What the hell was I doing in 2012?

The Book of Unwritten Tales is an old-school fashioned point-and-click (P&C) adventure which essentially catches you off guard right from the beginning. As the story unfolds from a simple quest in finding and retrieving a secret powerful artefact before the forces of evil in the vein of The Lord of The Rings, its strong and well-written narrative creates this deep and intriguing light-hearted story that always makes you wonder what is going to happen just around the corner. Not only that, but as the story progresses in its artistically breathtaking environments, it genuinely gets better and better throughout its impressively 17+ hours long story. While admittedly it is not the most original story on the surface and some of the animations can break the immersion at times, its rock-solid narration easily makes up for them.

To my surprise, the game features some of the best memorable and likeable casts I have seen in a very long time, with plenty of exceptionally written witty humour which mocks (and pays tribute to) almost every single fantasy and video game trope out there, enough for a handful of genuine laugh-out-loud moments. Whether it is J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels or World of Warcraft, you name it -- the game most likely covers it somewhere. Imposingly, the cast also features excellent voice acting accompanied by a fitting soundtrack when, well, when it feels like playing a soundtrack.

What has kept this generation from embracing P&C nowadays could be partially blamed at the inconsistent difficulty-curve caused by illogical and lack of inspiring puzzles in similar games, but The Book of Unwritten Tales fixes almost all of that. The puzzles here are logical and generally easy to solve throughout the game since it encourages you to explore all the hotspots without the game holding your hand along the way. Apart from the second last chapter in particular, the puzzles here should be solved by literally anyone who is willing to explore every single detail out there, and this game has an abundance of small, yet rich, details in places. Plus, there are plenty of interesting (and humorous) dialogues and the hotspots are indeed descriptive. More importantly, there is a constant flow of momentum when solving the puzzles, something I have not seen in many games like this in years, and that is brilliant. There is never that fear of being punished and getting stuck for long periods of time for a poorly implemented puzzle. To my enjoyment, a few of the puzzles were rather genially designed thanks to a character-selection mechanic which allows the player to pick which character they want to perform certain tasks. While most of it comes down ultimately to a specific character being able to perform the certain task, it is a satisfying experience to see everyone working as a group to solve a puzzle, although I strongly feel like this is where the game missed an opportunity to expand on this mechanic.

Just when the game seems to hit the nail on the head in every single aspect of a classic P&C adventure game (and beyond?), it drops the ball really heavily just at the end in one of the most abrupt endings I have seen since Dreamfall, without any sense of climactic fulfilment. It is clear that the ending was left open for a sequel, yet it was poorly executed -- causing more questions than answers. The last five minutes, including the final cutscene, felt more like the developers ran out of time and had to release the game as soon as possible, with little time spent on writing a conclusive and plausible ending. It painfully feels like the story ends halfway through the chapter, subconsciously knowing there has to be more. It is rather sad because everything up to this point was meticulously and well executed. You would honestly be surprised by how such ending can instantly change you from an enthralling mood to a pokerface the moment you see the credits rolling. That was very, I repeat, vey underwhelming.

Conclusively, The Book of Unwritten Tales is the closest thing to a Monkey Island experience in my book. While it does not blatantly rely on nostalgia and references from past classics to suck you in, in fact, it does have its own charming personality. It basically takes almost everything that worked in the past and improves it, or more fittingly modernising the formula, while still keeping that old-school feel of the golden-era of LucasArts/Sierra games and at least trying to break the status quo set by those classics. I can easily say that this is one the best accomplished modern adventure games I have ever played in a very long time and can also say that it will stand the test of time as far as P&C games are concerned. It just falls slightly short from a masterpiece status thanks to its unjustified ending, but The Book of Unwritten Tales is a prime example of how P&C should be tackled for new and old audiences in times like these where military shooters and other saturated AAA-titles seem to take the spotlight in the media. There is more passion and product value in this than in many titles out there and I am glad I actually got to play this, eventually. What an unforgettable and delightful experience all around.

Like I said earlier, what the hell was I doing in 2012? I shall not repeat the same mistake in 2015 when the sequel will be released.

This is an awesome throwback to the days of Kings Quest and Quest for Glory. I love the humor and excellent writing. Puzzles take some thought but not enough to make you frustrated. Graphics and Voice acting are top notch for this style of game as well. I see they are making a part two. Cant wait!

Modern Classic.

Missing Guybrush or other good adventures with meaningful item collection? Get it.

Personally, I adored this game - and I've taken far too many screenshots of chairs! ;) Amazingly humorous, the female, veggie dragon was every inch a breath of fresh air, with her character presenting the modern image of a dragon that wasn't 'terrifying'. More so, she was a dragon whom had become lost in a world of mindless carrying work and was now looking to take on the stereotypical image of the viscious, male dragon. Although now that I think upon it, she did seem like something similar to twilight (a vampire who's not a vampire; a dragon who's not a dragon; do you get the picture, eh?), but her character was certainly amusing enough to ignore this increasingly occuring character aspect in now modern culture.

My favourite characters were Nate and Wilbur, I have to say. Nate appealed to me at first because of his rouge appearance and Wibur...well, who isn't intrigued by cute little gnomes with grandpa's. The graphics were simply amazing (from characters' outfits to cutscenes), and I can't fault that one bit. Guillivar's character was particularly entertaining, I found.

Honestly, I entirely loved the game - minotaurs are not often represented enough today in culture and, as expressed, although there are some cliches (weeping women, dragon's not being dragons, etc), it was truly a breath of fresh air to play. The ending was perhaps a tad abrupt and could have been made longer, but it was clearly done to leave an opening for a sequel.

So, in any case, after playing as Guybrush Threepwood for many, many years, I was looking to experience a new point-and-click, adventure game and I believe I found it :) I can only hope that the sequel that's being planned comes out soon. After all, I want Wilbur's family and that dwarf bartender to see his new outfit ;)

I hate adventures!
--- end of review ---

Ok, not really. I would love to love them is a better term. But they are so boring.
Riddles because someone thought of them. Not because they make sense in the story.
Characters which are too cool or smart to be true.
Simply said, adventures are not fun.

I know of three exceptions currently:

1. Blade Runner - 1997 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_%281997_video_game%29
   
2. Culpa Innata - 2007 - http://store.steampowered.com/app/12310/
   
3. The Book of Unwritten Tales - 2009

I played through "The Book of Unwritten Tales" in two days, ca. 16 hours (Blade Runner took me 32 hours non stop), and it was fun.
Really fun.
Sitting in front of your computer and laughing loud out, I don't do that very often.
I like the characters, I like the music, I like the voices very much (dragon anyone?) and I REALLY like the riddles.

Sometimes I searched for answers in the internet, but somehow I failed to find all but the first riddle. And even that was totally logically, I should have thought a bit longer about it.
That is the funny thing here. You don't have to try to combine every item with every other item.
Most of the time, you already have an idea what could/should work and just work in that direction.
Only sometimes you look at what you have, then you look at the problem, then you say: NO, and try it.

The game tells a story, the riddles are not riddles but there are problems in the game and you solve the problems. I hope you get my point? It is less "oh my god, again a riddle" and more of "yes, of course do I need to do that somehow, how"?

The game is just great.

Awesome!

I love this game, it encompasses humor from so many other games. There are touches of The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Sam and Max, Terry Pratchett's "Death" character and even a rendering of the tree from a version of 3D Mark.

Long review short, you play a gnome who rejoices in the name of Wilbur Weathervane, but unlike other gnomes you have little interest in mechanical inventions. You would much prefer to become a Mage, and study all things magical. You start the game as a kitchen "assistant" in a once-popular Dwarven Inn... that was before The War descended upon the population and all of the Dwarves enlisted to go to the battle front... apart from the barman.

A deadly artifact has been uncovered in some texts by archaeologist Mortimer McGuffin, an aged Gremlin, which threatens the entire existence of the known world should it ever be found, but before he can warn the Arch Mage in the town, he is kidnapped and held hostage under threat of torture to reveal the location of the artifact.

The game starts with Mortimer's rescue, which indirectly introduces Wilbur into the story as well as a gorgeous female elf by the name of Ivodora Eleonora Clarissa, Princess of the Silver Forest Realm. The fate of the world lies upon your, and her, shoulders... and a couple of companions you happen to pick up along the way.

From the very beginning, this game portrays a sense of humor that traverses so many levels and borrows from some well respected sources. The one that sticks in my mind is a scene where you meet Death, immediately identified with the well respected Terry Pratchett character when Wilbur asks why he isn't speaking in capital letters... and in case anybody missed it, Death is actually wearing "fluffy bunny slippers" which are actually modelled on Max from Sam and Max,

There are also not-so-subtle references to Star Wars when Mortimer appears in a hologram to the Arch Mage and tells him that "he is their only hope". This game is full of wonderful tongue-in-cheek humor borrowed from some well respected classic sources which fit well with the characters and are delivered perfectly throughout.

The puzzles in the game are not difficult... obscure sometimes but not difficult. You just need to stop for a minute, count to ten and re-think a situation, and the answer will come easily to mind. The only thing to mention here is that is is _essential_ to re-visit locations _AND_ to re-click on items you have already looked at previously. Sometimes an object will only reveal a vital clue after you have progressed a plot-line further, even if you have examined it previously, you _will_ need to examine it again later to solve a puzzle somewhere.

It is this constant re-visiting of locations which is both a blessing and a curse, however the scenes are beautifully rendered so re-visiting is actually a pleasure, and visits are not too repetitive. Also, thankfully, several forms of "quick-travel" have been implemented which really helps as you progress through a chapter.

The developers have done a good job of programming the navigation in this game, it is quite polished and is primarily mouse-driven with a minimum of keys required to play, which makes for some fairly quick gameplay when it is needed.

Overall I would rate and recommend this game highly, it was a pleasure to play (for me at least) and it had a light air to it which I found refreshing in a steampunk style graphics game. The characters were light and friendly for the most part, even the "evil" characters were given a light humorous feel to them.

The game rendered just fine for me in 1920x1080 and the sound was really quite pleasant, although the music had to be cranked down a bit to stop it over-riding the speech. Not that the music is unpleasant, the score is quite classical and provides a very pleasant background to the game.

There were a couple of in-game sound effects that were not normalised but only a couple, the voices themselves are very well balanced and the variety of accents are actually genuine, being portrayed by genuine voice actors, not impersonators.

I would end this review by saying give it a try, you will be pleasantly surprised at how easily 8 hours of your life will just sail by without you realising it. This is quite an immersive game despite the simple plot, and if you are new to point-and-click then I would suggest you give this a serious go.

Pros: The art is not pixel graphics! Beautiful soundtrack, excellent voice acting, descriptive narration for the world and its items/inhabitants. The story has a complete ending.

Cons: The animation of the 3D models seems a bit clunky and rigid. I experienced a bug where the game slows downs tremendously when accessing the inventory. No Steam achievements.

Summary: When I see a game from "The Adventure Company," I roll my eyes and expect drivel. This game was actually quite fun, so I definitely recommend it to fans of the point & click adventure genre.

Amazing classic adventure game with a ton of games/movies insider jokes. Visually and technically very well executed as well! :)
A good way to introduce people to point and click adventures.

Nice point-and-click adventure. Won't blow your mind but it's a charming little game. Lots of beautiful, painterly artwork, and the voice acting does a good job of bringing the characters to life. It's not without its flaws, though. It can be a bit too much of a hidden-object puzzler at times, so get used to sweeping the mouse over the screen looking for that 25-pixel hotspot you missed the first 4 times through the room. And it's not nearly as funny as it thinks it is... lots of clumsy breaking of the 4th wall that just fall flat. Still decent in balance, though!

If you're a fan of the Point-And-Click adventure genre, Or even if you're not this game might be for you! The setting and game is chock full of humor. The fantasy genre, MMOs, Fiction and all manner of things get deliciously skewered in the story. Unlike other such games however, This game reards the observant. All the puzzles and interactions aren't too hard to figure out for the most part, But looking at things around you or in your inventory or talking to a person near you always reveals even a subtle hint as to what to do next, And if truly stuck one can hold SPACE at any time to see what interactive spots are near you at any time. For an indie offring, This is a game both beautiful and functional. At the very least, IT will provide a fun story!

Just finished the game and here are my thoughts.
8.5/10

Pros:
The story was interesting enough to keep me playing.
Voice acting was decent.
Puzzles made sense.
I LOVED the artwork!
Characters were pretty good.

Cons:
Animations were quite horrible.

Overall, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Very solid point and click adventure!

I am a pretty big fan of Point & Click Adventures so of course I would happily play this.

The game starts out with a Gremlin called McGuffin (Not just a name) being captured by an evil army as he has knowledge of a magical artefact that can end an on-going war. He manages to give a ring to Wilbur, a Gnome who wishes for a greater purpose in life, between being freed and immediately recaptured by a dragon. Cue the adventures of Wilbur the Gnome and Ivo the Wood Elf as they attempt to save the land from the Arch-Witch Mortroga.

This game is OK. From the beginning it has a clear idea of what it wants to do which is poke fun at multiple fantasy tropes with World of Warcraft seeming to be made the most fun of (Wilbur's first area looks incredibly like Dun Moragh for example) but still tries to keep up with its story. Later it seems to get rather cofused and some parts and character descisions make little sense such as Nate (a selfish scoundral interested in his own wealth) suddenly decides to want to save the land instead of ensuring his own safety and wealth. It is a rather odd character descision that comes out of nowhere much like other certain plot devices.

The worst part is pretty much the end. Which decides to solve the worlds troubles with a convuluted plot and then ends rather abruptly with no real explanation of what just happened.

It's not a bad game. The story does get rather sporadic and non-sensical towards the end although it may just be that the game feels more compelled to tell jokes rather than a story. Try if you want, Don't expect anything spectacular though.

So! You are a fan of point and click adventure games, but long gone are the days of Guybrush Threepwood, Roger Wilco, and purple tentacles. So, naturally, you've left games like that to the past, and whenever anyone tries to make a new one, it's all focused on graphics, never on story, never on humor, and certainly never the old 'combine these things to make this new thing to solve this puzzle'.

Well, I can say that if that is what you are looking for, The Book of Unwritten Tales is for you. The humor is a good blend of clever, self-aware, and just plain groan-worthy. The puzzles are not too simple and not too complicated. Well...ok, maybe a BIT too simple. Most of them were actually pretty basic, though a few stood out as clever.

My only complaints about this addition to the genre were fairly minor. One of the more classic moments in these types of games was in The Secret of Monkey Island where there was a whole string of events that happens outside of your control and everything occurs off screen with you just sitting there reading the text and listening to the sound effects. A direct homage to that happens in this game, but then a couple more times things similar to it happen....once was funny and a nice tribute, but multiple times sort of makes it feel like lazy writing or a way to advance the story when there's no logical way to tie two events together.

The other issue I had with this was one of...I don't know...dialogue trees? Programming? I am unsure what it would fall under but on multiple occaisons I would find an item and go 'Oh...I wonder if person X would like this items...' and so I go to check and they respond with 'Oh, hey, thanks for getting me that thing I asked for, here is the item I promised in return.' Except that none of that dialogue happened. It skips it entirely. It's not really a PROBLEM, but it certainly breaks the scene a bit and makes you kind of annoyed that you missed what might have been some funny moments.

Those gripes are minor, however, and I recommend this game a lot, even if you've never really played point and click adventures before as there isn't quite as many gaps in logic as you find in many others.

P.S. My favorite character was the dragon.

At first look, this game brought back alot of memories from the good ol' Monkey Island, Goblins and Loom days.
The game has a lot of references and not only from Amiga's best Adventure hits, but also various pop-cultural hits from Hollywood and even the music industry. Star wars among others.
The voice acting and characters is well-put-together and the jokes, even though they are cheesy at some times are decent and funny.

However, after completing the game - only using around 10 hours, I find myself fairly entertained, but in no way or format challenged. The in-game puzzles were way too easy, and despite of that the implementation of the "space-bar-helper" basically makes this game playable for 3-year olds, which is not in the spirit of Adventure games.
They are supposed to be challenging, with puzzles that makes you scratch your head for hours.. Not only press the spacebar and get it over with.

So would I recommend this game? If you're looking for a nostalgia-trip down memory lane, combined with 10-12 hours of fairly decent fun and not too hard puzzles, this is your game.
If you however, like me, enjoys to get challenged with proper puzzles/riddles - there are better and more challenging games out there.

A great little adventure game which lovingly pokes fun at fantasy adventures. This is very funny and fun to play. It is a little on the short side but as long as you don't use any FAQs will keep you occupied for around 10 hours. Definitly worth buying and look out for the newer stuff too.

89:100

Great game! Much fun! I strongly recommend it to all!

The Book of Unwritten Tales is a high quality point & click adventure with good voice acting,great humor and fairly straight forward,but enjoyable, puzzles.
The game is great value for money and is the first modern adventure game I have thoroughly enjoyed in a long time.

8/10

Gorgeous, entertaining and definitely one of the better point & clicks out there. Despite the fact that the writers spend most of their time crawling up Terry Pratchet's *** (read: honorable bottom), the writing is rather decent with a variety of references for all tastes and walks of life, distinctly articulated characters and some great chuckles in between. I also rather enjoyed the voice acting and generally found myself not skipping through the dialog. The art style is brilliant and the soundtrack is also great. The puzzles are for the most parts good, in a traditional point & click, Lucas Arts type of way.

On to the negatives: The early game is in every way superior to the later game, making me wonder whether they run out of time by the end of production. Specifically, in most of Nate's part there was less love in the details, the puzzles were worse (more unintuitive, more pixel hunting), and it all kinda dragged on without an apparent reason and without the great writing that made it all flow earlier. Problem number two was also mostly apparent in the second half: the lack of any type of hint system. If you want to get away without including one, you'd better give better clues, either with the art or with the writing, which the second half doesn't accomplish well. Lazy puzzles of the "put item x on spot y for no apparent reason" variety (and btw, good luck finding that "y" spot) are immensely annoying. It all becomes 10 time more exacerbating by unskippable cut scenes ("wuzza" anyone?) in two of those later puzzles. I don't appreciate alt-tabbing and having to look for walkthroughs - which I did because the "wuzza"s were ruining my enjoyment of the experience. Last but not least, I found the ending rather anticlimactic: basically an annoying cliffhanger-y type of thing that the game didn't deserve.

Nonetheless. It's for the most parts a good adventure game, beautiful to look at, great to listen to and with mostly interesting traditional point & click puzzles. Get it on a sale or a bundle instead of full price, and you can't go wrong.

Adventure games are few and far between these days. This one kept me amused and entertained for the two days it took me to beat it. There were a lot of pot-shots taken at adventure games and fantasy story-telling that broke down the fourth wall. If you were a big King's Quest fan, you'll probably enjoy this game.