The Book of Unwritten Tales
Score: 98% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Nordic Games Developer: King Art Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
Graphics & Sound: It seems like most games I review these days that have an adventure slant to them also mix in some hidden object elements as well. As a result, it is nice to pick up The Book of Unwritten Tales and find a good, old-fashioned point-and-click adventure, even if it is a fairly lighthearted one. The game’s visual aspects will quickly grab any gamer who has a taste for fantasy settings and fairytale creatures. Even the whitewashed, icy locations and the evil lairs of the enemy forces have enough colors in them to keep the mood of The Book of Unwritten Tales from getting too dark. The fantastical backdrops of each of the game’s scenes are well complimented by the voice-acting, sound effects and background music. While the music won’t get stuck in your head, it definitely does a lot to keep the overall mood of the game lighthearted. This, combined with both dialogue and actors that don’t seem to take anything seriously, just helps with the overall feel of the game. Unwritten Tales has a tendency to break the fourth wall when it is necessary for comedic purposes, and often makes comments about point-and-click adventures, especially when talking to Death, who finds his existence boring and tedious since no one dies in this type of game. As a result, even when I was faced with some of the game’s tougher or more tedious challenges, I never felt annoyed or angry at the game.
Gameplay: The Book of Unwritten Tales follows three heroes that are tasked with finding an ancient artifact before the evil forces of the shadow get a hold of it. These heroes include an adventure-seeking gnome named Wilbur Weathervane, a flighty and flaky fairy named Ivo and a cocky human named Nate. Not only does The Book of Unwritten Tales never take itself too seriously, but despite that lighthearted nature, it is a solid adventure game with quite a few tricky puzzles to work through. Sure, it has its share of fetch quest segments that require you to get one item so that the person you give that item to gives you something for someone else, who in turn gives you something else for another person, but it has quite a few doozies as well. One specific puzzle was very particular. It requires you to to brew a magic potion. Of course, the first step is to gather a variety of ingredients, but when it comes time to make the potion, it isn’t just a matter of putting them all in a pot. Oh no, you must follow the instructions carefully as they tell you which ingredient to add, followed by how fast to stir the pot, which direction to stir it and at what color you should stop stirring it. If you don’t do the job right, the whole mixture will blow up and you will have to start over again. Until this part of The Book of Unwritten Tales, I never could figure out what was so difficult in Professor Snape’s class in Harry Potter. Now, after taking an unacceptable number of attempts at that puzzle before finally finishing it, I feel like Neville Longbottom. The Book of Unwritten Tales has something else going for it; it is a long game. Between playing casual adventure titles that throw in hidden object elements and episodic-adventures like those from Telltale, it has been a long time since I’ve had to tackle an all out full-length adventure game and Unwritten Tales definitely qualifies.
Difficulty: Even when you take out the unfortunate potion-brewing exercise mentioned above, The Book of Unwritten Tales still poses quite a few challenging obstacles. While I found that the game had a lot of filler puzzles to keep the story progressing, the tougher challenges were frequent enough to keep me from making too much progress too fast. What was a nice relief was the fact that even some of the crazier puzzles that needed to be solved never felt illogical or wrong. Once I used the right tool for the right job or worked out exactly what needed to be done, I never felt like I had performed an utterly ridiculous and pointless task, although I have to say that there were a couple of times when I wasn’t sure how to proceed, so I simply went around and talked to everybody I could. This typically revealed some dialogue option that was either new or wasn’t attempted in a previous discussion.
Game Mechanics: Pixel-hunting is one of the banes of the adventure world. The Book of Unwritten Tales offers a solution that, while not original, is effective. By pressing the spacebar on your keyboard, all of the items of interest on a screen get an icon over them. This can either be a magnifying glass for "Look" or a hand for "Pick Up." A room filled with objects to look at might feel a bit overwhelming at first, but if you’ve looked at it and there is nothing more the character has to say about it, it is no longer clickable. This detail is interesting because it gives the player a chance to explore the world and learn about a lot of crazy and ancillary items, but when the icons stop hovering over the item, you know you don’t have to think about it anymore. One of the reasons I find this to be such a great solution to the pixel-hunting problem is that it is completely optional on the part of the player. If you don’t want the extra hint because you feel that makes the game too easy, then don’t use the spacebar. If you don’t use it, but find yourself missing an inventory item, or you don’t know what you can use an item on, then use the spacebar sparingly. It really is up to the player to decide how often you want this kind of hint. Any adventure gamer will want to pick up The Book of Unwritten Tales. It is a lengthy, challenging experience that is fun and doesn’t take itself seriously at all.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP SP 3 (32bit) / Vista SP 2 / Windows 7 SP 1, Pentium IV 2 GHz / Athlon 2.4 GHz Processor, 2 GB RAM, Direct-X 9c compliant video card with 128 MB RAM, PixelShader 2.0, DirectX:9.0c., 6 GB HD space   Test System: Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel i7 X980 3.33GHz, 12 GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c
Related Links: The Book of Unwritten Tales Official Home Page The Book of Unwritten Tales on Steam
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