|
|
The Book of Unwritten TalesThe Book of Unwritten Tales is a classic point-and-click adventure that resurrects the classic adventure games of the early 90’s. Novice computer adventurers will find the game challenging while veterans of the genre will find the puzzles too easy. What everyone will absolutely love is the story that is woven and the manner in which it’s delivered. Smart dialogue, in-jokes, and laugh out loud moments will keep players glued to the game until the end.
Score: 8.5/10Developer: KING Art Games
Released: 2009 Genre: Point and Click Adventure Official Website: The Book of Unwritten Tales |
Graphics:
The graphics of the game are a mixed bag. The environments are beautifully rendered and varied. The game takes you from a bucolic forest cottage to the fiery bowels of a volcano where a dragon has taken roost. Each environment is painstakingly crafted and the talent of the developer, King Art, shines through in each area. Small touches such as a mine filled with miscellaneous tools and debris or a deserted city overflowing with the detritus of a fleeing population add realism to a world otherwise filled with magic and fantasy. While the environments are packed with eye candy the animation of the characters is equally abysmal.
The character models are not rendered with the same exacting care the environments have received. Clipping is abundant and the character’s limbs will often pierce right through and object or the environment. One aspect of the character animation that I found particularly annoying is the classing “pass along” animation of adventure games, and for a game released in 2009 I find it almost inexcusable. Your controlled character will give an inventory item to another playable character or NPC with a pantomimed action. Empty hands will pass along an invisible object and the receiver will, empty handed, place something into the breast pocket. Adventure games released in the 90’s used this often and back then it was overlooked; I expected more even if this was a budget title. It cheapens a game that would have been graphically perfect if this was fixed.
Another point of contention for me is that facial animations and lip syncing are atrociously handled. While I understand that a small developer may not have access to the cutting edge of technology, the dummy mouthed movement of the characters really cheapens the overall look of the game especially the dragon that I had mentioned. The mouth of the dragon will not even move in most cases as the controlled character interacts with it. It breaks the immersion and the overall stilted character movement, flat facial expressions, and overall low quality of the character models and animations distracts the player and makes the game look out dated in a genre that is all but considered dead. If the same care was given to the character models that was given to the environments I would absolutely consider this game eye-melting in the genre. As it stands, the game is graphically passable and does not do much for gamers spoiled by the graphical luxury of current generation games.
The graphics of the game are a mixed bag. The environments are beautifully rendered and varied. The game takes you from a bucolic forest cottage to the fiery bowels of a volcano where a dragon has taken roost. Each environment is painstakingly crafted and the talent of the developer, King Art, shines through in each area. Small touches such as a mine filled with miscellaneous tools and debris or a deserted city overflowing with the detritus of a fleeing population add realism to a world otherwise filled with magic and fantasy. While the environments are packed with eye candy the animation of the characters is equally abysmal.
The character models are not rendered with the same exacting care the environments have received. Clipping is abundant and the character’s limbs will often pierce right through and object or the environment. One aspect of the character animation that I found particularly annoying is the classing “pass along” animation of adventure games, and for a game released in 2009 I find it almost inexcusable. Your controlled character will give an inventory item to another playable character or NPC with a pantomimed action. Empty hands will pass along an invisible object and the receiver will, empty handed, place something into the breast pocket. Adventure games released in the 90’s used this often and back then it was overlooked; I expected more even if this was a budget title. It cheapens a game that would have been graphically perfect if this was fixed.
Another point of contention for me is that facial animations and lip syncing are atrociously handled. While I understand that a small developer may not have access to the cutting edge of technology, the dummy mouthed movement of the characters really cheapens the overall look of the game especially the dragon that I had mentioned. The mouth of the dragon will not even move in most cases as the controlled character interacts with it. It breaks the immersion and the overall stilted character movement, flat facial expressions, and overall low quality of the character models and animations distracts the player and makes the game look out dated in a genre that is all but considered dead. If the same care was given to the character models that was given to the environments I would absolutely consider this game eye-melting in the genre. As it stands, the game is graphically passable and does not do much for gamers spoiled by the graphical luxury of current generation games.
Sound:
Sonically The Book of Unwritten Tales is a soothing balm to the ears that counteracts the acerbic reaction it has on the eyes. The music is full of swelling orchestral pieces, subtle background music that lulls as characters speak to each other or comment on the environment, even the main menu music I found myself listening to just because it was so pretty. The music sets the tone of the scene and doesn’t make itself intrusive or overbearing. Also, after a puzzle is successfully solved a musical tone plays much akin to level-up music you may find in RPGs. Even though the game is as linear as they come, hearing that music play when something is done right fills me with such a sense of accomplishment that it kept me pressing on.
The sound effects are also unobtrusive and fit the environment well. Birds chirp in the forest, water drips in the sewers, and pick axes and shovels clang and scrape in the mines. All the environmental sound effects sound as if they belong to the scene and are never loud or brash as to overpower the characters speaking. Every sound is equalized well, and there are options in the menu screen that allow the player to manually adjust the volume of each piece of sound. Find the ambient sounds distracting or annoying? Simply turn them off! This level of control over the game’s sound is always a nice touch especially for gamers such as myself that may need fine control to hear everything going on.
Where the game stumbles in the sound category is the voice acting. Adventurers now expect their games to be fully voiced; the days of the text adventure or even graphic adventures with text overlays are long over. We expect modern adventure games to feature a full cast of actors to read their parts believably and we also expect all those lines to mesh well with each other. Unfortunately The Book of Unwritten Tales has trouble delivering this. Each part sounds as if it was read separately from all the others and lends itself to acting that sound stilted and out of place. Nate especially suffers from abysmal voice acting and I found his character less charming and more annoying. This may have been done on purpose to portray Nate as the brash human but it makes the acting and the character seem lazily produce and does not lend to a deep connection with the character. Conversely, Ivo and Wilbur are acted superbly and this makes their characters really pop to life. Wilbur’s voice portrays a small gnome unfamiliar with the outside world and with pie in the sky dreams and Ivo as a mature elf well versed in the ways of the fantasy world in which she resides.
One point I find particularly annoying is that not all the lines match the subtitles. While this is not game breaking it is distracting and shows a lack of attention to detail. As a gamer I always play a game with subtitles and when those don’t match what’s being spoken it pulls me out of the game as I try to reconcile what I’m reading against what I’m hearing. Overall though, the sound is superbly executed with only minor flaws that won’t take anything away from your overall enjoyment of the game.
Sonically The Book of Unwritten Tales is a soothing balm to the ears that counteracts the acerbic reaction it has on the eyes. The music is full of swelling orchestral pieces, subtle background music that lulls as characters speak to each other or comment on the environment, even the main menu music I found myself listening to just because it was so pretty. The music sets the tone of the scene and doesn’t make itself intrusive or overbearing. Also, after a puzzle is successfully solved a musical tone plays much akin to level-up music you may find in RPGs. Even though the game is as linear as they come, hearing that music play when something is done right fills me with such a sense of accomplishment that it kept me pressing on.
The sound effects are also unobtrusive and fit the environment well. Birds chirp in the forest, water drips in the sewers, and pick axes and shovels clang and scrape in the mines. All the environmental sound effects sound as if they belong to the scene and are never loud or brash as to overpower the characters speaking. Every sound is equalized well, and there are options in the menu screen that allow the player to manually adjust the volume of each piece of sound. Find the ambient sounds distracting or annoying? Simply turn them off! This level of control over the game’s sound is always a nice touch especially for gamers such as myself that may need fine control to hear everything going on.
Where the game stumbles in the sound category is the voice acting. Adventurers now expect their games to be fully voiced; the days of the text adventure or even graphic adventures with text overlays are long over. We expect modern adventure games to feature a full cast of actors to read their parts believably and we also expect all those lines to mesh well with each other. Unfortunately The Book of Unwritten Tales has trouble delivering this. Each part sounds as if it was read separately from all the others and lends itself to acting that sound stilted and out of place. Nate especially suffers from abysmal voice acting and I found his character less charming and more annoying. This may have been done on purpose to portray Nate as the brash human but it makes the acting and the character seem lazily produce and does not lend to a deep connection with the character. Conversely, Ivo and Wilbur are acted superbly and this makes their characters really pop to life. Wilbur’s voice portrays a small gnome unfamiliar with the outside world and with pie in the sky dreams and Ivo as a mature elf well versed in the ways of the fantasy world in which she resides.
One point I find particularly annoying is that not all the lines match the subtitles. While this is not game breaking it is distracting and shows a lack of attention to detail. As a gamer I always play a game with subtitles and when those don’t match what’s being spoken it pulls me out of the game as I try to reconcile what I’m reading against what I’m hearing. Overall though, the sound is superbly executed with only minor flaws that won’t take anything away from your overall enjoyment of the game.
Gameplay:
The Book of Unwritten Tales does not stray far from the formula of the point-and-click genre. You control a character searching static environments or objects that can be combined with other inventory items or set pieces to solve puzzles and move the story along. Newcomers to the adventure genre will find this game has the right balance of brain teasers and object puzzles; nothing is too obtuse or impossible without a little observation and crafty thinking. Those of us who have played games like this before will most likely find it all too easy and leave us with that “done before” feeling.
While the story itself is cliché, consisting of a done to death plot about the lowly adventurer discovering his inner greatness and saving the world from evil and doom, the presentation blew my expectations out of the water. The dialogue and interaction between characters is well written even if the delivery of the lines is somewhat unimpressive in execution. Rarely do I find a game so funny as to laugh out loud but The Book of Unwritten Tales made me more than chuckle on more than one occasion. In most instances I actually found myself really laughing as the game addressed itself in some metaphysical way, paid homage to past great adventure games, or listening to the banter between the pieces of a talking set of magical armor. At one point Nate becomes so aggravated by his situation he delivers a short string of curse words that are bleeped out. The presentation of moments like these are truly funny and really add breadth and depth to a genre that has mostly grown stale. Even looking at strange objects in the character’s inventory lends itself to some truly funny moments were they are simply explained away as “magic”. I don’t want to ruin too many of the games funny moments; they’re something best left experienced for yourself.
Overall control of the game is handled by the mouse. Click on the area you want your character to go and they will walk to it. Some nice additions to the gameplay are accidental clicks on the right mouse button don’t skip dialogue (something I’m particularly annoyed that I continue to do even after years of game experience), shifts in camera perspective that add graphical flair (one scene is an isometric overhead camera reminiscent of classic RPGs), and a double-click feature that easily and quickly transitions into the next scene to cut down on travel time. Thankfully the environments are small enough that transition from one to another doesn’t take much time and the game makes sure the player doesn’t need to do much backtracking, a saving grace over traditional point-and-click adventures which typically force the player on lengthy backtrack missions to complete tasks. Another nice addition is an area map that can be used to quickly enter a scene that would otherwise take many clicks to get to through traditional scene segue.
The Book of Unwritten Tales has some interesting additions to the genre that I hope to see scooped up and used in other titles. Adventure games typically don’t require much interaction from the player other than clicking on objects or points of interest and passively watching or listening to the results. The Book of Unwritten Tales takes this idea and throws it upside down, unfortunately only sometimes. These interactive puzzles such as mixing up a potion by following the recipe or performing a dance a la a Dance, Dance, Revolution-style keyboard rhythm game is something I have previously never seen before in an adventure game. These puzzles, while not particularly difficult, offer something fresh and exciting to the genre and I found myself wanting more of them and less of the typical “combine A with B” puzzle. I would go so far as to say I hope these types of puzzles become genre defining. Here’s to hoping that King Art Games and other adventure game developers take a page from The Book of Unwritten Tales on how to craft truly unique puzzles in the future.
The Book of Unwritten Tales does not stray far from the formula of the point-and-click genre. You control a character searching static environments or objects that can be combined with other inventory items or set pieces to solve puzzles and move the story along. Newcomers to the adventure genre will find this game has the right balance of brain teasers and object puzzles; nothing is too obtuse or impossible without a little observation and crafty thinking. Those of us who have played games like this before will most likely find it all too easy and leave us with that “done before” feeling.
While the story itself is cliché, consisting of a done to death plot about the lowly adventurer discovering his inner greatness and saving the world from evil and doom, the presentation blew my expectations out of the water. The dialogue and interaction between characters is well written even if the delivery of the lines is somewhat unimpressive in execution. Rarely do I find a game so funny as to laugh out loud but The Book of Unwritten Tales made me more than chuckle on more than one occasion. In most instances I actually found myself really laughing as the game addressed itself in some metaphysical way, paid homage to past great adventure games, or listening to the banter between the pieces of a talking set of magical armor. At one point Nate becomes so aggravated by his situation he delivers a short string of curse words that are bleeped out. The presentation of moments like these are truly funny and really add breadth and depth to a genre that has mostly grown stale. Even looking at strange objects in the character’s inventory lends itself to some truly funny moments were they are simply explained away as “magic”. I don’t want to ruin too many of the games funny moments; they’re something best left experienced for yourself.
Overall control of the game is handled by the mouse. Click on the area you want your character to go and they will walk to it. Some nice additions to the gameplay are accidental clicks on the right mouse button don’t skip dialogue (something I’m particularly annoyed that I continue to do even after years of game experience), shifts in camera perspective that add graphical flair (one scene is an isometric overhead camera reminiscent of classic RPGs), and a double-click feature that easily and quickly transitions into the next scene to cut down on travel time. Thankfully the environments are small enough that transition from one to another doesn’t take much time and the game makes sure the player doesn’t need to do much backtracking, a saving grace over traditional point-and-click adventures which typically force the player on lengthy backtrack missions to complete tasks. Another nice addition is an area map that can be used to quickly enter a scene that would otherwise take many clicks to get to through traditional scene segue.
The Book of Unwritten Tales has some interesting additions to the genre that I hope to see scooped up and used in other titles. Adventure games typically don’t require much interaction from the player other than clicking on objects or points of interest and passively watching or listening to the results. The Book of Unwritten Tales takes this idea and throws it upside down, unfortunately only sometimes. These interactive puzzles such as mixing up a potion by following the recipe or performing a dance a la a Dance, Dance, Revolution-style keyboard rhythm game is something I have previously never seen before in an adventure game. These puzzles, while not particularly difficult, offer something fresh and exciting to the genre and I found myself wanting more of them and less of the typical “combine A with B” puzzle. I would go so far as to say I hope these types of puzzles become genre defining. Here’s to hoping that King Art Games and other adventure game developers take a page from The Book of Unwritten Tales on how to craft truly unique puzzles in the future.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, The Book of Unwritten Tales is a game every computer gaming enthusiast should pick up and play through till the end. Smart dialogue will keep you clicking away until you reach the conclusion. While the ending is really anticlimactic and far too short for a game that takes about twenty hours to complete, the journey will be enough to satisfy. Character interactions and dialogue spoken directly to the player are funny and well written, though the acting is spotty as best. You won’t find many deviations from classic high fantasy tropes such as orcs, elves, and the undead but their presentation is smartly executed and it is a pleasure to listen to the remarks that break the fourth wall. Inventory objects cannot be erroneously combined which leads to some easy inventory puzzles and the lack of funny dialogue if the player tries to combine unlike items is a missed feature. Switching between playable characters, while something new to the genre, is made annoying by the amount of time it takes for the active player to step into the background and the new character to come to the foreground. It’s an interesting feature but is not well polished. Finally, some pixel hunting of environments to find objects rounds out the small flaws of the game.
While The Book of Unwritten Tales doesn't do much to outright change the adventure genre, it adds enough new features to hopefully resurrect a dying (or outright dead as most would say) genre of computer gaming. I highly recommend playing The Book of Unwritten Tales; the story is engrossing and well written and is enough to carry the player away to a fantasy world full of interesting characters and situations. The puzzles, while easy for seasoned gamers, will have just the right amount of challenge for newcomers to the world of computer gaming and the hilarious dialogue will keep all players hooked until The Book of Unwritten Tales reveals its tale in full.
Overall, The Book of Unwritten Tales is a game every computer gaming enthusiast should pick up and play through till the end. Smart dialogue will keep you clicking away until you reach the conclusion. While the ending is really anticlimactic and far too short for a game that takes about twenty hours to complete, the journey will be enough to satisfy. Character interactions and dialogue spoken directly to the player are funny and well written, though the acting is spotty as best. You won’t find many deviations from classic high fantasy tropes such as orcs, elves, and the undead but their presentation is smartly executed and it is a pleasure to listen to the remarks that break the fourth wall. Inventory objects cannot be erroneously combined which leads to some easy inventory puzzles and the lack of funny dialogue if the player tries to combine unlike items is a missed feature. Switching between playable characters, while something new to the genre, is made annoying by the amount of time it takes for the active player to step into the background and the new character to come to the foreground. It’s an interesting feature but is not well polished. Finally, some pixel hunting of environments to find objects rounds out the small flaws of the game.
While The Book of Unwritten Tales doesn't do much to outright change the adventure genre, it adds enough new features to hopefully resurrect a dying (or outright dead as most would say) genre of computer gaming. I highly recommend playing The Book of Unwritten Tales; the story is engrossing and well written and is enough to carry the player away to a fantasy world full of interesting characters and situations. The puzzles, while easy for seasoned gamers, will have just the right amount of challenge for newcomers to the world of computer gaming and the hilarious dialogue will keep all players hooked until The Book of Unwritten Tales reveals its tale in full.