The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is a narrative-driven point-and-click adventure that involves a lot of puzzle-solving and a bit of turn-based combat. But you could also say it’s a game for those who like the idea of diving into a good book.
The odd world of The Bookwalker is a place where skilled individuals can step right into written pages and pluck out objects—and in some cases even characters—that they fancy.
Admittedly, that’s all quite illegal in this place. But that doesn’t stop your character, Étienne Quist, from doing it.
Étienne is a former writer who’s been given a sentence of 30 years of state-imposed writer’s block for some past offense. Fortunately, Étienne knows a guy. And this friend (?) connects him with a powerful client who, via telephone calls, promises to remove Étienne’s painful writer’s shackles in exchange for a few leaps into various books and a few procured valuable items. Hey, this client will even fork over a little extra cash if the snatched items are in good shape. And since Étienne is currently locked away under house arrest in his shabby little apartment building, that walkin’ around money is welcome.
Now he just needs to avoid any book police; circumvent the dangers and puzzling situations of the books; and earn his way back to putting pen to paper himself.
Gameplay wise, players have several different worlds they can point-and-click their way around in. There’s Étienne’s “real world” apartment and its surrounding building, of course. But then you have the six different books and story locations that he dives into. Those book worlds hold some very valuable collector’s items that gamers must find and grab, such as a potion of immortality, a wizard’s wand and Thor’s hammer.
Each book has its own rules, settings and characters that players must interact with. And depending on their choices, their interactions can devolve into turn-based battles against everything from robots to giant spiders to the undead.
In battles, Étienne starts off with three “ink-based” skills (since he’s fighting on a book page). Each slashing, stunning and shielding skill either draws from Étienne’s limited supply of ink or drains it from foes. Foes attack in turn and can sometimes heal themselves, so strategy is required.
Fortunately, while exploring each book, Étienne also picks up food that can replenish his life bars. Other collected detritus can be used to craft puzzle-solving tools or be melted down into an ink supply.
The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is a single-player first-person/ third-person game. And though there’s only one story ending, choices within the books can change the outcomes of the individual journeys. In some cases, those choices can result in a failed quest or a broken item.
The writing of this narrative-driven game is quite interesting, with involving twists and unexpected surprises. And though Étienne’s world can feel a bit bleak, there are lots of elements to explore and onion-layers of story to peel back.
Étienne and a lost character he finds discuss about refraining from injuring others. And even though Étienne is working through dangerous worlds, he determines that he’ll try to help rather than hurt any characters that he meets.
That said, lots of sentient and non-sentient characters are “killed” here. And some die in lightly bloody ways. Étienne’s attacks don’t involve weapons (other than a pen-like slash move) but other characters use blades and clubs. People are shot and stabbed. Attacks can result in a reddish splash of ink. A computer kills people with a laser beam to the back of their head (seen from a distance).
Defeated characters crumple over and disappear. We see some dungeon-like areas splattered with what appears to be blood. Étienne also encounters evidence of people being tortured for a science experiment. In some books, he discovers the corpses of people who have died or been murdered.
Characters smoke and drink. And after Étienne rises out of sleep on one occasion, his apartment is littered with empty booze bottles. One of the books takes place in a school for witches and wizards, and one of the witches says she wants to feed her fellow students to a group of undead. Étienne has the option to attack with a voodoo doll.
Another book involves a ship full of spacefaring “acolytes” who pray to an unknown “god,” and their praying energy is transformed by a computer overlord into a physical form of energy that the ship uses. This tale references “sinners” and “hell fiends.” The ship’s computer rules over passenger’s and determines whether they’ll live or die based on how “worthy” it judges them to be.
Étienne lies to his neighbors, authority figures and, well, nearly everyone around him. We discover that, in turn, he is being regularly lied to as well. Crudities such as “d–n,” “b–tard,” “h—,” “crap,” and misuses of God’s name, are scattered throughout the dialogue.
The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is a novel idea and an immersive trip. But this messy, T-rated book-dive could have benefitted from an editor.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
