➤ The book walker: Thief of stories, the review of the adventure of biblionaut Etienne Quist 🕹

After The Final Station, DO MY BEST offers a narrative adventure in which books are explored: we discover it in the review of The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales.

Etienne Quist is desperate: the famous writer has been sentenced to handcuffs for thirty years due to an unspeakable crime. Unable to write, he decides to accept assignments from a mysterious criminal boss who asks him to enter six books, as a biblionaut, to recover powerful and mysterious objects. The narrative premises underlying the latest video game by DO THE BEST I CAN, published by tinyBuild on old and new generation PlayStation and Xbox platforms and PC (the latter is the version we tested), are fascinating to say the least, and hold up the adventure very well for its entire duration.

Can be framed in the genre ofnarrative adventureHowever, The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales also features turn-based combat, which in the long run turns out to be too simple and unmemorable, and is somewhat repetitive in the construction of objects and the way in which the scenarios are developed. explored, all of them different from each other. Despite these flaws, it is, overall, an excellent product and capable of keeping the player's attention until the end, for the approximately six hours necessary to complete Etienne's literary odyssey.

We tell you about the adventures of biblionaut Etienne Quist in ours Review of The Book Walker: Story Thief.

Six novels, six different worlds

The book walker: Thief of stories, the review of the adventure of biblionaut Etienne Quist — To undertake each task, Etienne will have to open a suitcase that he will find outside the door of his apartment

We said that the writer Etienne Quist cannot continue his brilliant literary career due to the handcuffs imposed on him by the editorial police: during the history, we will discover more about Etienne and his crime, but unfortunately the general context of the fantasy world in which The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales takes place is never fully made clear. And it's a shame, because the little that can be seen of the narrative framework of the adventure seems really very interesting: it seems like a dystopian world and totalitarian, in which writers are endowed with powers beyond imagination, and the line between reality and fiction can be blurred until it disappears.

The revocation of the writer's license implies the removal of Etienne's books from the market. Desperate, the protagonist would at least like to free himself from the cumbersome handcuffs that prevent him from writing: this is why he accepts the dangerous assignments that will take him through six different novels, along with Roderick, a mysterious helper locked in a small cage. Roderick can be used to get advice on how to continue if the player ever finds themselves in difficulty: however, overall, exploring and solving the puzzles in The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales turns out to be a fairly linear and well-structured task. from a logical point of view and no additional advice is necessary. The bad thing is that, after a few hours, the plots of DO MY BEST become clear and a certain feeling of repetitiveness arises. The alternation of scenarios, however, manages to keep the player alert, with an excellent pace (each book can be completed in approximately an hour) and with enough differentiation between the situations presented.

There is no lack of true naivety: in some cases, Etienne knows things that he should not (yet) know, because he has not interacted with a certain object or learned information from a character present on the stage; Furthermore, a simple question could call into question the very foundations of the adventure: why doesn't Etienne Quiest read the books that have been given to him beforehand, to be aware of the development of the adventure and the risks that he will find inside? ? ?of the different novels? Despite these doubts, the plot presents some fascinating ideas and a pleasant and surprising twist at the end, but some characters - first and foremost the enigmatic Amanda - perhaps deserved a deeper analysis.

Inside and outside the pages

Etienne's adventures take place inalternation between reality and fiction. To give an example, in the introductory setting (of which a demo is available), the novel "A Drop of Infinity" by Jonathan Bowers, there are crumbling walls that could be knocked down with a well-aimed blow from a mallet. The protagonist then has the idea of asking his neighbor to lend him the necessary tool: he returns to Etienne's squalid apartment building, goes and knocks on the aforementioned neighbor's door, gets the sledgehammer and dives back inside. of the book, thus managing to resolve the problem of the wall in force.

It is a very interesting mechanic, although it is used rarely (approximately once for each book explored). For the rest, the different "rooms" that make up each scenario are explored successively - represented in isometric perspective - and one is left speechless before the artistic domain from DO MY BEST, capable of enclosing the spirit of each novel represented in magnificent dioramas. Prisons, deserts, power plants and decaying schools of magic are well characterized and full of life, which makes exploring for objects and key components to build levers, lockpicks and cable cutters very enjoyable, in order to solve puzzles (quite a few). simple in general) and find additional elements that help us in combat. Unfortunately, the aforementioned tools tend to be repeated, as well as the solutions to be adopted to continue, but the overall short duration of The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales makes it possible not to feel excessively a sense of boredom that could have occurred in a few hours. more adventurous. Fortunately, it is the alternation of settings that reigns, thanks to interesting dialogues with the characters present in the six novels explored by the biblionaut.

The weak point of the game structure created by DO MY BEST is undoubtedly the fight. Divided into turns, above each enemy the indication of the movement they will make in the following turn is visible: this offers excellent strategic possibilities, but it oversimplifies the approach to battles. The idea of unlocking abilities after “solving” each book is great; Unfortunately, however, the battles are overly simplified and repetitive, lacking flashes and played with alternating moves depending on the availability (and relative expense) of living ink, an essential resource for any good biblionaut. Initially you only have three moves: Slash, a powerful attack aimed at a single enemy, Assimilate, a weak attack that nevertheless allows you to absorb a large amount of the opponent's ink and, finally, Stun, a move with high consumption. of ink that allows you to block the next action of all enemies. In general, the combat is too simple and the design of the enemies fails to stand out in the context of the work.

If art direction presents points of excellence in the visual sector, the same cannot be said on the sound side: The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales offers a certainly functional accompaniment, but far from being unforgettable, and the soundtrack seemed too modest and background to us. We recommend using headphones to better experience the often quite light and non-intrusive sound effects that "color" the gaming experience. The dubbing of the dialogues is absent, while there is a translation of the same in Spanish Language: Except for some errors and naivety, we found it to be of reasonable quality. We would like to highlight an impeccable technical sector: no errors, system failures or technical failures spoiled our adventure, which went without problems.

Conclusions

Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam Holygamerz.com 7.5 Readers (5) 6.8 your vote

The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales presents an excellent basic idea and is generally well executed in its various parts. DO MY BEST is confirmed as a team to take into account, and at times it seems incredible that the video game starring Etienne has been developed by a team of only four people. Just as the biblionaut becomes absorbed by the various books in which he must venture, it is difficult to abandon the adventure before its conclusion, since it is attractive and attractive in its intrigue and mysteries. The narrative and exploratory aspects certainly prevail, while the combat is undoubtedly the weak point of the experience. We would have liked a more in-depth analysis of some elements of the plot, which in our opinion were not adequately exploited, but we believe that we can unreservedly recommend The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales to those who want to experience a series of literary adventures that reinterpret myths and great classics from a different perspective of literature.