collectables. Specifically, there will be 432 items, 11 characters that have touched Tabitha’s life, 13 secrets to uncover, and 56 achievements. That’s a lot to keep our completionist friends busy! And there will be a daily puzzle to keep you coming back. So much content!
Yvonne wrote about the game in a weekly gaming news post in October 2025. You can read it here. The demo for A Storied Life: Tabitha is available now on Steam, and the full game will release on April 14, 2026. How will you choose to remember Tabitha’s life?
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