The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales Review
Played on PC
Developed by Do My Best Games
Released 22nd June 2023
Quite a while ago, I played this cool, little indie side-scroller game that hooked me with its surprisingly rich world, pixelated visuals and simple yet effective gameplay. That game was 'The Final Station', and it was the debut title of Do My Best Games, who would use Tiny Build's indie-friendly ecosystem to help publish their game. 6 years later, they're back to essentially do the same albeit with a vastly different concept, playstyle and art direction than their 2016 side-scroller, pixelated survival horror shooter. Did they manage to deliver a greater experience than last time? Well, according to Metacritic and its score of 80 (4 more than 'The Final Station'), it would seem like so.
Story
Considering this game's title alludes to a heavy emphasis on storytelling, its greater focus on the conceptual grounds of the narrative rather than its execution might disappoint some people. Bookwalker follows the story of Etienne Quist, a writer who, after committing a crime, is shackled to prevent him from writing any more books. The fascinating part about the Bookwalker's world is that writers here can dive in and out of books to create the tales using their writer's ink, rather than simply typing it out like we would in the real world. Because of this ability, Etienne is offered a series of jobs: dive into books and steal an item from them and, in return, the shackles will be removed. Each chapter consists of you diving into a different book with a vastly different setting, appearance and genre from the previous one and going on the hunt for an artefact of sorts, and this whole premise was greatly engaging for the first three chapters. However, by the halfway point, they began to feel repetitive and the overarching storyline told through the protagonist and their talking-lamp sidekick gets progressively less interesting and cast off to the side as the intrigue behind the world that you're currently inhabiting starts to take the spotlight.
Since this experience is that of an adventure game, it naturally poses dialogue choices and while they may seem like they affect the outcome of the story or events, either within the book or in the outside world, they don't. This isn't as apparent early on, but once the structure of the narrative repeats and seemingly no effect is seen in follow-up chapters, it becomes easy to catch on.
Additionally, the ending feels quite anticlimactic and almost lacklustre. Like every chapter beforehand, the game builds this impressive world that is genuinely intriguing in the way it functions and thrives, but the build-up far exceeds the conclusion with a seemingly boring reveal of the antagonist and a zero-consequence explanation for your actions up to that point. It does sound like this game fails more than it succeeds in its narrative department and while that is true for its main plot, the side stories and worlds that you enter are so brilliant that entire games, books (ironic) and movies can be built around them. Even though the main story failed to meet the calibre of the books' settings, it has to be said that I still thoroughly enjoyed my time, even if much of the impact had a stale delivery.
Gameplay
The gameplay isn't the strongest element of the game but it is the one that made me sink my teeth in for the rest of the journey. The switches between a first-person walking sim, an isometric point'n'click adventure and a turn-based battler made for, what felt like, a unique experience. While you're diving into books and exploring their contents, the game will shape itself in an isometric viewpoint with a heavy point'n'click design. While you're here you'll be interacting with NPCs, figuring out puzzles and investigating the world. Nearly everything is interactable and while I typically love that kind of interactivity in adventure games - being able to provide an extra layer of depth to the world - it felt quite bare bones here as characters never provided charm to their descriptions of the world's objects, as if they had no personality themselves. But, the puzzles and the way certain items warranted a successive interaction still made for quite a fun time that enveloped me in the game.
Because of the low recognition the game currently has, walkthroughs and guides were unavailable, but, fortunately, it felt like each puzzle was designed and implemented smoothly and fairly, requiring enough thinking to get it done without overstepping into some frustrating bounds. Between all the dialogue boxes and spam-clicking your character in the right direction, you'll also be participating in turn-based fights. The combat system is very intriguing in its first appearance, but it doesn't take too long for it to become underwhelming and empty. There isn't much to it: you can either strike, stun or block attacks, all of which cost "ink" to use. While you may think the ink is a valuable resource, it kind of isn't. The game provides you with enough items and opportunities to craft ink bottles to restore your whole "ink" meter, and even then you have a fourth action where you can siphon ink out of the enemies you're fighting. The enemies also only vary in design as there isn't a strategic way to play but rather "aim to defeat the lowest health enemies first". Towards the end, it does spice it up a little by introducing enemies that can stop you from using an action at a time, and, call it good luck or whatever, but they would never restrict the action I intended to use.
The final aspect of the gameplay is the first-person walking sim, where, when you're not in a book, you're free to roam around your apartment building, knocking on your neighbour's doors, checking out the details of your apartment or using the diary on the desk to upgrade one of the four actions you can use in combat. Maybe it's the artistic jump, but I oddly found this downtime to be amongst my favourite moments as, even though nothing spectacular was occurring, it felt grounded enough to immerse me all the way.
Characters
You know how, when you're eating those cheap frozen pizzas, you take a bite and sometimes you accidentally pull all the cheese and toppings off? Well, the characters can be described as the part of the slice that is cheese-less and toppings-less, because, while the core of it can still be enjoyed, it just doesn't have enough layers to be fully realised. That might be a terrible analogy but I'm sure you get the picture. The characters are quite surface-level, not straying too far from being one-dimensional in characteristics. It feels like the only purpose they serve is to move the story forward and any attempts at fleshing them out, like giving Etienne a troubled moral compass or a tragic love backstory, soon enough becomes redundant at how quickly it's forgotten or buried under the plot due to its lack of significance.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere was solid throughout. Visually, the game was quite marvellous. The murky graphic novel aesthetic mixed with each book's genre's design and colour vibrancy was great. The clinically futuristic and religious details of the Black River Drifters chapter or the time-jumping decay of the Timeless Mansion chapter made for some excellent sightseeing along the way. This thick, and kind of dirty graphic novel look continues out into the game's real world albeit with some more majestic rays of lighting and detail. The only issue that I had with these visuals is that it felt odd that each of the 6 books with varying genres and storylines, all shared a common look that no amount of colour palette shifting or lighting emphasis could hide. Because of this consistency, there was a slight disconnect for me that, fortunately, wasn't so grand that it harmed the experience. Sonically, the game was ok. While the sound effects were satisfactory, the music was just plain. Every chapter, regardless of the context, had the same style soundtrack that made the tales blend too much. This airy, alluring OST gets repeated so much it loses its impact before the end of the first level and the lack of effort to differentiate itself makes the game fade out of my memory all the more. Technically, the game was fine. Despite looking like it would require a decent amount of power to run, the system requirements seem to be on the lower end.
Story - 6.5/10
Gameplay - 6.5/10
Characters - 5/10
Atmosphere - 7/10
MEDIOCRE
Its ambitious approach to telling so many stories and ideas produces an ok result which would've benefitted more from simplicity like Do My Best Games' previous effort: 'The Final Station'.
