We all know what it’s like to get lost in a good book, but the Do My Best development group is taking this concept to the next level in The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales, their latest adventure game. In this title, you put yourself in the shoes of a writer-turned-thief with a supernatural and peculiar ability to immerse yourself in books and become part of the world they tell. Because? In short: Etienne Quist, the protagonist, has problems with bad people. In order to pay off his debts, he must complete six missions, in each of which he must find a fictional item from a book if he is to save his skin from a terrible fate. This will take you to fantasy worlds, sci-fi domains or the old west, places where you have to solve a series of puzzles and challenges to get the item you want.
The Bookwalker spends most of his time exploring the world and levels around you, communicating with NPCs, collecting items, and interacting with the world to discover secrets and other valuable items. This part of the game sets the stage for several interesting storylines and intriguing characters. Additionally, it raises some universal moral questions that make you question the nature of your role as a real person, altering the course of stories already written and published, and bringing bits and pieces of them into the real world. Since “The Bookwalker” is not a work full of side quests or additional story arcs, each story is very thorough and detailed and takes place in a small world that is easy to get lost in, which is the case in each of the idiosyncratic books, they address, the case is Quist’s door.
The appeal of The Bookwalker isn’t just limited to its stories, however. One of the most entertaining parts are the puzzles that are presented and how to solve them. For example, sometimes there’s a puzzle where you have to search the area for a battery that will help you open an electronic door, while other times you have to get Etienne to get out of the book to get to a real-world object reach (e.g. a shovel) that will help you to continue. The fact that The Bookwalker takes place on two different levels of reality makes it an extremely creative game, although solving most of the puzzles is fairly simple and lacks any complexity.
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However, some decisions are very important and will later affect the gaming experience, even if mostly lacking in difficulty. Another example: you can try opening a door with a lock pick to skip finding the key, or craft a more powerful tool like a crowbar. However, if the lock pick breaks, it won’t be easy to replace, which could have negative consequences for Quist later. If this lockpick broke, you wouldn’t be able to use it to open a chest that couldn’t be opened any other way. All of these small decisions add up and add a lot to the experience of The Bookwalker.
Combat dynamics aren’t great, although they’re not a fundamental part of the game either. From time to time, Etienne will engage in a fight scene and use rather rudimentary turn-based strategies. You must use attacks and moves that deal specific amounts of damage or increase stat to defeat a range of enemies while managing Quist’s health bar and ink bar. The latter is something like a mana or energy bar used in other tactical and strategy titles. Basically, Etienne needs to spend Ink to attack, but since he has limited Ink, he also needs to Siphon Ink to regain some Ink before a bigger attack. All of this may sound like there is a certain level of complexity to the combat flows, but in reality it is enough to stun all enemies, siphon, stun them again, siphon again, and so on until the time comes You have no choice but to use a healing item to heal Quist, although the latter is not usually the case. Luckily, I’ll say again that the fights are still something of a sideline.
Well, and if the warping, while not the best thing about this title, isn’t really an inconvenience, then what’s the real problem? Well, The Bookwalker has a number of performance issues that interrupt immersion and frustrate the player. Between struggling with the cursor to steer Etienne exactly where you want him to go, the lack of interactive elements and objects, and bugs that cause you to restart the game, it all adds up to a bunch of minor issues that are mine In my experience, they’re even worse when trying to play on a computer with a controller. Gaming with a mouse and keyboard has its own quirks, but playing with a controller is a real performance nightmare.
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It might not be a perfect title, but a sufficiently original concept and engaging gameplay makes The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales feel like an extremely interesting indie to me. It would have been on a different level if they polished it up a bit, although I’m sure Do My Best is considering continuing the series as they seem to have something special on their hands. Anyway, now that The Bookwalker is available on Game Pass, I’d highly recommend spending a few hours on it, even more so considering the quiet month of July we’re in.
