The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales Critic Reviews

The choices lose a bit of their variety as the story goes on and the combat can be a tad simplistic, but The Bookwalker is a beautiful exercise in exploring the humanity of fiction and why we, the audience, should feel for the characters on the page.

Overall, Bookwalker is an engaging game that takes an interesting premise and uses it to tell a story full of mystery and creativity. I enjoyed the meta-ness of me controlling a fictional character as he wrestles with how and if to control other characters that are fictional to him. World-building, puzzle-solving, and quality visuals and writing make Bookwalker a satisfyingly complete package well worth checking out.

The Bookwalker doesn’t really manage to refresh the venerable old point-and-click genre with new systems because the new systems simply don’t work all that well. The worldbuilding and story are immensely compelling, however, and guided forward by great dialogue. The gameplay itself doesn’t have to be awesome if you tell a story such as this.

The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales presents an excellent basic idea and is, in general, well executed in its various parts. Just as the bookwalker is sucked into the various books in which he must venture, so it is difficult for the player to leave the adventure before its conclusion, as it manages to be engaging and inviting in its intrigues and mysteries. Narrative and exploratory aspects certainly prevail, while combat is the weak point of the experience. We would have liked an expansion of some elements of the plot, in our opinion not properly exploited, but we would recommend without reservation The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales to those who want to live a series of adventures that reinterpret in a different light myths and great classics of literature.

The Bookwalker has a huge potential. The developers, playing with the fantasy of the most incredible worlds and stories, aroused a desire to evaluate at least a couple more sequels that I hope will be bigger, with more branching storylines, and additional gameplay features. I hope we will see more of them to again go on adventures to surf the vastness of numerous universes!

The Bookwalker isn’t about inventing new wheels but combining familiar concepts in intriguing ways, ably marrying point-and-click adventuring and turn-based combat to provide a dark world to explore, filled with surprises that are ultimately more intriguing than its grand finale.

Even though it isn't flawless in any sense, the concept is unique enough and the gameplay engaging enough for the most part that I found The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales to be a really interesting indie title.