“The Bookwalker is a narrative adventure in which you play as Etienne Quist, a writer-turned-thief with the ability to dive into books. Use your powers to journey between reality and book worlds, and steal legendary items like Thor’s Hammer and Excalibur to restore your ability to write.”
The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is coming soon – very soon. Releasing on June 22nd, I have NO IDEA how I missed this one. Honestly, I do, but life gets busy, y’all, and it was announced in 2020. (Not entirely certain; it could have been previous to that. I found an announcement video from 2021, but that looks like it was just an announcement that tinyBuild was publishing, but then I found a second video from May that was a walkthrough on an Alpha Build.)
I caught this game during the Future Games Show last week and was floored. It looked insanely creative, not to mention, the premise of jumping into books to search for/steal artifacts? The Warehouse 13 fan in me squealed. The weekend/early week with game events kept me busy, but when I could finally dive into the demo on Wednesday, I wasn’t disappointed.
(The following will contain spoilers for the demo, which is available on Steam now.)
The demo started answering questions I had from the trailer about the world, but also added several more (and that’s not a bad thing). You’re not just a thief. You’re a writer, and you’ve been found guilty of some kind of heinous crime.
Instead of being thrown in the slammer, though, you’ve been fit with a pair of shackles that GIVE YOU WRITERS BLOCK. This guy, Etienne Quist, did something so wrong (in the eyes of those in charge) that he must wear them for THIRTY YEARS. As someone who deals with writer’s block, I can’t imagine having to deal with it all day, every day, for thirty years.
Immediately, you get the vibe that this world is broken, and there are bad people in charge. When there are bad people in charge, an underground emerges, and this underground can take care of your hellish shackles. There’s a catch, though. Because you’ve been sentenced to thirty years with these shackles, it’s going to take more work from you than most with your punishment. (And, as part of your punishment, you also need to work for a publishing house, which I thought was EXTRA brutal.)
Your first job arrives almost right away. From a courier, you get a suitcase with a book, a card with what you’re being sent to retrieve, and some miscellaneous information. The case also has a compartment where you’re to put the item you’ve been tasked to find. In the demo, you enter the book A Drop of Infinity to find a Potion of Immortality. Once you decide you’re ready to dive in, your open the book, and there you go!
When you’re in the book, the game shifts to an isometric perspective, as opposed to a first-person view when you’re in the “real world.” As someone who sometimes struggles with first-person perspectives in games, I appreciated this shift a lot; it meant I could keep playing. The ropes of the game are fairly simple. You can read notes on walls to gain information, find things in barrels and chests, and use items you’ve picked up to gain other items or craft necessary items at workbenches throughout the book world.
The seamless transition between the real world and the book world impressed me. I thought I would have been stuck in the book world until I completed my task, but I was able to hope in and out when I needed. First, I needed to return to my sparse apartment for my lockpicks, and a second time to convince my paranoid neighbor to lend me a sledgehammer. The demo sent me to a medieval prison, but there was a definite twist involved. I loved it.
There wasn’t a ton of combat in the demo. It’s turn-based, but not in a way that’s overwhelming. My problem with some turn-based games is that you’re bombarded with so many things I get overwhelmed. That wasn’t the case here, and I’m glad. If I got close to using my ink (think mana points or spell points), I had another bottle or two in reserve from exploration and crafting.
What I’m most interested in seeing in the full release is if the game has a morality system. There were certain moments in the game where I felt like it was turning that way, but I can’t be sure. I plan on re-exploring the demo one more time before the game comes out to make some different choices in certain spots to see if the ending changes.
I have few complaints about my time with The Bookwalker. The one thing I’m hoping for is perhaps making the hot boxes for interaction items a bit larger; I was playing with a controller and found it easy to miss the cues unless I was in just the right spot. It was far from something that would cause me to avoid the game in the end.
Final Verdict: Recommend!
The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is being developed by DO MY BEST and published by tinyBuild. DO MY BEST also released The Final Station in 2016, if the name sounds familiar.
You’ll be able to explore vast literary worlds on June 22nd, when the game comes out for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. If you have Xbox Game Pass, it will be included in your subscription!