The Book of Unwritten Tales

More of a comment on the release date. It officially came out for everyone in Oct 2011. It originally made an appearance in 2009 and like many good games in Europe takes forever to make it out :( So this particular release is from Oct 2011. I know the release dates on gog here are usually off when one sees games from the 90's show up as 15 yrs off. That being said this game reminds me of Shrek. Especially the first trailer the moment the moron throngs that sword I thought of the Blond idiot in the first Shrek. Almost expected the short King to show up at that moment..

First the objective stuff: Audio, visuals, voices, stability, atmosphere, characters all 5/5. And the more subjective: Puzzles 4/5. Personally I liked the generally logical/common sense puzzles, but others might find them too easy. Replayability 1/5. Unfortunately it's completely linear, but I'll probably replay it again sometime for all the 5/5 things. I nearly rated the game 4/5 overall because of this, but adventure games are not generally very replayable. Overall the game is very charming. It boils down to the usual adventure game fare of pixel-hunt, examine, pick-up, experiment but the characters and environment drew me in to the extent that I generally forgot that I was going through this cycle. There is also a keyboard key that highlights all areas of interaction on the screen, but I hope you don't find it as it can spoil the game. Would I buy a sequel from gog.com? Yes!

The first thing I noticed about this game was how it didn't look even remotely 'ancient' - this could easily be a modern indie game. I was never a fan of point-and-click adventures, but this one has made me reconsider. It's silly, irreverent, graphically brilliant, and very funny. It also looks like it could be a nice casual brain-teaser. Of all the games I've bought from GOG, this one is the one that stands out as the real keeper.

I found this game fun enough. Played it for the first time a little while ago. I stopped though because the puzzles started to make no sense which was causing me to get stuck. Minor puzzle spoilers ahead.... One example is you had to light something on fire, but you couldn't walk past a guard with a light source. I tried finding a way to light the item at the place I needed to for quite some time before I looked up how to do the quest and you have to put the lit torch in your backpack so it doesn't provide light. You can't put a lit torch in your backpack like that....... Also another one there was a cannon ball falling on a plank of wood which would bend and the cannon ball would fall off......the solution after I looked it up is to use a cushion.......that so wouldn't work. Anyways that was about half way through the game.....it just falls apart, puzzle wise.

The Book of Unwritten Tales is a beautifully realised, heavily tongue-in-cheek fantasy adventure game that errs on the side of cliché, breaking of the fourth wall and gaming references. It's hard to classify this game though, as it's rated 12+, but often feels geared towards younger children, while at the same time referencing things more familiar to an older RPG/adventure gaming audience. As a result it can feel a bit confused, and the frequent jokes become a bit tiresome, not helped by clunky, often long-winded dialogue. However, the interface is slick and easy to grasp, and the puzzling is generally logical if a bit too easy. Overall it's a good game, perhaps not very re-playable but it has a charm and entertainment enough. Oh, and if you find a Crumpled Note, you can right-click it; never had to do it with anything else, but… yeah.