The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is a truly imaginative game that has gamers diving into the unique worlds existing within the pages of successful novels in an attempt to help free our anti-hero author from the chains of writer’s block.
The game tells the tale of a disgraced author, Etienne Quist, who has fallen from grace for crimes unbefitting of a writer – as a result he is given a 30-year sentence of “writer’s shackles”, more commonly known as the aforementioned writer’s block. In an effort to shorten his sentence, Etienne makes contact with a shadowy organization which promises to relieve him of the shackles but only if he can steal a collection of valuable items from six award-winning novels. Etienne is gifted with the power to enter the world of these novels where he must interact with the characters and settings to find the desired items and transport them back to the real world.
Gameplay shifts between first person exploration of Etienne’s real-world hovel of an apartment, and 3D-isometric puzzle-based dungeon crawler when in the pages of the books. The player will find themselves largely exploring each book’s world, periodically sifting back to the apartment to grab a helpful item, then returning to the book to use the item to solve the puzzle.
None of the puzzles are all that difficult – in fact many are a bit too easy, especially given that the game provides Etienne with a mechanical assistant named Roderick to provide “hints”. I put “hints” in quotes because Roderick pretty much tells Etienne what needs to happen next in complete and detailed instructions. Roderick certainly can come in helpful in a bind, but his constant clues and easy accessibility all but erases any difficulty in solving puzzles.
Bookwalker does offer up a handful of turn-based combat scenarios, with Etienne using his feet, hands, and ink pens to battle with various attackers like spiders and robots. There’s not a ton of strategy involved in the battles, as each play out pretty much the same, but it does add variety to the otherwise slow, dreamy exploration.
The game presents the worlds in both gameplay perspectives wonderfully, with the apartment looking aptly dark and dingy to contrast the beautifully thematic worlds within the novels. In all there are six books for Etienne to navigate – each having its own unique setting and theme. The gamer will explore dark dungeons, snowy power plants, and dusty railroad yards.
I did have some difficulty using the controller to find objects – with the necessary red “X” appearing only when the controller was in the exact position and angle of an object. Bookwalker was first developed for PC, and I can only assume that a mouse and keyboard would be better suited to the point-and-click than the controller setup.
The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is a very unique experience. It has its glitches and might be a little too easy, but it definitely delivers an interesting approach to narrative-based adventures and tries to throw in a handful of cool gameplay features to keep from feeling too repetitive and slow.
