As someone who has moved house far too many times throughout my life, I’d have been willing to fight anyone who tried to convince me that packing and unpacking my belongings are secretly relaxing hobbies. A cozy game designed around moving tasks sounded like an absolute nightmare to me, and I was convinced that anyone who disagreed must be some kind of masochist.
That is, until I finally tried one of these ‘cozy games’ for myself, and alright, fine, I’m convinced. After playing and enjoying Unpacking, I was eager to experience something similar in nature that recaptured the bittersweet feeling of closing a chapter on parts of your life while packing away everything that once defined it into neat little boxes, which is exactly what A Storied Life: Tabitha is all about.
Who Is Tabitha? She’s Whoever You Want Her To Be
Contrary to what you might be expecting, A Storied Life: Tabitha does not put you in the role of the titular Tabitha. In fact, she passed away some time ago and has left you, an unnamed relative, with her estate that she encourages you to sift through so that you can make some money off her old valuables.
Much like Unpacking, you’ll move through the house one room at a time, packing things up as you go. Each room is full of objects that you have the option to keep, sell to fund your vacation, or recycle. However, there’s one more element to A Storied Life: Tabitha, and that’s telling her story.
Before she passed, Tabitha was on track to have her memoir published, but due to unforeseen circumstances, it’s now damaged beyond repair. Your job while sifting through her belongings is to fill in the gaps, Mad Libs style. The way you do this is entirely based on the objects you decide to keep, which is where A Storied Life: Tabitha really begins to shine.
There are absolutely no limitations on things in the different rooms. You can keep anything you want as long as it fits in your grid-based cardboard box. A smashed photo? You can keep it. A haunted doll? You can keep it. Cat poop? You can keep it. You probably shouldn’t. But you can.
Every object in Tabitha’s house gives you different words to fill in her memoir, if you choose to keep them and take them home. There are no right or wrong options, at least in a technical sense, and there’s not just one story to tell, either.
All the objects in Tabitha’s home are linked to varying backstories you can give her. There are several story strands to follow, and I promise you wouldn’t be able to guess some of them if you tried. Tabitha is by far the most interesting person to ever exist.
I, of course, spent my first playthrough packing everything I thought was unique or interesting while completely disregarding the story strands to see what would happen, and I wasn’t disappointed. This might be the funniest memoir in history…
From there, I focused on narrowing down each story and completing it so I could see the different versions of Tabitha’s life play out. Still, I was not remotely prepared for the roller coaster of emotions that came with these long-held revelations. Tabitha’s stories range from heartwarming to heartwrenching, and I found myself constantly toeing the line between smiles and tears.
Now, I’m an extremely sentimental person, especially when it comes to various knickknacks that have a history, so there’s a chance I just happened to be the perfect audience for this game. But I truly think A Storied Life: Tabitha will land a proper emotional gut punch on anyone who plays it.
Turns Out I Suck At Packing, Even In Games
One area where A Storied Life: Tabitha did start to lose me was the actual packing puzzle itself. Rummaging through rooms to find various objects was enjoyable enough; several items are hidden and require you to search for keys or move furniture, which is a fun element of interactivity. But when it came to putting things in the box, I couldn’t help but get frustrated.
For each room, you’ll only get one large box to pack items into, and everything that doesn’t fit must be either sold or recycled. Unfortunately, 90 percent of the items in the room don’t fit together. If you decide you want to pack one or two large items, that’s your lot, which means you likely won’t have enough words to fill in the memoir properly.
That said, if you’re following a specific narrative thread, then all the objects for that thread in the room should fit together. It would be nice to have a little more freedom, though. I assumed that, at some point, I might be able to purchase a second box with the money I made from selling items in previous rooms, but one is always your limit. Tabitha’s world must be low on cardboard or something.
Of course, it is still a puzzle, so there’s always a chance that I’m just terrible at placing the objects in a way that offers me the most room, but I felt like I was doing the best I could, even with the envelopes and other packing materials that are designed to help make extra space.
Just like packing boxes in real life, the box’s weight and other factors are important, which complicates things even further. Thankfully, developer Lab42 clearly saw this coming as it offers two different game modes. One of which specifically ignores some of these additional requirements, so you can focus on enjoying the story instead of smashing up Tabitha’s priceless porcelain.
Still, I wish there were more tools, beyond just the reinforcing tape available in later levels, that would eliminate the need to adjust difficulty. Extra boxes, for example, would allow players to get more creative with packing certain items and accounting for weight, while also being able to take home more items.
I often felt like most items were being sent for recycling, while I was only able to pack an extremely limited three or four. This is more of a personal nitpick, since you only need two or three items per room to reach a specific ending, but it would’ve made me feel more productive and challenged to manage two or three boxes’ worth of items and then build my memoir.
Quirky Surprises Help Make Up For Limited Replayability
Perhaps the biggest concern I had going into A Storied Life: Tabitha was replayability. One of the aspects that gives Unpacking a decent excuse for return visits is that you can decorate things a little differently every time you play, and there are an endless number of objects per room.
Since A Storied Life: Tabitha focuses on packing up, that isn’t a factor, which is likely why the memoir element was created. However, even with this in tow, you’re only going to stick around until you’ve unlocked all of the unique endings across the 10 to 15 hours of overall playtime.
Fortunately, everything I loved about this game made its shortcomings easier to overlook, including a handful of odd surprises that jolted me out of the steady routine I tended to fall into when I’d played a few chapters in a row. I won’t get into them for the sake of spoilers, but just know that everything isn’t always as it seems, and Tabitha has some incredibly unique objects lying around her house.
I’m Not Ready To Say Goodbye To Tabitha
A Storied Life: Tabitha is a beautiful little gem that, much like the family member you take control of throughout this journey, I’m not quite ready to bid farewell to. This format is perfect for a series based around different characters, especially if they manage to overlap to some degree, so I’m hopeful that Lab42 and Secret Mode will continue building upon all of its potential.
Regardless of what you specifically look for in a cosy game, there’s a little something for everyone here. Even with my nitpicks, I’m unlikely to forget the stories I pieced together to tell Tabitha’s life story anytime soon.
A Storied Life: Tabitha
Reviewed on the Lenovo Legion Go S (SteamOS)
3.5/5
- Released
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April 14, 2026
- Developer(s)
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Lab42
- Publisher(s)
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Secret Mode
- Number of Players
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Single-player
- Story through discovery. Players unravel the story themselves rather than having it fed to them.
- Steam Deck (and other SteamOS devices) Compatability
- Challenging puzzles that encourage players to think outside the cardboard box.
- A variety of endings that each tell a unique story.
- Unexpected surprises that enhance the game’s personality.
- A lack of replayability once all narratives have been discovered.
- The limited number of items that can be taken from each room feels as though it contradicts the player freedom that is otherwise encouraged.
